PLEASE POST ON NEW SITE

Gravatar Well, it's an old game to try to argue something is really "conservative", even though it appears to not be so, politically. But conservative itself is virtually useless as a precise term, so to my mind deductive definitions are pretty much useless.

I much prefer the old term "Whigs" which has a fairly clear referent for 'conservatives' and "Social Democrats" for 'liberals'. In any case the link of autos with the Whigs is clear:

1) Whigs like business, and autos are good for business. (Whigs do not object to government, they just think government should facilitate business, not stand in its way.)

2) Whigs like personal/nuclear familial autonomy, and autos are good for personal/nuclear familial autonomy. (By contrast bicycles require mass transit as a complementary mode of transportation--you and your family can't bike from Cambridge to Heathrow with your luggage for a trip to Spain, right?)

Having said that, I walk to work 30 minutes each way daily, and much prefer it to driving.


Gravatar I've not actually got anything against cars (unlike many of the sort of people who sincerely believe that "cycling belongs to the leftward side of humanity"). My post was really kicking at the attempt to usurp cycling for one end of the political spectrum, but if it also serves the purpose of illustrating the elasticity-to-the-point-of-meaninglessness of the term "conservative", all the better.

BTW, you say you walk 30 minutes each way daily: so that's about two or three miles, right? Why not buy yourself a bike - you'd be there inside ten minutes.


Gravatar I used to ride a bike, but my mind tends to wander. When I ran into the back of an SUV parked outside a fraternity and shattered the back windshield with my head, my wife said, I'd better to stick to walking. After paying the $200 or so to fix the kid's back windshield I agreed.

I guess we're on the save wavelength then about "conservative" as a term. What I find most slippery about it is that it covers both the "Whig" position (the view point shaped by market economics, constant growth, and a society of upwardly mobile nuclear families) and the "Tory" position (in the real old sense, of a fixed social hierarchy with an established church). Since the "Tory" vision has certain affinities to the Social Democrats (they both hate parvenues and are suspicious of growth and evangelical churches), Social Democrats frequently try to weaken the "Whigs" by playing up their "Tory" side.

My heart, actually, has a lot of sympathy with "Toryism", and I believe it has considerably more Biblical backing as a vision than Whiggism. But my head tells me that in the long run, full scale Toryism is a dog electorally, and that American conservatism is strongly precisely because it is so Whig. (All this presumes that Social Democracy is the "heart of darkness" ;^D ). So like, I think, many social and Christian conservatives, I settle for Whiggism, try to appreciate its good sides, and do my little bit in my personal life to burn incense for the lost dynasty, the old Tory vision.


Gravatar Whether left or right I don't care - just get on your bike.

It's good to find other cycling bloggers.


Name:

Email:

URL:

Comment:  ? 

 

Commenting by HaloScan