Talk:American conservatism

From WP?

Hi Richard, thanks for contributing to CZ. Can you do me a favor and point us to the history link showing you are the sole author of material here? Otherwise, we need to keep that little "from WP" box checked. Thanks! —–Stephen Ewen 22:40, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

I dropped most of the stuff from other people. I suggest CZ needs a reasonable policy -- such as 90%. The way Wiki works is that hundreds of people go in and change a word or two here (or a date, if they are malicious). The "one drop of blood" doctrine needs some pretty strong justification, which I have not seen presented.Richard Jensen 01:30, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

(The above conversation was continued at User_talk:Stephen_Ewen#single_drop_of_blood_theory.) Stephen Ewen 02:52, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

Ayn Rand

This article only has one mention of Ayn Rand, but I though she was the most eloquent and principled defender of conservatism. What is exactly her status in the conservative movement? Yi Zhe Wu 20:16, 2 July 2007 (CDT)

the libertarians like her a lot-- Alan Greenspan was a major disciple; however the social conservatives, traditionalists, TR-admirers, dislike her. Richard Jensen 20:33, 2 July 2007 (CDT)

Ah, now I get it. Today's conservatives are really dominated by social conservatives, those ones hated by young people like us. I heard Barry Goldwater's daughter/granddaughter/whatever said once on a podcast, that Goldwater probably would have not able to attend the GOP convention if he was alive today because he leans to be libertarian on certain issues. So sad. Yi Zhe Wu 21:20, 2 July 2007 (CDT)

Bush tries to bridge the two but was blasted by the social conservatives (nativists in this case) on the immigration issue. The business community is mostly libertarian-GOP and is usually dominant (they wanted the immigration bill), but they lost in this case. Richard Jensen 21:56, 2 July 2007 (CDT)

Mentioning the immigration bill, BTW, it says a cloture motion failed...so who is filibustering? Yi Zhe Wu 10:14, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

85% conservate vote according to who?

This text:

In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Senator John McCain, with a 85% conservative voting record and a maverick reputation, is the conservative nominee of the GOP, while the Democrats will nominate either Senator Barack Obama the most liberal senator, or Senator Hillary Clinton, who takes a somewhat more conservative stance in foreign policy issues.

clearly needs a reference. An 85% conservative voting record must be according to somebody's standards and not all conservatives would agree on that standard. If that were true, Reagan and the Bushes would be called flaming liberals for their spending habits and deficits. David E. Volk 15:04, 9 April 2008 (CDT)

it should be 82.3% --Am Conservative Union scorecard over 20 years "compared to Mr. Thompson's lifetime ACU rating of 86.1 and Mr. Frist's 87.8, worth noting is Arizona Sen. John McCain's 82.3. Also worth noting are the lifetime ACU ratings of so-called "second-tier" Republican presidential candidates: Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, 94.0; California Rep. Duncan Hunter, 92.0; Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, 97.8; and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, 82.3." see candidate scores Richard Jensen 15:56, 9 April 2008 (CDT)

Further reading

I'm going to move the further reading section to the Bibliography subpage. It's the right place for it. Anyone got any objections? --Tom Morris 18:06, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

please don't move it. It's a brief version of the bibliography for the general reader, and belongs on the main page, while the very long bibliography is designed to help students find topics to write papers about. Richard Jensen 21:23, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Yes. I agree with Richard. Although I initially had my doubts about this approach, the result is quite satisfactory, and there is already precedent for this among history articles. See, for example, the recently approved entries on Merle Curti and Frederick Jackson Turner. It is appropriate in the case of history articles to differentiate between full-blown bibliographies on the subpage and a short further reading list on the main page.

Roger Lohmann 07:29, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Sorry, I can't agree; this has come up before. Both general readers and students are capable of clicking a link. Very large pages are not good Web design; I'm constantly working to split long articles of mine and not always succeeding. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Re-write of intro section

With due recognition of the difficulty of defining not only American conservatism but also conservatism in general, I still find it unsatisfactory that the previous lede section delineated the subject almost solely in negative terms - that is, primarily in terms of what conservatives were against, etc. Also, I separated the listing of current political issues from the main, general introductory section which I don't think should contain matter of such specificity. James F. Perry 16:48, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Tightening

There was no need to define conservatism here when there is an article on it. I also moved the older history to a separate article. Still, there's a good deal of duplication, and, I'm afraid, non-neutrality. Howard C. Berkowitz 04:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not now, nor have I ever been an economist. Could some kind soul disambiguate the references, in the definition, to conservatism being opposed to liberalism, but with the economic conservatism text saying conservatives are liberals? George Orwell, where are you now? Howard C. Berkowitz 19:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)