Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
No, extreme is often seen as a negative in any political arena and as such is a perfectly acceptable modifier.
People often describe religion in a similar way. There may be no issue with evangelicals, but a fundamentalist evangelical could be seen as a negative.
JohnnyD brings up a good point and one that I've made many times.
The word Liberal is used quite liberally by some to denote a common set of beliefs that most people don't really completely associate with. I've seen numbers that show only about 15% of Americans would even consider themselves a "liberal" while 50% would consider themselves "conservative".
You rarely hear people making generalizations about conservatives all being warmongers for instance, yet if the Liberal label is used the person is assumed to be a pacifistic. Usually there's some modifier put on the conservative, evangelical conservative, isolationist conservative, neo-conservative, libertarian conservative, Goldwater conservative etc... so someone actually know which of the conservative flavors you're really talking about.
Neo-con is another label that applies to a very small number of people, and it's mostly seen as a negative due to the recent policy blunders their leadership helped to create. Otherwise most people wouldn't even know what one was.
To say that neo-con is using conservative as a perjorative isn't really in the same spirit, in that it's just a way to call out liberal values held by someone who pretends to be a conservative, and not placing a negative on what most would consider mainstream conservative values.
It is interesting though how so many who would consider themselves conservatives readily embrace neo-con principals when they think they are conservative principals. Not all conservatives do this of course, but a lot of people I've known have.
It just goes to reinforce the notion that labels only apply to the extremes and most all of us live somewhere in the middle.
-spence
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Indeed, since Iraq, I've heard many people making generalizations about Conservatives being warmongers, especially when, as Johnny does, using Conservative and Republican interchangeably. Slick trick.
And isn't it amazing that your 5 different qualified conservatives, etc., and Johnny's Extreme Conservatives, are a way to dissect the simple, supposedly "neutral" Conservative into whatever portion of conservatism you don't like and use the Qualified, Modified, Conservative as a pejorative so as to leave the sacred simple Conservative unsullied and still "neutral"? Another slick trick. AND TOTAL NONSENSE. It's all a pejorative use of Conservative and it is as constantly, if not more, used to denigrate Conservatives as Liberal is used to denigrate.