Do social conservatives hate individuality?

Over the past few months of posting on this forum, I think I've finally realized why many social conservatives make me nervous.

For example, they are big advocates for traditional gender roles, the nuclear family, defining marriage between one man and one woman, and of course, Christianity. These aren't inherently bad values. After all, everyone is allowed to have their own value and belief system. But after seeing some of the posts here from these members, it seems like the desire for control is inherent in social conservatism.

To begin, the man in the video below showcases this fear and desire for tradition very well:

[video=youtube;fTiBv99MYDk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTiBv99MYDk[/video]

Also, take a look at the thread below to another example:

http://www.politicalforum.com/curre...ys-cross-dressing-camp-6-year-olds-above.html

It's not just simple disagreement with what the camp is doing, it's a collection of outrage, paranoia and accusations of pedophilia and child abuse.

There's a similar reaction from social conservatives whenever they see anything that's out of the norm. It seems like a lot of them try to uphold the norm and try to mold their children and those around them into this norm.

What I've concluded with this is that social conservatives place the society and culture above everything else, so anything that defies the norms of those two things must be stamped out to preserve the society, according to them. That's why I think there's lots of fear when they discuss homosexuality, transsexuality, single parent families, etc, because they know their control on society is losing it's grip. If I were to guess their placement on the Libertarian/Authoritarian political chart, I'm sure they would place high in the Authoritarian Right category.

Like I said before, I don't think all of their values are bad, but many social conservatives have a tendency to be authoritarian with their worldview. This is why I believe they're anti-individual, because individuality tends to get in the way of promoting whatever values the status quo says is right and moral.

Now don't get me wrong, there's people on the left that police behavior as well, but they have different goals in mind, and I've already made topics about them in the past, so let's not derail the topic towards that direction. Please stay on topic.

 

I was raised with them and even I can't stand them in the political arena anymore. About the only thing I am staunchly still socially conservative on is abortion for obvious reasons.

As individuals I have a lot of respect for them as they give a lot of themselves to other people and most of them don't seek out attention for it. The church I used to go to routinely helped out families of members in financial need and they received anonymous checks so that no one would know who gave the money. Religious conservatives are also on the top of the list in terms of volunteering money and time for charities, blood drives, public service etc.

However, whether or not they want to admit it they suffer the same dysfunction that most liberals do. They think they know best and that everyone should live by their standards for their own good. Add in religious dogma and you get a dangerous mix of religious ideology, self-rightousness and nannyism. They can't help but run around and tell everyone else how they should live their lives. Liberals and social conservatives in my mind at least are two different sides of the same coin.

Frankly the only reason that I worry more about liberals is because they have a much bigger list of dos and don'ts than the right and the lefts "religion" has a much larger impact on my daily life and freedoms.

The good news though is that this strain of conservatism seems to be dying out in favor of libertarianism which obviously I am very happy about. The majority of Republicans under 30 support gay rights so at least by 2020 possibly sooner you won't even see the gay marriage issue as a platform anymore. It will be treated just like a "kicking babies is not such a good idea" platform.......who is going to oppose that.

 

Only on the internet Mr. Johnson, only on the internet. You still aren't going to be able to build a winning political coalition against the crazy left that doesn't include Christian conservatives for another fifty years. Romney lost because a hell of a lot of Christian conservatives couldn't be persuaded that Romney really gave a damn about their issues and sat the last election out.

 

It depends on what type of social conservative we are talking about. I think you are referring to the Christian Right, and not necessarily social conservatives. The Christian Right is usually pretty moderate economically too. They tend to be more likely to support social security, military projection abroad, and closed borders. The only thing they differ from the left on is gun laws, and higher taxes and spending in concept - but rarely in practice. Social conservatives generally feel that government shouldn't get involved in shaping the cultural institutions of society. (Unless they are in charge of course, funny how that is always the case with politicians.) They may overlap in practice many times, but they are not the same thing. The Christian Right often wants to use more government to push its agenda. They are usually fine with big spending too, as long as taxes stay the same, not realizing debt is just a tax by other means.

 

Romney lost because no one voted for him......not just social conservatives. He actually managed to get fewer votes than McCain did after the 08 crash. Frankly I don't want the Republican party to give a damn about their issues. I am far more concerned with actual important issues like international terrorism, the NSA spying on its own fellow Americans, Obamacare and a host of others than I am about keeping gays from marrying. The fetish that a lot of social conservatives have with gay marriage is mind boggling.

You could design the most fantastic presidential candidate from scratch and make him the worlds best leader and yet if he supported gay marriage a lot of social conservatives wouldn't vote for him...........because they are obsessed to the point of derangement on that issue. I get being passionate about abortion.......I certainly am as I think its murder and torture after a certain point in fetal development. What I don't get is the obsession on what is intrinsically a private issue between two people. Its no ones business but their own.

In time I hope that the Libertarian strain overwhelms and kicks out the nannyist social conservatives who have nothing better to do than wag their fingers and stick their noses into other peoples affairs. As I said I love the people as individuals but they are freaking annoying as hell in the political realm. As I said the majority of Republicans under the age of 30 have no issue with gay marriage.......the writing is on the wall for social conservatives at least on that particular issue.

 

Social conservatives are Calvinists. Calvinists believe that since God knows all things he knows who will go to heaven and to hell, they are "predestined". They further believe that wealth is sign of God's favor and poverty a sign of God's disapproval. If you're wealthy, especially born so, you are one of the "elect". God loves you and you can do no wrong. If you are poor you are predestined to go to hell because God, in his infinite love and mercy, created you mainly for a life of suffering followed by an eternity of the same. You should thank him for this and die quickly so as to take up your place in perdition and stop mucking things up for all the people God likes. Mind, it doesn't matter what you do or how you try, nothing will work, God hates you, accept it and die.

Individuality to social conservatives is almost totally a financial concept. To the social conservative our fortunes are totally and completely our own concern. If you lose all your money, and this is no matter whatsoever the reason even if it's because one or another of them cheated you, it doesn't matter, you should simply go live under a bridge, or, even better, die. By the same token, if they have money it doesn't matter how they got it and they are entitled to keep it all, even more so if they have a lot. Most of the tax burden should fall on those least able to pay it, that way the inferior will die quicker.

Otherwise, individuality is just a sham. You are free to be as individual as you want, as long as you are exactly like them.

Isn't Calvinism wonderful? I try to be as tolerant of most religious as I can but if I ever were to meet John Calvin I would gladly strangle that evil hypocrite with his own intestines.

 

It's not just that their control on society is losing its grip. It is also that the control is moving into other hands. Not the hands of individuals, by the way. For instance, you mention single parent families. Well, when the family has less control over the children, who has more? That's right, the government. State-raised children are a great cause for concern, and also a danger to individuality. Sure, the state may not care if you get a tattoo or stick something up your butt. In fact, the state would prefer that you did. As long as you toe the line on important issues, those distractions are good for their brand of conformity. See Brave New World. Bi-sexuality and drug use were fully sanctioned by the state, because they kept people too entertained to give a damn about who was pulling the strings.

 

Uh, I see a hole in your theory doc. My family is socially Conservative, and they're not Calvinists, they're Catholic, which derides Predestination as a heresy.

... Predestination also refers to heavenly rewards, not Earthly ones. You're thinking of the Prosperity Gospel, which at least more than just Calvinists believe in.

 

Democratic voters have the exact same beliefs. They just chose to ignore (in 2008 and 2012) the fact that their beliefs were in direct contradiction to the this President and the Democratic Party platform. I'm not sure what you mean by "of course Christianity" as if to single it out as the only religion in America, but Protestant's and Catholic's are equally supportive of these things you list and they consist of huge amounts of Democrat voters.

 

As a social conservative, I'm all for individuality. I'm against fake individuality, like people who claim their style is individual, yet looks like every other person who want to be individual.

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Silly strawman. Those of us who are Catholic social conservaties are far from being Calvinists (which we view as being close to heretical).

 

This actually came up in conversation relatively recently. About 9/10 people don't understand a very simple precept when it's explained to them: I support marriage equality, but homosexuality is an abomination (to put it in the simplest, most used case). I am a religious, social conservative, but I appeal to libertarian principles in civil life and law. Most people are so caught up in their understandings of left and right that they just think I am a hypocrite for making those two seemingly juxtaposed statements.

To the video, let's first be fair: that guy is hardly even symbolic of the religious right. [I had a couple paragraphs on it but deleted it to keep the conversation steamlined and specifically on topic as much as possible]

I honestly think that the few narrow regions where social conservatives want to 'control' your life are less significant than bread and butter ways that liberals want to. It's really only abortions that social conservatives want ACTUAL control over - as far as marriage, they just don't want the state to recognize it (the few who want to criminalize gay marriage an extreme that the majority of the religious right wouldn't approve of). So while I think you are largely right, you're missing that even social conservatives want less control over the lives of others than do liberals. I don't want to derail the subject, just put it in perspective. IF you agree that the unborn are lives, then you're basically left with social conservatives wanting to extend laws protecting life to the unborn, and wanting to not recognize gay marriage - and that's *mostly* it (there are other less hot-button issues where social conservativism comes up). But even talking about that is (as abortion conversations almost always are) useless without any agreement on when life begins.

 

I actually do really agree.

While they're values are great in theory, they get thrown out the window when people don't do it their way.

I just wish they would tone it down to.

I do believe however in the nuclear family, I do believe in Christian values, I do believe in one spouse one spouse (no cheating however who cares who you love).

However, I also feel that social conservatives live under the premise of "Everything that happens in my life is a reaction to my actions and my actions alone" type of thing.

I think liberals are the collective ones on that issue.

All people need help in some way. But when it all boils down, your life is what it is because of yourself.

Decent thread OP

 

Speaking as a social conservative, myself, here's basically what it boils down to. We're interested in protecting, preserving, and promoting what works. We're not worried about people's feelings. Contrary to what the left would have us believe, nowhere in the Constitution does anyone have the right not to be offended. In a free country, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do for the most part, provided that you're an adult. But that doesn't mean society has to change to accept you for it or accommodate you on it. You can stand out and be different if you desire. God knows I played that one to the hilt, myself, in my teens and 20s. But society has no obligation to change all of their standards to make you feel better about yourself. Demanding that they should is called wagging the dog. And it's selfish.

Not surprisingly, whoever uploaded that video labeled it in a deliberately misleading way. Designed to make people believe that this guy advocates beating up your children. But when put into the proper context, it changes the entire meaning significantly. The message he's trying to drive home here is to toughen your son up. Something fathers used to commonly do for their sons because they loved them. And they wanted them to be strong and self-sufficient and to able to survive in the harshness of the world. Back in a bygone era when fathers were actually present in their children's lives and cared enough to help raise them into responsible adults. Today, we have such an opposite approach where we coddle and baby our young boys and teach them to be sensitive and then we wonder why they're living with their parents until they're 30. We wonder why they're afraid to take risks. We wonder why they don't know how to carve out their own life paths or run their own businesses. We wonder why they're so unbelievably soft and dependent upon the government. And it's because we've failed them. We haven't given them the proper tools necessary to do anything productive with their lives. We have fundamentally robbed them of the opportunity to grow up and become men. And so they look to the government to coddle them the way their parents did. Because they can't do (*)(*)(*)(*) for themselves. They have failed to mature, and it is entirely our fault because our society now promotes feelings over growth. Sensitivity over strength. And blind tolerance over critical reasoning. Our culture is weak today because we have socially criminalized healthy nurturing and re-branded it as "bigotry." Not because it's legitimately bigoted, mind you, but simply because it hurts our feelings. In this clip, this guy is simply promoting what was once called common sense. Something that once built and maintained the greatest, most productive, and most successful societies in the history of the world. It's the very foundation of western culture. But today we are now so far removed from these values that we no longer even understand why they are important. In fact, they shock our ears when we hear them. They now sound startling and mean. Again, not because they actually are, but simply because we've lost touch with everything that built the culture that we take for granted everyday. And this is where the collapse begins. With the corrosion of the foundation.

 

I disagree with the OP. That may be true amongst some social conservatives, but I have also seen variations of that among people who like to call themselves libertarian fiscal conservatives, and yes I have even seen it among progressive autocrats. There is no difference between wanting to force people to accept someone and wanting to force them to reject someone--it is all autocracy and normative indoctrination--just different norms.

 

I actually agree with you for the most part. Through efforts to be more diverse and tolerant to gender variant individuals, maleness in boys does tend to get shunned, even though it isn't oppressive in nature.

I made a thread awhile back on that topic: http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/312826-war-against-boys.html

The thing that really pissed me off about that video, though, was how he reduced being a man to digging ditches and being a woman to looking pretty. Boys and girls can still be tough while having character traits of the opposite sex, but that pastor seems to think that boys have to be 100% manly and girls 100% girly.

 

Their religious leaders caution them against thinking.

Not that it's necessary to tell them that!

 

No, social conservatives hate satan.

 

^This is an excellent book. I have it as well. Christina Hoff Sommers also wrote another good one called Who Stole Feminism? that's worth a read. It talks about the systematic cultural war against masculinity and how women's lib has become hijacked by radical man-haters and now promotes a purely misandrist agenda that has nothing to do with freedom or equality. It's not quite as good as the War Against Boys, but it's still really solid. If you liked WAB, I recommend WSF.

Well, that's the thing. Naturally, that's what biologically benefits the species the most. Which was why those traits built the culture we have today. That's what I was talking about with us losing touch with our foundation as a society. I'm reluctant to get too in-depth with you on this because I think you're a really cool guy, and I don't want you to feel like I'm attacking you or lecturing you. But I also see some things in some of your posts that I can tell you don't see yet. Some things that I think you might come to see in time but perhaps you're just not there yet. I think some of the things that I've seen you talk about that bother you about your own circumstances could potentially be a result of some of the ways that you currently perceive the world. Again, I don't want to get into this too far here because I don't want you to feel put on the spot, but if you'd like to chat about this sometime in PM, I'll be happy to explain more of what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to tell you what to think or how to live. I'm just trying to share some things that might help you in your own life journey. That's all. Just lookin' out for ya, bro.

 

You know what's funny is that your political leaders tell you secular leftists the same thing. You guys worship at the church of government under the doctrine of political correctness. A sacred dogma that must never be questioned no matter how illogical its tenets. And anyone daring to speak such blasphemies as "you should keep what you earn" or "men and women are different" must be branded a heretic, cast out of society, and made to wear a scarlet B. For BIGOT!

For such an anti-religious bunch, you people sure do act an awful lot like a cult of fundamentalist zealots. Are you even aware of that? Do you have any concept of what you actually look like from the other side? It's quite silly and hypocritical. You guys burn Rush Limbaugh at the stake for sinning against your feelings while ignoring identical transgressions from members of your own congregation.

 

I don't think they hate individuality, they just try to take the moral high ground.

They believe strong morals are gone out of this country and social conservatism is the only way to bring it back.

They see the problems in society being caused by the steady drop social conservatism has taken in the last 50 odd years.

In a way, they are correct. I just don't believe you have to follow that doctrine in order to be morally sound.

 

Gender equality is inherently misandrist.

 

No. That is an absolute liberal lie. It is the LIBERALS (that is, those whose philosophy is ultimately based on Communism) which would erase the individual in the pursuit of the mass or group.

To give everyone equal opportunity is divine. To hope for everyone to be equal in outcome is suffocating and one of the greatest of evils. This is why income redistribution on a large scale is repugnant to moral Conservatives.

Moral Conservatives don't consider it 'individual' to do things which are self-destructive of course. That is why they sometimes might seem to NOT 'support' someone in 'being an individual' in the liberals' sense of 'individuality'.

But to be an individual, including to be self-supporting and sustaining, is one of the highest goals of the moral, or 'social' Conservative.

 

There is gender equality and gender identical-ness.

The left has trouble discerning the difference in some important cases.

 

"Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior."

Women and men are fundamentally different, and it is entirely good and just that the latter should own the former as chattels.

Before we worrying about abolishing "gay marriage"(as if there could ever be such a thing), we should try to restore heterosexual marriage to its rightful state as a form of property ownership.

 

I didn't even READ this whole damn long post Unifier , and I already know that I agree with all of it.

So take that, weakling apologists!

Liberals are scared, Unifier. And it's no more complicated than that some folks know that God is taking care of them in this life, and other folks think they have to take care of themselves because they're 'on their own'.

Some of these latter folk don't realize that "individual responsibility" falls in the 'God-view of things' category and obviously DOESN'T exist as much in the 'we gotta take care of ourselves thing' category, even though it seems that is SHOULD exist in this latter category.