Are the Republicans really conservative anymore?

Politics International Politics
21

Anyway, one of the wisest and most astute political quotations I’ve ever heard was Benjamin Disraeli’s (Conservative and first [only?] Jewish Prime Minister of the UK) dictum that:

“A man who isn’t a liberal when he’s young has no heart. A man who isn’t a conservative when he’s old has no head.”

The older I grow, the more that makes sense. Of course when we’re young we all want to change the world. Life is so unfair, damn it! But as you grow older and adopt adult responsibilities you grow to understand why certain traditions and institutions of society are necessary to keep things running orderly and smoothly.

22

“The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
– P.J. O’Rourke

I still think it’s possible to be both conservative and rational and intellectually honest though evidence of that is admittedly hard to come by these days. Let us hope that Colin Powell soon restores some credibility to the conservative philosophical movement by publicly disavowing the kooks that have become its mouthpieces and throwing in his lot with the closest thing there is to an honest person in Washington politics.

23

Thatcher was a radical in conservative clothes. Reagan was fundamentally conservative in the way that I described. His vision of society was the small town America he grew up in. He correctly understood that many Americans still shared those values and tried to return the US to that largely imagined past. So yes, conservatives of this type do change society. However, their model for society comes from the past and they call on powerful feelings of nostalgia to convince people that a return would be a good idea.

[quote]
I don’t know if 19th century definitions of conservative and liberal are particularly useful here. After all, times change. If conservative is defined as resistant to change and defending the status quo, that makes the two most revered conservative leaders of our day - Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher - liberals not conservatives, since their free-market anti-socialist policies and ideologies were considered radical at the time.[/quote]

24

[quote=“Quentin”]Anyway, one of the wisest and most astute political quotations I’ve ever heard was Benjamin Disraeli’s (Conservative and first [only?] Jewish Prime Minister of the UK) dictum that:

“A man who isn’t a liberal when he’s young has no heart. A man who isn’t a conservative when he’s old has no head.”

[/quote]

I always thought that was Churchill, talking about socialism, but…

[quote]My version of gardening is to maintain a web page of quotations.
I had fun trying to ascertain who actually said what I quoted in
the June '00 Penn Central newsletter as:

If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart.
If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.
- Winston Churchill

I failed to find the quote under “socialist”, “conservative”,
“heart”, “man”, or “Churchill”, in books of quotations like
Bartlett’s, Encarta’s, Oxford Dictionary of, Home Book of, or
NY Public Library’s.

retro.co.za/quotes/eli.html says:
Any man who is not… a socialist before he is 40 has no heart.
Any man who is still a socialist after he is 40 has no head.
- Wendell L. Willkie (quoted by Richard Norton Smith)

sirius.com/~maya/poetry/republico.html says:
As George Bernard Shaw said,
one who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart,
and one who remains a socialist at 40 has no head.

home.planetinternet.be/~smitsr/quotes/b.html says:
The man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart,
but if he is still a socialist at 40 he has no head.
- Aristide Briand (1862 - 1932)
[French premier and former socialist]

bserver.com/bunker/party.html says:
I think it was William Casey [director of the CIA] who said,
A man who isn’t a socialist at 20 has no heart,
and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.

abedul.pntic.mec.es/colaborativo … /list.html says:
Anyone who is not a socialist at 16 has no heart,
but anyone who still is at 32 has no mind.
- Woodrow Wilson

jerryk.com/dialogue/dialogue960915.htm says:
He who is not a Socialist at 19, has no heart.
He who is still a Socialist at 30, has no brain.
- Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1896)

dailyprincetonian.com/Conten … eaton.html says:
Georges Clemenceau [another French Premier and former socialist]
once said something like:
A 20-year-old who is not a Socialist has no heart,
but a 30-year-old who is still a Socialist has no brains.

bkkpost.samart.co.th/news/BP … usi22.html says:
Not to be a Republican at 20 is proof of want of heart;
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
- François Guisot (1787-1874)
and:
A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart;
a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
and:
Not to be a socialist at 20 is proof of want of heart;
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
and:
Any man who is under 30 and is not a Liberal has no heart; and
any man who is over 30 and not a Conservative has no brains.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

A definitive answer arose in the wonderful book
“Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings,
and Familiar Misquotations” by Ralph Keyes, 1992. He writes:

“An orphan quote [unattributed quote in search of a home] sometimes
attributed to Georges Clemenceau is:
Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart.
Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head.
The most likely reason is that Bennet Cerf once reported Clemenceau’s
response to a visitor’s alarm about his son being a communist:
If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him.
If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.
George Seldes later quoted Lloyd George as having said:
A young man who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart;
an old man who is a socialist hasn’t got a head.
The earliest known version of this observation is attributed to
mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot:
Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart;
to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.
Variations on this theme were later attributed to Disraeli, Shaw,
Churchill, and Bertrand Russell. (I misquoted Churchill to this
effect for years.)”[/quote]

geocities.com/unmark/unquote.html

25

democrat
Democrat
conservative
Libertarian
Republitarian* - Thanks to the Sage for coining this one.
Republican
Liberal
liberal
leftist
right-winger
anarchist
middle-of-the-road
moderate
independent
a**-hat
fookin’ looney

All names used in the US political game to describe and pigeon hole for the sake of convenience. Thankfully, more and more people are coming to understand these terms and how they are used in todays politics. I should say used. Because thats what they allow to happen to people…use them.
IMO, it good that more and more people are learning about this use/mis-use of their voting power.

26

All -isms twist & turn like a twisty turn thing. Their capacity for flux is only second in degree to that of the explanatory rhetoric.

27

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]democrat
Democrat
conservative
Libertarian
Republitarian* - Thanks to the Sage for coining this one.
Republican
Liberal
liberal
leftist
right-winger
anarchist
middle-of-the-road
moderate
independent
a**-hat
fookin’ looney

All names used in the US political game to describe and pigeon hole for the sake of convenience. Thankfully, more and more people are coming to understand these terms and how they are used in todays politics. I should say used. Because thats what they allow to happen to people…use them.
IMO, it good that more and more people are learning about this use/mis-use of their voting power.[/quote]

What? No “n-word” in your supposedly all inclusive list of political buzz words? How can that be?

I’ve never understood why the conjunction of neo and conservative is so disliked by those it’s applied to. It’s not as if separately or together they’re pejorative. The only explanation I can think of is it triggers the “don’t lift up my rock” reflex for some unfathomable reason known only to neoconservatives themselves.

28

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]democrat
Democrat
conservative
Libertarian
Republitarian* - Thanks to the Sage for coining this one.
Republican
Liberal
liberal
leftist
right-winger
anarchist
middle-of-the-road
moderate
independent
a**-hat
fookin’ looney

All names used in the US political game to describe and pigeon hole for the sake of convenience. Thankfully, more and more people are coming to understand these terms and how they are used in todays politics. I should say used. Because thats what they allow to happen to people…use them.
IMO, it good that more and more people are learning about this use/mis-use of their voting power.[/quote]

Whenever I watch coverage of McPalin campaign events, there’s all sorts of new political terms being shouted out by the crowds present – things like “terrorist!” “kill him!” and “n*gger!” What’s going on with that?

It’s odd that McCain doesn’t like ACORN now, considering he was the keynote speaker for ACORN in 2006. Now that McCain appears to be speaking at Klan rallies (or are those just GOP events circa 2008?), I wonder if he’s going to turn around attack the Klan in 2 years.