Does more history knowledge make you more conservative? Options

[Hartmann]

It's a pretty straightforward question.

My opinion is that it does in some way, as the liberal ideal is utopianism and an understanding of history makes it all the more clear that man is an imperfect thing and not able to be made perfect

Thoughts?

[Seeker]

I think being a student of History makes you Libertarian.

[Hartmann]

I think being a student of History makes you Libertarian.

Which is considered a conservative stance as personal freedom is not so much of a core of liberal thought anymore.

[blaarg]

Which is considered a conservative stance as personal freedom is not so much of a core of liberal thought anymore.

huh?

yeah because I guess conservatives would agree with gay marriage and non-intrusive surveillance methods (*cough cough* wiretapping) because that is what the "stay out of people's business" part of libertarianism is.

No doubt there are uber traditional conservative principles in libertarianism (especially having small government), but the fact is present day conservatives have little to no resemblance to traditional conservatism.

oh yeah and to answer the topic question:

no.

[Hartmann]

huh?

yeah because I guess conservatives would agree with gay marriage and non-intrusive surveillance methods (*cough cough* wiretapping) because that is what the "stay out of people's business" part of libertarianism is.

No doubt there are uber traditional conservative principles in libertarianism (especially having small government), but the fact is present day conservatives have little to no resemblance to traditional conservatism.

oh yeah and to answer the topic question:

no.

I think it's the far right who really want the intrusive searching. If you sit down and talk to your everyday conservative, they're not going to like the government going through their harddrive or viewing them on camera.

Libertarianism is conservative from the point of view of business and government regulation for sure, I just think the original idea of conservatism was not government control and surveillance but "do what you will" instead.

[blaarg]

I think it's the far right who really want the intrusive searching. If you sit down and talk to your everyday conservative, they're not going to like the government going through their harddrive or viewing them on camera.

So it's just the "far right" that are getting bills like this to pass in Congress? I agree, if you sit down to talk to your average everyday conservative they would think that all this surveillance (i.e. "government going through their harddrive or viewing them on camera") is bullshit. That just shows how out of touch the conservative voters are with their representatives (and how the neo-conservatives have hijacked the party).

[Hartmann]

So it's just the "far right" that are getting bills like this to pass in Congress? I agree, if you sit down to talk to your average everyday conservative they would think that all this surveillance (i.e. "government going through their harddrive or viewing them on camera") is bullshit. That just shows how out of touch the conservative voters are with their representatives (and how the neo-conservatives have hijacked the party).

There are no arguments from me. I think that in general (for both conservatives and liberals) the house and congress need to be cleaned out. There are folks in these positions that are simply going along to go along and don't take any interest in their party nor their constituents. This is definitely where I think we could improve as a nation, getting Congress back to where it was originally, representing the people.