Infanticide

[Bono]

Biggest load of bull ever! Being liberal does NOT equate to wanting to legalize killing babies. Gee, we're all getting more conservative economically. Maybe one day we'll get to shoot poor people for being unable to take care of themselves.

I never said it does, if you read the article it talks about the Netherlands euthenizing babies with severe disabilities. My question was whether or not this would be permitted in the future. In a sense I was asking if liberalism would follow the path here that it has in the Netherlands.

You're still implying that liberalism is the ideology that results in killing babies. Why not point to fascist genocides and ask if being conservative will lead to that? You may not realize the entirety of what you're implying. Stop for a second and think about it.

What does fascism have to do with conservatism?

Any serious look at the history of Either Germany or Italy 1918-1933 would answer that question instantously. Conservatives were often very fond to turn to fascism.

Actually Traditionally Fascism is what right-wingers turned to once alot of the old right-wing bastions have been discredited (such as the Church and the mainstream Conservative parties).

i don't see why. Though first let's define conservatism: conservatism is an ideology that stems from Edmund Burke's writings, and that has to do with the retention of traditional society mores in combination with a free market economic policy. I don't see how that is compatible with fascism.

I think he's talking about how the Weimar right, the Centre Party and the German National People's Party, supported the Nazis when they came to power and basically allowed Hitler to be chancellor instead of reaching out to democratic leftist parties that would have continued the tradition of the democratic Weimar Republic.

I don't know much about those parties, but if the current German right is in continuance to them, they were probably christian-democratic and not conservative. "Christian democracy" is much closer to fascism than conservatism.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The DNVP certainly wasn't a Christian Democratic party.

[Gustaf]

The Communists were much more responsible for Hitler's takeover because they decided that the Social Democrats were their major enemy and not the Nazis.

Also, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats were the most anti-Nazi parties. That is why they came to dominate politics after the war, IIRC.

[Colin]

Biggest load of bull ever! Being liberal does NOT equate to wanting to legalize killing babies. Gee, we're all getting more conservative economically. Maybe one day we'll get to shoot poor people for being unable to take care of themselves.

I never said it does, if you read the article it talks about the Netherlands euthenizing babies with severe disabilities. My question was whether or not this would be permitted in the future. In a sense I was asking if liberalism would follow the path here that it has in the Netherlands.

You're still implying that liberalism is the ideology that results in killing babies. Why not point to fascist genocides and ask if being conservative will lead to that? You may not realize the entirety of what you're implying. Stop for a second and think about it.

What does fascism have to do with conservatism?

Any serious look at the history of Either Germany or Italy 1918-1933 would answer that question instantously. Conservatives were often very fond to turn to fascism.

Actually Traditionally Fascism is what right-wingers turned to once alot of the old right-wing bastions have been discredited (such as the Church and the mainstream Conservative parties).

i don't see why. Though first let's define conservatism: conservatism is an ideology that stems from Edmund Burke's writings, and that has to do with the retention of traditional society mores in combination with a free market economic policy. I don't see how that is compatible with fascism.

I think he's talking about how the Weimar right, the Centre Party and the German National People's Party, supported the Nazis when they came to power and basically allowed Hitler to be chancellor instead of reaching out to democratic leftist parties that would have continued the tradition of the democratic Weimar Republic.

I don't know much about those parties, but if the current German right is in continuance to them, they were probably christian-democratic and not conservative. "Christian democracy" is much closer to fascism than conservatism.

Centre was Christian Democratic DVNP was not Christian Democratic. They were nationalist conservatives some of whom still longed for monarchy. Centre is predecessor of the CSU while the DVNP was a conservative party in almost all respects.

[Colin]

The Communists were much more responsible for Hitler's takeover because they decided that the Social Democrats were their major enemy and not the Nazis.

Also, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats were the most anti-Nazi parties. That is why they came to dominate politics after the war, IIRC.

The Social Democrats, yes, but not the Christian Democrats. The Centre Party, which was the main Christian Democratic party at that time, was actually one of the main Nazi coalition partners and was basically responsible for Hitler becoming Chancellor since their backing was needed for Hitler to have a majority of the Reichstag.

[Gustaf]

The Communists were much more responsible for Hitler's takeover because they decided that the Social Democrats were their major enemy and not the Nazis.

Also, the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats were the most anti-Nazi parties. That is why they came to dominate politics after the war, IIRC.

The Social Democrats, yes, but not the Christian Democrats. The Centre Party, which was the main Christian Democratic party at that time, was actually one of the main Nazi coalition partners and was basically responsible for Hitler becoming Chancellor since their backing was needed for Hitler to have a majority of the Reichstag.

That may be right, I'm more sure of the Austrian Christian Democrats.

Having looked it up it seems that the Centre Party was largely opposed to Hitler but they were tricked into voting in favour of abolishing democracy, thus bringing about their own downfall.

[Bono]

The DNVP certainly wasn't a Christian Democratic party.

Was it a conservative party though?
Would Edmund Burke review himself in them?

[Colin]

The DNVP certainly wasn't a Christian Democratic party.

Was it a conservative party though?
Would Edmund Burke review himself in them?

Would Edmund Burke review himself in any conservative party of today? The only thing that really kept him apart from the normal liberal establishment of his day was his views concerning the French Revolution and just because of that he is now worshipped as some conservative icon.

[minionofmidas]

Yawn.

First off, Dutch government is traditionally, for reasons Freek can best explain (but I can try as well) extremely permissive*, but Dutch society is certainly less liberal than any society within several 100s of kms around it.

*basically, after slaughtering each other for a hundred years over their society's cleavages, the Dutch decided to just ignore each other. This was 350 years ago.

Second off, infanticide used to be widely practiced and sort of tolerated, though illegal, in Europe and European North America - and native American North America as well - into (in the lower orders) 19th century. Legal & safe abortions prevent infanticide from happening regularly.

As to Germany... again, traditional cleavages.
By voting patterns, there were basically three major political blocs in Germany, both in the Kaiserreich and in the Weimar Republic, with the vast majority of vote-switching occurring within them. Vote switching across the bloc boundaries occurred of course, but was fairly rare.
They are
the Socialist bloc - Social Democrats and Communists
the Bourgeois bloc - Liberals (DDP), Mainline Conservatives (DVP in Weimar, "National Liberals" under the Empire), Far Conservatives that were essentially Proto-Nazis (DNVP in Weimar, "Conservatives" under the Empire), and, later, the Nazis
the Catholic bloc - the Center Party.

Not all Catholics voted Center, and not all working class people voted Socialist, of course, but the majority of the Nazis' voters were certainly always Middle class Protestants. (Despite Hitler being a Catholic.)

This should not be confused with what parties worked together in Parliament etc - the picture there is totally different, basically a pro-Constitution bloc of SPD-Center-DDP that occasionally fell apart, and could always be enlarged into a pro-Democratic-forms-of-governance bloc including the DVP and (in the late 20s) the "Economy Party", basically a caste organization of the downwardly mobile lower middle class.

Note that, when the Nazis rose, the DDP, DVP, WP, and a myriad of protest lists that had won quite a few votes during the 20s went under pretty much without a fuss. The DNVP actually held up better. Also note that when Hitler came to power, it was at the head of a NSDAP-DNVP coalition.

The situation after 45 is not really comparable because West Germany was now a majority Catholic country. Depending how you want to view things, the CDU can be described as either representing a blend of the Center and conservative traditions, or as a hostile takeover of the conservatives by the Center.