Off Topic — HabitableZone

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What the hell do conservatives want? An alternate history project
Robert — (archived)

It might be nice to take a break from the realtime, fine-grained arguing about the issues-du-jour, and step back to consider the big picture and, literally, how we got here.

I was thinking about the capsulization of conservatism as "resistance to change", and how it's not very accurate these days, since conservatives want to change the country from top-to-bottom. "Advocates of retrograde change" is more accurate, because a recurring theme is "undoing FDR's New Deal". Turning back the clock, in other words. That may be simplistic, but for discussion purposes it provides an easy-to-express, concrete introduction to the next bit.

OK. Just about everybody here is a science fiction fan, and we're all familiar with the alternate history genre. I'd like to see the conservatives take as a premise that FDR lost the 1932 election, and develop it forward into their dream of how the world would look today. It might not require Herbert Hoover's reelection; maybe the Republicans replace him to overcome the disillusionment that helped pave the way for FDR. Whatever it takes to construct a plausible starting premise, and from there, construct a rigorously logical alternate history leading to the present day 2004(alpha). I think this would be a good way to illuminate what conservatism, in an ideal form, is all about.

I'd also suggest that the liberals hold back for a while, to give the conservatives a fair chance to develop their timeline. Jumping in too early to criticize a detail of the work-in-progress will break their concentration and torpedo the project. Let's wait until they have a consensus, and can produce a final draft that outlines their history in a single new root post. Then, on the new thread, we'll have something coherent to debate. The two threads, working and result, would be kind of like the relationship between the Constitution and the Federalist papers--there's the formal result, backed up by a ton of source material illuminating the thinking that led to its creation.

Any takers?

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