tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post7248787041340253878..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: How to be a left conservative in one easy lessonRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-25130291596682847702007-11-30T11:14:00.000+01:002007-11-30T11:14:00.000+01:00"the left conservatives never gained much of a foo..."the left conservatives never gained much of a foothold in Britain" - that's probably because of what conservative means in British usage. It has no ideological basis, rather being defined pragmatically. It only appears that way by exclusion from other ideologies, the way oil and water appear to be two different liquids that only associate with themselves but it is actually an artefact of water only associating with itself and excluding oil. Anyhow, think of Viscount Falkland's formulation "when it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change" to get the spirit of British conservatism. If you bring something with an ideological content to that, like "left", it may work but only in a fellow travelling way; "left conservative" is intrinsically based on ideas, so it is a contradiction in terms unless you are following a usage in which "conservative" can be ideologically based. P.M.Lawrence (BTW, I can't put my details in any more, so this will have to be anonymous).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-71692281472708439692007-11-21T18:54:00.000+01:002007-11-21T18:54:00.000+01:00Mr. Lawrence, You know, the left conservatives nev...Mr. Lawrence, You know, the left conservatives never gained much of a foothold in Britain - save for the odd Belloc or two. Liberal cultcha accomplished the remarkable feat of bringing together Burke (or Coleridge) and the French revolution - a miracle wrought by John Stuart Mill. Interestingly, the first appearance of pessimism in english, according to the OED, comes from Coleridge. <BR/>By the way, there's an excellent book I'd recommend to you: Ben Wilson's "The making of Victorian values : decency and dissent in Britain, 1789-1837." You might already have read it, but if you haven't - it has pretty cool chapters on the 'national disease' of hypochondria, the society for the suppression of vice - the kind of reformers that give reform a bad name - and the gradual social prohibitions that closed in upon the good old English - yes, the examples are culled from England - custom of bathing - or, to put it in more logical Americanese, swimming - in the nude.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-11346331033431197872007-11-20T14:05:00.000+01:002007-11-20T14:05:00.000+01:00"...an economic system which would profit the uppe..."...an economic system which would profit the upper class..."<BR/><BR/>I think we've been here before, in the related area of colonial dynamics. It wasn't a monolithic upper class in the UK, remember? The new economic order was of benefit to commercial interests and those able to tap into them, merchants, industrialists, large landowners who could be names at Lloyd's and the like - the Whigs, including the Whig Grandees. The Tories, however - lesser landowners like the "knights of the shires", university colleges, such bishops who were not swept up in the false consciousness that was all gas and gaiters, and the like - these had little to gain and much to lose, and often knew it. You can trace this in such things as the Stephensons carrying out railway surveys surreptitiously to avoid the attention of hostile landowners, and the efforts of the universities to keep railway links at bay (Oxford was more successful in this than Cambridge; the other place managed to deflect the main line via Abingdon and so was only connected late with a branch line, where Cambridge only managed to keep the station a long way out of town - though it was still practical to walk that far, as I recall; hence the story of one Don asking another what had become of their lost youth and receiving the reply "I don't know about yours, but mine caught the three o'clock down train").Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com