conservatism – The R.oB. Opinion

The Problem is Ignorance

Even when the odds are stacked against them and they are ill equipped to meet the challenge, it’s still their fault.

“President Obama was right in his speech last week. The division between rich and poor is a national problem. But the biggest challenge we face isn’t inequality. It’s ignorance. So many kids from West Philadelphia don’t even know these opportunities exist for them. Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home. Many have teachers who are overburdened and too stressed to find the time to help every kid that needs it. Many of these kids don’t have the brains to figure this out themselves – like my kids. Except that my kids are just lucky enough to have parents and a well-funded school system around to push them in the right direction.

Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.”

(Via Forbes .)

Mr. Marks is exactly right the problem is ignorance. His. Its willfulness especially. I don’t doubt his heart is somewhere near the right place, but seriously. His entire argument boils down to this: Poor black kids “don’t have the brains to figure this out for themselves” just like his presumably white middle class kids. Further, they don’t have adults with the resources to help them. So even when the odds are stacked against them, and like all children, are ill equipped to face these challenges alone, it’s still their fault they struggle. You gotta love conservative ideology for it’s ability to engender doublethink. Orwell would be impressed.

Fareed Zakaria: How Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality

Party Politics: How Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality – TIME:

“In fact, right now any discussion of government involvement in the economy — even to build vital infrastructure — is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such involvement is always and forever bad. Meanwhile, across the globe, the world’s fastest-growing economy, China, has managed to use government involvement to create growth and jobs for three decades. From Singapore to South Korea to Germany to Canada, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by the government can act as catalysts for free-market growth.”

This is why I don’t have respect for “the new conservatism.”

More Reasons Why I’m not Conservative

In the 20th century, it was conservative intellectual William Buckley who defended white supremacy in the South. I hear people talking about how National Review–a magazine that speculated that the Birmingham bombing was the work of a “crazed Negro”– has, of late, betrayed its holy intellectual roots and I wonder what planet they’ve been living on. People mournfully claim that conservatism has “died,” and I wonder if they’ve forgotten what “conservatism” had to say to black people in apartheid South Africa. Meanwhile, conservative intellectuals are attacking gay marriages because it might reinforce “black social failure.” These are the intellectuals.

There is a fundamental problem here, one that can’t be elided by pointing out the differences between “true” conservatism and Republicans. A bias toward time-tested, societal institutions almost necessarily means a bias toward institutional evil. Likewise, a skepticism of change almost necessarily means a skepticism of those who seek to expand democracy beyond property-owning white men. Taken in sum you have an ideology, whatever its laudable merits, that will almost always, necessarily, look charitably upon those with power, or those who control the institutions, and skeptically upon those without power, or those who seek to change those institutions.

As a black person, I find that really hard to take.

via Conservatism And Power – National – The Atlantic.

Exactly. Even though conservative has it’s purposes in democracy, I prefer loving justice than institutions, than what is.