That’s another conservative value that follows from the first one – that people who do not act in their own self interest do not deserve anything and should fall by the wayside.
Another conservative value is that if people band together in their own self interest and oppose the very greedy, that’s wrong, because they are overcoming the will of the strong.
At a certain point you reach a contradiction in the conservative values, because conservatives are going to say “We mustn’t let people band together for their own self interests, because they’ll be against the will of the strong.
If you go back to Plato, I think he points out an inconsistency there. If they’re really weak and banding together, then they’re not so weak. So that’s a flaw, and that’s really a dynamic of what’s happening in history.
I see a different point of view as a progressive, and I don’t think that greed is a good value. I think it’s been disproved over the centuries that every man with his own rifle – emphasis on the word “man” – takes care of himself and those he chooses to take care of. We’ve seen that fail throughout world history. So perhaps that’s the failure in the conservative value.
I suppose the bull elephant seal, or the solitary lion might be your metaphor for the greatest good. And social animals that band together for their own welfare, whether they are honeybees, or attack dogs, or whatever, a contrasting example. We built civilization on socialization. Not on individual greed.
Failed Conservative Values: Norma on Greed
My name is Norma, and how conservative values have failed – they’ve failed, because they have forgotten the little man. They’ve forgotten that they don’t earn their money. We’re the ones that earns it for them. We’re the low-paying workers. We’re the ones that are out there on a daily basis. They get the fruit of our labor.
I think their value is greed. They have forgotten that they can’t do it without us. They need to start remembering that. I would guess that they were like an anaconda, in that they sit there and try to choke their prey. They’re trying to choke every dollar out of us for their benefit, so that they will get bigger as we get smaller.
Failed Conservative Values: Karen Suarez on Greed
That’s what I don’t get. I would think that the title conservative would mean to conserve, and it even says – I’m not a religious person – but it says in the Bible somewhere, somebody told me once, that I will destroy those who destroy the earth.
And I can understand using resources – you need to live. We take the energy from the sun in different forms around us. We need to survive. It’s the sun, and energy is the circle of life. But to overuse and be greedy – I don’t understand it.
EDWIN: Have conservative values failed?
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