Thoughts on this 'Conservative Hippie' manifesto?

Damn. The first line of this tripe still irks the shit out of me. As if the notion of "Peace" is some kind of childish concept. The entire manifesto is a veiled insult.

 

It's not bad to be a conservative, if your conservativism means that you want less government intrusion into your life.
The more we sell out to the government in the name of social programs that are supposed to take care of us, the more we are owned by that government and the more we are controlled by that government. Be wary of politicians who try to win your vote by offering a so-called "free lunch." (national heath care comes to mind...)
As someone once said, "Freedom isn't free."

 

There's no such thing as a conservative hippie. That's a contradiction in terms.

Why? Because the very term "conservative" means holding to the status quo. Never allow anything to ever change. Keeping everything the way that it is, forever. That is what "conservative" means. In the year 2014 we should be living exactly the same way that everyone use to live back when Eisenhower and Truman were the presidents.

That is the definition of "conservative" the status quo.
– literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs.[1] To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are.
No change.

Kind of a delusional idea, that seems to ignore the fact that Life is Change.

Anyhow, the complete opposite of "conservative" is progressive. (Note: NOT Liberal) Progressive. This term was commonly used in the U.S. from the 1870s through the 1950s. Progressives want knew modern things to happen and to live in a more modern style that they did in the past. (Flush toilets rather then Out Houses.) To develop the future and to go forward.

Conservatives want to keep everything in life staying the same and comfortable and stable. Familiar.

So then, anyone can see why I say that, "There's no such thing as a conservative hippie. That's a contradiction in terms."

Because they are.

Hippies all rebelled against the status quo. They broke free of it. Hippies were cutting edge for all change. Hippies ran away from the same old same old.

As they say, "I think that that word do not mean what you think it means."

Progressive hippies? Sure.

jamgrassphan, I figure out why this all sounds so very familiar to me. Here you go:
George Orwell: Peace is WAR. Slavery is Freedom. Does anyone recall what the third saying was? I can't recall it.

I looked it up:
From Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
"Big Brother is watching you"
"War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength"

Sounds just like the good old U.S. of A. Doesn't it?

WAR is Never Hippie. Yes everyone has the right to defend their life. BUT hippies are for no more war forever.

Women's rights in other nations? Simple answer. Vote for me for president. If I won I will create a law that will automatically allow any women who are beind discriminated against or subjugated to beatings, to simply fill out a short e-form or to write a short letter to our government. She simply needs to have a few others confirm what she is claiming. The U.S. will then issue her a U.S. Passport for free and transport her out of her old nation.

My thought is simple. When there are finally no women left at all in their country than perhaps they will start changing their ways with regard to women. Should serve them right.

I would love to hear everyone's feedback with regard to this new system.
You thoughts.

 

I think that that word does not mean what you think that it means. From The Princes Bride

:sunny:

Did you know that you can be a total progressive liberal left-wing extremist and be totally and completely opposed to any government interference or restrictions in your life?

"(national heath care comes to mind...)" I know a whole lot of people who can't get medical insurance in the United States of America, at any price, because they have a preexisting condition. I private insurance companies make the rule for health insurance. Did you know that 5% of the people in this country who can afford to pay for health insurance but have preexisting conditions will never have any health insurance simply because the health insurance companies make that rule.

In the 2000s and 2100s maybe its time for the United States of America to join the modern world. What do you think?

And Finally, YES FREEDOM IS FREE. Really.
I have no idea who sold you that line of Horse Poo Poo. Don't know why you bought it either.

If you really don't believe that Freedom is Free, Then try this. On a warm afternoon, get way out in the country. Take off all of your clothes and run wild through the woods to a meadow. There in the meadow lay down in the warmth of the Sun and watch the clouds float by and feel the warmth of the Sun on your skin. In that moment you will know that freedom is truly free, forever.

Love at you.
Bon Chance! In Life.

 

Yeah, you can do that here in America, and in Canada, and in England, and most of the rest of the countries of the world where freedom was won and protected the hard way, through wars and revolutions - although, seriously... laying naked in a field is hardly a test of freedom. Dictators and kings who opposed such things as you suggest had to be ousted violently, because they wouldn't go peaceably. Really... and they were asked so nicely, too.

I'm sorry to be the one to inform you, but you're able to run naked through the fields on a warm summer day, because someone died, and someone else didn't, in a war that you would have opposed. You're welcome. Thank god, the gods, the goddess, or just your lucky stars that you don't live in Rawanda or Somalia or Iran, because you might find yourself a little too locked up or a little too dead to run in the fields naked.

Hippies are opposed to war in general, but I would say they are very concerned with protecting their freedom from those who would take it away. It's the reason why we took to the streets in the 60's and 70's.

Dont get me wrong; I'm not condoning "police actions" or "wag the dog" scenarios in places like Vietnam, or anywhere else, but when ruthless dictators are killing innocent civilians in an attempt to stay in power and continue their draconian rule, I would like to think that hippes would get off their asses and do something about it. It's all very nice to preach peace and love, or protest your government, when you live in a country that allows you to do that. It's quite another thing to try it when it can get you killed.

Kenny, your ideals are mostly in the right place, man... but I hope for your sake that strife never comes to you. I feel that you may be somewhat unprepared to handle it.

Peace has enemies. Enemies need to be dealt with, in order for the peaceful to remain at peace. This is not a contratdiction.

 

Scorpio, spot fucking on :2thumbsup:

 

Saving people in a just war sounds fine. And "conservatives" don't do it, and don't campaign for it. Nobody's about to invade the US, but we're fighting wars and have troops in places with some of the worlds more minor humanitarian violations happening. How about umm.... most of africa? Where war is waged by way of child armies and rape, for diamonds sold in US malls? Yeah, business as usual, better forge documents alleging uranium shipments to the country daddy couldn't finish his shit with....

Also, sorry, freedom is free. There are those would steal free things, and they're called conservatives.

 

Well, RooRshack, that would be why I said that I wasn't condoning police actions, like Vietnam or similar things in other parts of the world. There are plenty of places with worse human rights track records than Iraq. Afghanistan was justifiable, unless you're one of those conspiracy theorists who believes that 9/11 was a huge government-sponsored trigger to start a war in the middle east. (people who can't get past their hatred of Republicans love that one...)

What I'm talking about is having a military to promote our national defense and a fight for human rights and dignity. Would you be willing to concede that we SHOULD be intervening in places where child armies are killing and raping for diamonds sold in the malls of America (and most other civilized countries of world, just to be fair)? Or, will those places sort out their own problems, so they don't need us getting our lilly white pacifist hands dirty?

You sound to me more like someone with a political axe to grind than someone who seriously wants to discuss whether hippies can be conservative (in the ideological sense of the word, not the political sense).
I'm sorry that G. H. W. Bush and Son's pissed you off so much that you can no longer carry on rational discussion without bringing them into it... but that's a topic for another day.

More to the topic: the prime roll of the US government is to provide for the defense of the people. That doesn't mean starting a bunch of bullshit wars and covert "actions" all over the world to protect "certain US interests," it means maintaining a standing army for the defense of the country. I would like to think that we could also extend that to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for the rest of the people of the world, too.

"those who would steal free things" are the ones who need to be stopped. They're not conservatives, although some of them may call themselves that. What they are is rapists and pirates, and they love the idea that their victims won't fight back.

 

Okay, Let me change my mind now and agree with you. Okay.

So, right now we have two 10-year-old wars going on, which for the past 10 years we haven't paid for. Now everybody (conservatives/ Tea Party) are screaming we are 16 trillion in debt to the Chinese. The selfsame conservatives that yelled rah rah Bush for 10 years while we cut taxes and borrowed, borrowed, borrowed.

So, I'll vote with you. Lets have 3 or 4 more wars to make a total of 6. I'm with you. Why should I care. I'm not the one paying the 16 trillion in debt back. I barter and will retire soon. You guys can have as many wars as you want to. Okay? Go for it.

As far as this goes.

I live in one of the few places where conceal weapons are perfectly legal without any permits. (they got rid of the permit law) and silencers are legal. Anyone can walk around anywhere carrying a loaded gun. Even in stores. You can own a machine gun. And if you file a mining claim, then it is a given that you might need to buy dynamite. I really don't think that strife is comin' anywheres near here. If it does, then its in for a rude surprise. I think that at 6'1" to 280 pounds, I'm prepared. I look like a big viking.

Thank for you concern, though. I do appreciate it.

Peace and Love,
Kenny

 

The business of america is business and protecting the interests of business and the military complex. Any freedoms we currently enjoy are secondary and are given and controlled by the whims of our business community(such as it is) and the bought and paid for legislators whose actions (votes)are dictated by ---the business community. We don't need no stinkin' manifesto--we need action.

 

Of course the "at home, then abroad" thing doesn't always work, but in this case, it does. We need to fix our shit here. There's no compelling reason to have armies ANYWHERE. Maybe a few in korea..... or we could just tell north korea that we'll drop a peacemaker on their sorry asses if they screw with south korea or japan, and actually mean it. We need to fix problems here like police brutality and abuse, the prison-industrial and military-industrial complexes and their (ever increasing) control over US society and goals(domestic and abroad), we need to stop subsidizing farmers to grow nothing, when we could just pay them the same thing and send the extra to other countries that need it, we could be spending the money saved by keeping our army here to build a better army, that's more cohesive and doesn't have things like excessive rape and brutality, a culture of gunning down civilians and then covering it up, a culture of bigotry and loving violence(among the lower ranks at any rate), and we could train soldiers who are truly skilled and committed, and able to do more than shoot. Putting soldiers in ANY foriegn country doesn't work to improve them or us if our soldiers are out of control rednecks who want to kill things, as many US soldiers stationed in the middle east have been documented to be. We could also divert that money into "soft power" campaigns, to avoid war but still fix things by legitimate means. We could stop funding terrorists (from columbia to any other place we think they're the enemy of our enemy) and the list goes on and on and on.

And all of these things would be highly anti-"conservative", and highly progressive, and they would all go a very long way to literally fixing the world. The US is THE world power, and all we can do is drop shitty forces with shitty attitudes off in the desert to break things. That's conservative: the beatings will continue until morale improves-also, never forget 9.11.

So, yeah, hippies don't have to be liberal, but they have to be progressive, and want positive change, through whatever means. Conservative means preserving all the parts of the status quo I just listed, and more. A hippie can not be conservative, that's bullshit.

But yes, I have an axe to grind, with conservatives.

 

Tom Laughlin has a great speech at the end of Billy Jack about pacifism. I'm kind of paraphrasing and going from memory but it is something along the lines of it is a good thing to be a pacifist but don't expect the world to be. Because there are always going to be people that mess with them. That is why pacifists need non pacifists around. To keep the predators at bay.

Chris Rock also pointed out that no one worth a fuck is completely conservative or completely liberal. I consider myself liberal but also believe in the right to own guns. Granted I've transplanted to an urban area. I grew up on a farm and to me a gun is a tool. It is used to keep the livestock safe. It is to keep foxes out of the hen house. It is used for slaughter of food. It isn't used to kill humans.

I'm sure if I was born and raised in the city my views on guns would be different. It is a different place. It is a different atmosphere.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

I wholeheartedly agree with this post.

 

Exactly.

The peaceful hippie ideal is great, as long as you're living amongst other people who share that ideal. It was easy to do back in the 60's and 70's, but not so much anymore.

Scorpio Kenny professes that freedom is free. At the same time, he lives somewhere (??) where you don't need a permit for concealed carry and you can own a machine gun. He also describes himself as 6ft 1in, 280lbs and "prepared", which I take to mean he is capable of fighting off aggressors. That sort of lends itself to the notion that you can stay peaceful if you carry enough threat to keep the violent away. Sort of like Billy Jack.

Look, you don't have to be an aggressor to believe in being prepared. For an entire country, being prepared means having a standing army and spending money on things that are used to kill people. Bad people. People who would like to use and abuse you.

I think what RooRshack is misconstruing as conservativism is Neo-Conservativism.
There's nothing conservative about promoting wars to protect financial interests, or advancing a New World Order. There's nothing conservative about manipulating economies to gain control. Those are not conservative ideals. There's nothing conservative about promoting wars on a half dozen fronts, for the sake of "shaping the world." Those things are greed and power driven and there really needs to be another name for those who practice that kind of thing. There IS every need to promote war for the sake of basic human rights, though. Genocide cannot be tolerated, simply because we want to consider ourselves to be peaceful people. Doing nothing is tantamount to condoning the action.

I'm conservative.
I'm peace loving and non-agressive.
I don't want to take anything away from anyone and I don't want anyone taking anything away from me.
I accept that we need a government to provide for the national defense, but I don't want that government sticking it's nose into every aspect of my life.
I'm willing to pay taxes to help the government pay for the national defense, but I believe that charity and social consciousness begins at home (locally, with family, friends, community, church, whatever).
I'm willing to contribute my fair share to the well being of others who are in need (but not those who abuse that generosity).
I WILL defend myself (and the innocent) against naked agression.
I firmly believe in a philosophy of "live and let live."
I'm not a neo-con.
There is a difference.

 

The neo-con's set it up (democrats and republicans alike) and the conservatives fight to keep it that way.

You're right, genocide can't be tolerated. However the US totally ignores it, while liberating (to the tune of 100k+civillian deaths, alone) countries like iraq, when there's much worse things happening. And we've supported plenty of tortorous genocidal despots. Know that guy in egypt..... yeah, we set him up. Remember saddam? Yeah, he "flew to power in the back of a CIA airplane", in either his words or his friends words, I forget which.... (I might have screwed the quote up a bit, but... thats what it meant-and it's true)

We currently support terrorists who don't have a legitimate claim to power, and who, themselves, also produce drugs, in columbia-and dust poor peoples fields when they're just trying to eat-sounds like a policy of "soft" genocide, to me.... not only supported, but perpetrated by the US.

We have a CIA that actively sends away foriegn (and maybe US) nationals to be tortured in countries where there's no constitutional ban on it. Might as well be us doing the torturing.

We can NOT think about saving MORE people, when the one's we're saving end up so much WORSE off than they ever started. Our military is a charade, our people are war hungry, but nobody cares about saving the starving people in africa. It's ALSO genocide (if you actually look up the word) to systematically allow or cause people to starve to death, OR for that matter, to allow christian missionaries from the US to go destroy indigenous cultures.... that falls squarely in the definition of genocide, whether or not they kill anybody.

We could make lives much better by just providing food, medicine, shelter, even airdropping fucking condoms on them, than we EVER will by running around "liberating" countries. And while doing this, we could train a military that's not a barbaric archaic joke, and that's accountable. (could start by giving bradly manning a medal and presidential fucking APOLOGY in public) and THEN we could worry about military conflict.

Like it or not, "conservatives" argue for all these things to stay the way they are. And you, to a degree, are, by saying that we can't stand by genocide. Fine, let's start nice and easy, by not letting our christians bully bush people into abandoning their cultures. Let's stop killing numbers that would make saddam proud in iraq. Etc. We are the ones supporting and enacting genocide. It is because of US policy that the world is not vastly better today.

You can't be conservative and only sort of support the neocons, you've got to stand against them. The whole "conservative" idea needs to be abolished and re-built, before it's honorable to be a conservative.

Progressive is fixing things that need fixing, when it's possible. Conservative is NOT FIXING ANYTHING. Keeping the status quo IS neocon now, so neocon is conservative.

If it's really obligatory to wage war on those usurping basic human rights and/or committing genocide, I'm ashamed of the whole world for not declaring war on the biggest tyrant of them all: the USA.

 

Progressive ideas and philosophies are what has ruined this country. It has been proven time and time again that the progressive system does not work. Just look at the last 3 and a half years.What a mess!!

 

Republican ideology is what has ruined this country. It has been proven time and time again that conservative ideas ruin the environment, lead to huge deficits, wars with no exit strategy, and increase the gap between have and have-nots. Just look at the Bush years. What a mess!!

 

This is what truly irritates me about political discussions. Both sides generally blame the other for everything that is wrong with the country. The thing is I can point out stupid destructive things that both sides have done to fuck things up.

For the Republicans/Conservatives we can blame the gulf war, the trillions of dollars wasted on defense including building of planes and helicopters that can't fly due to the fact that they are too heavily armed, depleted uranium anti-tank rounds that are illegal weapons of mass destruction, the patriot act, etc.

For the Democrats/Progressives we can blame Vietnam, The '68 Chicago Riots, the PMRC, the Rave Act, 2 presidential candidates that stepped down the fight and allowed 2 more terms of the Bush Empire, Bailing out the robber barons, continued tax cuts on the people who can easily afford to pay more etc.

It's time for change. It needs to be unilateral. I'd like to see a return to Carter's climate change plan. Let's get tough on the greenhouse gas problem. I'm talking fines not carbon credits. If we want to give the rich tax breaks make them create jobs. Tell them straight up if you want your tax break you will get it as soon as you create jobs not the other way around.

It also saddens me when I think about assholes like Fred Phelps. Try this on for mixed feelings. On one hand I love and believe in the First Amendment and Freedom of speech. Under that heading Phelps can be an asshole and picket funerals with his hate speech. On the other hand I also feel like it is common sense not to fuck with people who are in mourning and believe that something should be done to fight it. But the other side of the conflict from my perspective I find it sad that we need to legislate common sense.

I have had discussions with people about banning the sale of Nazi memorabilia in the US. To me this would be like the beginning of a slippery slope. It starts with Nazi memorabilia. I was at a flea market a few years ago and there was an old black man there selling racist signs from the early 20th century for "Colored only" water fountains, No Indians Served in this establishment etc. Should those be illegal too? How about Civil War Reenactments? Where does it stop?

To me a truly "Progressive" mind set is to look at both sides and see what works and what doesn't and cut loose the parts that don't work. We have seen that giving tax cuts to people who promise jobs before they deliver doesn't work. We've seen that the war on drugs and the consistent fueling of the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex doesn't work.

We've also seen that political correctness and the constant fight to avoid offending people does more to separate people then bring them together. We've seen that this type of thinking does more to restrict freedoms then to protect them. I'm going to refer to "The Rave Act" on this one.

"The Rave Act" was co-sponsored by Joe Biden. It states that if someone promotes an event and there is a drug bust at said event then the promoter faces 10 years federal time. The bill was shot down on its own a number of times and only got passed when it got tacked on to an anti-crack house bill. This law then got used by the Bush administration to come down on NORML rallies and the like. On a smaller level I don't think that I have ever been to a concert that wasn't a wash of pot smoke. This is making promoters more concerned about even putting on shows and putting venues in positions where they don't want to put shows on either. Plus it helps feed the Prison Industrial complex.

Stay Brown,
Rev J

 

Hippiefriend said--"progressive ideas and philosophies are what ruined this country".

Sorry friend,but that's ridiculous and wrong. Do we go back to horses for transportation? The medicine of the 1800s? Earlier? Slavery? What else would you like to return to? Women not being able to vote? A return to no child labor laws? No social security? 70 hour work weeks with no over time? No civil rights act? No environmental laws at all? Conservatives voted against all those issues. Why? Because they are CONSERVATIVE! As Sunfighter said above--republican ideology(CONSERVATIVE) has always held back progress and still does. Conservative ideology cares only for the haves and is constantly against anything that would help the workers of this or any other country. They are presently protecting their super-rich benefactors by refusing to raise taxes on them or closing loopholes in the tax codes so they and the huge conglomerates-(Exon-Mobil,for example)pay a fair share. Why? Because they are CONSERVATIVES!

And oh--by the way--who do you think killed the Kennedys and King? Liberals? Progressives? They scared the HAVES and were taken care of. Wake up.

 

Sorry if the truth hurts brother.