Failed Conservative Values Stories: Violence and Brutality

 What a piece of work is man... the paragon of animals. The paragon of animals? Six thousand years of brutality, murder, and slavery. An animal does not do this to its own kind. Byron: [Hamlet]

This article is a rather harsh critique of deeper Failed Conservative Values.  In interviews, Richard Wagner told me he thinks thuggery is a failed conservative value and Herman Blackmon mentioned the lynch mob. I didn't think that either the lynch mob or thuggery were actually values. They seem more like manifestations of a value or perhaps of multiple values.

Sometime it's hard to know what is a value and what isn't.  The largest listing of values that I have found is the Union of International Associations - Human Values online.  They have a database of around 5,000 values. I checked and neither thuggery or the lynch mob are listed.

However, the dictionary definition of thuggery mentions both violence and brutality and they are listed as values.  Violence and brutality seem to work as the values behind the lynch mob as well.  We do see Failed Conservative Values of violence and brutality continuing to be  manifest in domestic violence, school yard bullies, the starting of an unnecessary war in Iraq, the beatings and killings of gays,  and the ongoing conservatives support of torture.

Herman also talked about growing up in Texas and fighting against  violence backed segregation and working for the progressive value of justice. 
 

Failed Conservative Values: Richard J Wagner on Thuggery

Richard Wagner: Conservative values go back to the Romans, especially thuggery.  Those who are strong and can take what they want because they have the strength to do it.  This is a struggle going on for thousands of years. 

In the old Roman Republic, the elite, strong, wealthy took what they wanted.  They had slaves, enslaved whoever they wanted, who they could enslave they would enslave. 

If you want freedom you have to fight for it.  All the history and struggle against feudalism in the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and awakening of people’s rights in the founding of this nation on democratic principles is all part of the progressive struggle – progress for everyone, for freedom and prosperity for all.