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Using ‘conservative logic’ to defend evil

scombrid said:
Trausti said:
Ah, conservatives are for limited government, individual rights, freedom of religion, free speech, personal responsibility, and meritocracy. But, go ahead, slay your strawman.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iQPqOwtvYbw
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Conservatives are for government by a corporate oligarchy where the corporations are free to dump all of their negative externalities on the commons while they loot the treasury and bankrupt the democratically elected real government. Conservatives are not for individual rights or freedom of religion. Conservatives think that local and state governments should be free to impose the majority religious doctrines on people within their jurisdictions. They say they aren't but it is what they try to do when they refuse to grant equal protection under the law to all people irrespective of sex or sexuality. They think that a corporation should be free to do anything it pleases but that you should not have an automatic right to marry whomever you please. They even favor deed covenants that restrict who can and cannot buy property. They talk a good freedom game but they never put it into practice when it comes to individual basic rights. It is smoke and mirrors with total corporate control being the end game.

They grouse about the big bad EPA regulating a 'puddle' on some farmer's property claiming that property rights mean that you should be able to do whatever you please on your property irrespective of downstream effects. They couch it in terms of David versus Goliath. But they are really angling to free up the multinational agribusiness and development corporations to be able to operate as cheaply as possible while dumping on the folks down stream with impunity.

And meritocracy? Is that how Jared Kushner and all of the other incompetents got their jobs in the McConnell administration? Yeah, they really live by meritocracy.
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I see conservativism as a push for freedom to leverage power asymmetries, largely because when you can leverage an asymmetry, it feels great, like that initial rush when you cheat at a video game and get to play God.

The problem here is that *it's also a really shitty fucking thing to do*.

I had a moment last weekend, when it really hit me how much I could leverage my new position as a senior executive at my new workplace. There was a moment where I started realizing how utterly evil I could be. Then I remembered who I am and made a conscious decision to keep being that person I have always been. But I looked over the horizon and saw my new position could put me at an economic energy level to track a valley of "screw you I've got mine": I looked at my principles and realized that was the moment I built those principles and ethical models to confront.
 
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