Do liberal successes push conservatives to the left or the right

My understanding of conservative psychology from the various sources I've read associate it with a handful of attitudes that seem to keep popping up in various countries and cultures. Among them (but not limited to):

The idea that a select group are the 'real' citizens and everyone else is pretty much either not as important or an interloper bent on destruction of the 'natural order'.

Support of hierarchies and inequality that place the 'real' citizens at the top of the socioeconomic and political totem pole and everyone else below them.



There are other traits associated with conservatism (I'd read Lakoff, Altemeyer or the paper political conservatism as motivated social cognition for more info), but those are the main ones I am wanting to debate in this thread. If you look at conservative movement in history most have those traits (among others). The idea that a select group are the natural leaders, the natural citizens and they have to defend the country against interlopers and deviants who want to bring the order down and integrate those deviant lifestyles and behaviors.


It used to be 80 years ago (when the KKK of the 1920s was around) that in order to be a 'real' citizen you had to be a white male anglo saxon protestant (among other things). So if your ethnic heritage was German or Italian, or you were Catholic, you were out.

Nowadays, all you need is to be a white christian for the most part. Catholics with german ancestry, or Irish Catholics (like Sean Hannity, who probably would've gotten persecuted by the KKK in the 1920s) are allowed into the 'real' citizens group. Mormons are still kindof kicked out, since Romney had to give a speech justifying his faith to people. But by and large, ethnic divisions within the white race and theological divisions within christianity have disappeared as requisites to be 'real' citizens in contemporary American conservatism.

Women too, seem to have more power in conservative circles. Obviously they are probably still not considered equals of men to most conservatives, but they have more leeway than 80 years ago.

Non-whites, non-heterosexuals, non-free traders, etc are still out.

Liberalism is the opposite of conservatism, based on the concept that the social, legal, political, economic and moral system should be expanded to be as inclusive, protective, fair and just as possible to as many sentient beings as possible. Blacks and women shouldn't be deprived of holding good jobs or voting, animals shouldn't be tortured, gays should have legal rights, the mentally ill should be treated with dignity and not deprive equal medical care, etc. Basically the opposite of conservatism with the belief that a select group of 'real' citizens should have dominion over all the fake citizens.

So there has been a lot of progressive progress in the last 100 years. And it seems that progressive achievements have pulled conservatives to the left. It used to be you had to be an anglo saxon protestant male. Now any white christian will do, and even women have a bit more authority in conservative circles than they used to. So in that regards I would guess progressive pull conservatives to the left.

On the other hand, progressive achievements seem to lead to conservative backlash. Advances in civil rights led to the 'welfare queen' and 'tough on crime' conservative messages which were just dog whistle politics about keeping blacks in their place. Gay rights advances a few years ago led conservatives to vote in 2004 to ban gay marriage and civil unions in several states. A democratic takeover in congress led to the armed wingnuts showing up at town halls and screaming.

The civil rights movement handed control of the south to the GOP for 50 years. We are facing the negative effects of this to this day, with about half the GOP members of the senate coming from the south, despite the south only having 1/4 of the states in the US. W/o the backlash against civil rights, Reagan probably never would've gotten elected.

Anyway, do progressive achievements make conservatives more liberal or more conservative? On one hand, conservatives are less intolerant, but that could just be due to numbers (there aren't many anglo saxon protestants left, but there are tons of white christians left) and them realizing they had to expand to survive, the same way conservatives are now realizing the same thing.

So in 50 years will the future's equivalent of Sean Hannity be an openly gay latino, will the 'real' citizens expand to include non-whites and non-heterosexuals? Eighty years ago the idea of an Irish Catholic considering himself one of the 'real' citizens would've been laughable to the KKK (which was a conservative organization and looked at people like Hannity the same way he looks at illegal immigrants and gays), so the idea of a gay latino as a member of the 'real' citizens, while laughable now, might be plausible down the road.

Classic examples in recent history are Nixon DEMS and Reagan DEMS: people who benefited from the New Deal and from unionism but jealously guarded their material gains and newly-found social status ( middle-class, lower-middle class?) from the claims of those who came after them ( AAs and more more recent immigrants) who wished to share.

Obama's popularity among this demographic was one of the most telling phenomenona of the 2008 cycle. You had to know the economy was in bad shape if he ( a tweedy Ivy League AA liberal) was carrying white blue collar and (socially *ultra-conservative*) bastions like Indiana. They'll revert to type once the recession is over.

If the recession is *ever* over.

the new deal. So the other party lost one of the good ones. I'd guess that the net effect of this micro event would be to push the Republican party further to the right.

people, they likely don't renounce ...

I don't see any liberal successes, do you?

Progressives have made tons of economic progress (unions, medicare, social security, unemployment, min. wage, etc) but right now I'm talking about social progress over the last 100 years.

Womens rights, minority rights, animal rights, children's rights, homosexual rights all come to mind of areas we have seen advances in in the last 100 years. I don't know if children's rights were pioneered by progressives and opposed by conservatives (I'm hoping both conservatives and progressives supported childrens rights) but every other area was basically pushed by progressives and resisted by conservatives.

You put them in a round room and have their respected leader tell them that there is a terrorist in the corner.

And this should make perfect sense? Because in reality, the round room is the orb of thought, in which leaders intentionally implant stories about boogie men; and I am convinced by the research that not only does this drive conservatives crazy; it will drive them to committing the most unimaginable acts of inhumanity. And this is no accident, it’s just a matter of knowing what buttons to push; and once you know how to do that, and you have no moral conscience or sense of justice and you are driven by your own selfish depraved sense of self gratification; playing head games to prod and control conservative followers is not to much different than controlling herds of cattle who are slightly less intelligent yet closer to many truths by the simple fact of not being able to assimilate conservative myths and lies...

So education - when given a chance - can install a little bit of objective reality and social civility, and conservatives can take on the façade of sanity and tolerance too a certain degree, and they can even seem to function normally in a progressive society, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their hypocrisy, double standards or blindness to self etc. But keep in mind, you can take the caveman out of the cave, but you can’t take the cave out of the caveman; i.e. conservatives are genetically predisposed to ignorance and fear; and psychopath’s - aka conservative leaders, are drawn to conservative minds like magnets (or should I say stink on shit); and the leaders can’t wait too awaken, to pander quickly too, nor risk letting primitive instincts rest within the conservative mind; so they must constantly recreate all the evil little boogie men so as the world will never be safe with out them; and in exchange for keeping the world safe from these imaginary foe, millions of innocent lives are slaughtered for sport and psychopaths, aka the creators of evil, get to rule the world...