Quote:
Originally Posted by doc_spartan
I can relate to this, being an upper middle class white guy....hey if we all decide to move back to the 1950s morality I'm good with that.
But I wonder if I was a racial minority, or woman, if I would really want that "social order" that conservatives wish for restored.
|
As a conservative and avid student of conservatism, I embrace the notions of prescription, presumption, and prejudice. However, prejudice in this sense does not mean the racial prejudice. There was a time when in conventional use, the term prejudice was not a perjorative, and not associated with racial discrimination. Today the terms are almost interchangeable.
I think you would find very few true conservatives wanting to go back to racial discrimination, against blacks or anybody else. I think making that assumption about what we want to conserve is a mistake. Wanting to preserve traditional social order is not about discrimination, however it does recognize that we are only equal in the eyes of god and in the jurisdiction of the court. People have different abilities and talents, and equal outcomes for all regardless of ability are not somethig we support. Again this is not about race. There are many black and brown conservatives.
I think the same can be said about discrimination against women. I think another thing conservatives (both mean and women) wish to preserve is the role that the mother and wife play in the family, which is in the context of the family as an institution, and again, as a bedrock of our civilization. We feel society is best served by the traditional nuclear family of husband and wife and children, and that people have a duty to society to procreate. That hardly means conservatives wish to make women barefoot, pregnant and uneducated.
The gay marriage issue is a whole different thing because we view it as an attack on the institution of marriage, the family, the roles of the husband and wife, and procreation, and we feel those institutions are the bedrock of western civilization, and they are worth preserving and promoting in their traditional form, because they have served us so well for so long, and any and all attempts to replace them have been futile.