{"id":510,"date":"2012-04-04T17:01:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T22:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toppun.com\/blog\/?p=510"},"modified":"2012-04-04T17:01:04","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T22:01:04","slug":"conservatives-conserving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toppun.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/04\/conservatives-conserving\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are Conservatives Conserving?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;\" align=\"center\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTON<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;\" align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/TopPun.com\/Political\/Buttons\/What-Exactly-Are-Conservatives-Conserving-POLITICAL-BUTTON.html\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/TopPun.com\/Political\/What-Exactly-Are-Conservatives-Conserving.gif\" alt=\"What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTON\" width=\"172\" height=\"172\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;\" align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/TopPun.com\/Political\/Buttons\/What-Exactly-Are-Conservatives-Conserving-POLITICAL-BUTTON.html\">What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTON<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;\" align=\"center\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\">This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0;\" align=\"center\"><strong>View more <a title=\"Political Buttons\" href=\"http:\/\/TopPun.com\/BUTTONS-Political-Buttons-Pins.html\">Political Buttons<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What exactly are conservatives conserving?\u00a0 This is a great question!\u00a0 Of course, I love the play on the similar root of the words conservative and conserving.\u00a0 Conservatives love talking about freedom.\u00a0 However it seems that if we listen to conservatives we would be free to live in a world that is being consumed by all of its so-called free human beings, and all these human beings would be competing to no end against one another.\u00a0 Sounds like a crappy version of freedom to me.\u00a0\u00a0 Freedom without understanding and honoring the limits of the natural world seems to me to be simply a license to ignorantly destroy the planet and all of its inhabitants.\u00a0 Of course, the shared reality of the natural world, if it is going to be protected for the benefit of humanity, must put demands and limitations on human freedom.\u00a0 Human beings, though seen as the pinnacle of reality by many, are certainly not exempt from the feedback or karma that the rest of reality causes in response to our actions.\u00a0 Oftentimes, when I hear conservative speaking of freedom, it sounds to me like some immature fantasy of being free from anything and everything (or anyone).\u00a0 However, I believe that true human wisdom lies in discerning what we should do, not simply what we can do (or get away with).\u00a0 Reality gives plenty of good feedback about what we actually can&#8217;t do, so the obsession with freedom seems to me to be a sort of moot question.\u00a0 Like the existentialist philosopher John Paul Sartre says, &#8220;we are condemned to be free.&#8221;\u00a0 Freedom actually isn&#8217;t even a choice; we are born free.\u00a0 Certainly, living in community with other human beings is a complicated and difficult thing.\u00a0 However, it strikes me as foolish to ignore or greatly discount all the great things that we get from community as somehow too fuzzy or somehow reducible to some\u00a0 individualistic form of math (the whole equals the sum of the parts, not more) that need rely only on some &#8220;invisible hand&#8221; to do the difficult and messy work of creating and maintaining a healthy and functional community.\u00a0 In the end, it seems to me that what conservatives are conserving is the right to be selfish &#8211; more of an excuse than a human right.\u00a0 Then, to get out of this amoral or evil conundrum, they claim that selfishness is the highest form of selflessness or benefit to the common good.\u00a0 I suppose it&#8217;s very difficult to argue against an ideology that creates both its central tenet in its exact opposite.\u00a0 Let them eat cake and keep their cake to.\u00a0 What could be more conserving than that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTON What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTON This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/toppun.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/04\/conservatives-conserving\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,55],"tags":[227,607,331,141,335,91,219,392,460,115,305,473,228,213,349,273,16,594,17,601,224,517,723,389,380],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-and-philosophical-musings","category-top-pun-design-commentaries","tag-amorality","tag-common-good","tag-community","tag-conservative","tag-conundrum","tag-cool-design","tag-environmental","tag-evil","tag-foolish","tag-freedom","tag-humanity","tag-ideology","tag-immorality","tag-individualism","tag-karma","tag-love","tag-musings","tag-play","tag-political","tag-reality","tag-sartre","tag-selfish","tag-top-pun","tag-wisdom","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - 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