"I came with the message that Christianity and conservatism are not inextricably linked,” (Silverman) told me, “and that social conservatives are holding down the real conservatives — social conservatism isn’t real conservatism, it’s actually big government, it’s theocracy. I’m talking about gay rights, right to die, abortion rights –”

Hold on, I said, I think the Right to Life guys who have a booth here, and have had every year since CPAC started, would disagree that they’re not real conservatives.

“I will admit there is a secular argument against abortion,” said Silverman. “You can’t deny that it’s there, and it’s maybe not as clean cut as school prayer, right to die, and gay marriage.”....

He describes himself as a “fiscally conservative” voter who “owns several guns. I’m a strong supporter of the military. I think fiscal responsibility is very important. I see that as pretty conservative. And I have my serious suspicions about Obama. I don’t like that he’s spying on us. I don’t like we’ve got drones killing people…” In the final analysis, “the Democrats are too liberal for me,” he says....

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/07/d ... -atheists/

http://skepchick.org/2014/03/is-there-a ... -abortion/

hackenslash wrote:

http://skepchick.org/2014/03/is-there-a ... -abortion/

I'm actually quite impressed by that article. She got all the way to the end of the second paragraph before using the word 'misogyny'.

Anyhoo, I'm not aware of a reasonable secular argument against abortion, so I'd be interested if somebody knew of one.

hackenslash wrote:Indeed. I was aware that I was adding a qualifier. My point is that I agree with PeeZed for a change, in that all the arguments for abortion I've ever come across have treated the embryo as having some magical qualities, which qualify them as non-secular, IMO.

Mick wrote:I think he's wrong to exclude social conservatism as something other than "real conservatism". Sure, you can distinguish fiscal conservatism from the broader construct, but social conservatism has a claim to conservatism in virtue of its protection of certain traditions and institutions they deem essential to proper society and the individual.

Conservatives are united in conserving something about the past and in being a response to Progressivism or Liberalism. They are also united in their appreciation of something immanent, transcendent or somehow objective, something that anchors them or gives them footing amidst the shifting sands of popular opinion. For the States, for instance, they anchored themselves in the natural rights of man bestowed onto them by the Creator.

Where conservatives are not united is which anchor they choose and which things they aim to conserve. It is better to talk about conservatisms when it comes to these issues rather than something uniform.

trubble76 wrote:

Mick wrote:I think he's wrong to exclude social conservatism as something other than "real conservatism". Sure, you can distinguish fiscal conservatism from the broader construct, but social conservatism has a claim to conservatism in virtue of its protection of certain traditions and institutions they deem essential to proper society and the individual.

Conservatives are united in conserving something about the past and in being a response to Progressivism or Liberalism. They are also united in their appreciation of something immanent, transcendent or somehow objective, something that anchors them or gives them footing amidst the shifting sands of popular opinion. For the States, for instance, they anchored themselves in the natural rights of man bestowed onto them by the Creator.

Where conservatives are not united is which anchor they choose and which things they aim to conserve. It is better to talk about conservatisms when it comes to these issues rather than something uniform.

Social conservatism? Isn't that where a group of people don't like change and so they try their hardest to stop everyone and everything from changing, without regard to what those other people might want?

hackenslash wrote:Bingo. They're all Platonic about how the world should be, and can't stand deviations from what they see as the perfect form, or some thought-free bollocks like that.

Mick wrote:No, that's not true. Nothing about what I said has to be Platonic.