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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Tannin, if you define conservative as wanting no change whatsoever to the status quo, or having entirely conventional opinions and seeing all other races as inferior, or considering those from the working class as useless dullards, then your aunt sally married to a straw man might work. That is, however, a bit like allowing only art in the "Socialist realism" vein to be considered "Left". It's way below your level.
The Left holds no monopoly on the idea that merit may be found in many different places, nor does being on the ordinary Conservative Right imply mere adoration of power for its own sake. You might want to read the works of Burke and his pursuit of the East India Company for an example. Your post suggests that this is your understanding of conservatism, and it's so circular and tendentious that i can only presume you are teasing.
If one adopts a fairly normal definition of a conservative as someone with politically conservative opinions, being patriotic and monarchist and broadly pessimistic about human nature, sceptical of ideas of radical equality, and perhaps even democracy, , and seeing the preservation of tradition and an evolved form of life as important, then what I posted is 100% correct. A quick google search of the relevant authors will confirm that this is the scholarly consensus.
Kipling is an ardent British imperialist and an avid monarchist. The idea that he is on the Left is eccentric in the extreme. Of course he admired Indian people. He lived among them and found many of them admirable. If you think that only socialists can feel that, I weep for you.
Conan Doyle ? His hero, Holmes, is likewise an ardent patriot and monarchist. He repeatedly speaks proudly of preserving the crowned heads of Europe (Bohemia, Scandinavia, etc) , and he engages in counter-intelligence work for the British government. His revered brother Mycroft is the go-to man for the U.K. Foreign office. Holmes actively seeks to head off anarchist plots. Doyle himself split from the Liberal Party over Irish home rule to actually run for office as a Liberal Unionist, a party which then joined the Conservatives a few years later. Holmes shows no interest at all in social reform, though he shows a typical Conservative concern for justice and the rights of the innocent to be protected from crime. Doyle is not even remotely a Leftist.
Your comments on the sublime Wodehouse are strangest of all. Wodehouse personally was a complete political naïf, and I did not claim him as a Conservative. However, his hero Jeeves is a stickler for conventional proprieties in dress, in titles, in manners and in observing the forms of the class system. His idle rich are mentally negligible but mostly kindly and honorable. Wodehouse pointedly and deflatingly satirises communists (when Bingo Little joins a Bolshevik sect) and fascists (Roderick Spode) with equal aplomb. If you think that makes him politically classifiable good luck with it.
Lawrence is an oddball in many respects, but his politics were virtually fascist. A minute's perusal of the internet (Wikipedia et al) on Lawrence's politics will put you straight on this. As it happens, I was at Lawrence's birthplace near Nottingham on the very day I wrote my post, and reading Terry Eagleton's just censure of Lawrence's rather disturbing politics.
I know nothing about Dorothy L Sayers' work, so I can't comment. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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^ You need to read books in their historical content, not through the lens of 21st Century attitudes. Practically everyone was a monarchist and an imperialist in Victorian England.
All that aside, I neglected to make the most telling criticism of your silly claim that "the best literature was right-wing" - which is, of course, that you (a conservative) are defining what counts as "the best". It's like saying:
"All nice people are white."
(What evidence do you have for that?)
"Here is a list of my friends. They are all nice people. They are all white. See? All nice people are white." _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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Tannin wrote: | Phillistine! You obviously don't know that tax avoidance is the greatest art of all. |
Quite so _________________ “I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough†Kinky Friedman |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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Charles Dickens anyone?
The poetry of George Eliot? Great Grandmother of Jamie. _________________ “I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough†Kinky Friedman
Last edited by watt price tully on Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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Oops. Too much data. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Huh ? Nowhere did I write that "the best literature was right wing". I wrote as follows :
QUOTE "Many, indeed most, of the great writers of the first half of the twentieth century are broadly on the right - Kipling, Eliot, Yeats, Larkin, Conrad, Faulkner, Conan Doyle, Ted Hughes. DH Lawrence. Probably Thomas Hardy. There are many exceptions - Orwell, Auden and others - but the overwhelming tenor of poetry and prose writing up until about 1960 is on the right." End quote
Good (and bad) art can be written from either (or no) political viewpoint, and it has often been written from a politically Conservative one. It's a function of the age, not the laws of great writing or the particular genius of the Leftist world view.
As to the lefties are smarter than rightists stuff, well, yes, if graduates have been indoctrinated by leftist academics for the last sixty years, you might get that sampling across an entire population of educated and uneducated people. If you compare mainstream right-wing graduates and mainstream Left-wing graduates your finding disappears, like the illusion it is. _________________ Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Fri Jun 02, 2017 10:49 am; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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I don't think that's possible. More than a million? |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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I'd get that coffee you had this morning drug tested.
& please don't use Presti's name in such vain _________________ “I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough†Kinky Friedman |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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That actually sounds plausible to me. Testosterone junkies are less likely to be sensitive, introspective types! _________________ "Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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David wrote: |
That actually sounds plausible to me. Testosterone junkies are less likely to be sensitive, introspective types! |
I'm sensitive, introspective, a capable enough writer but also athletic and conservative. When I was younger I was skinny and socialist |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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I think Tannin's post is the biggest load of crap he's ever written.
I was in Ballarat today and it's clear the cold has his brain misfiring.
Artistic creativity has no link to intelligence. You get smart ones and dumb ones.
if his tongue wasn't firmly planted in his cheek while typing that he should get to Ballarat hospital ASAP for a brain scan. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Post subject: Re: Why is the arts so hostile to conservatism? | |
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Tannin wrote: | Jack Spain is well-educated
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Really ? A bad case of polishing a suede shoe, then, that one. From memory, Jack was the genius that wanted Malthouse sacked right through 2007-2009 then claimed personal credit for the changes that led to 2010 before being heckled off stage. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Tannin wrote: | Here on Nick's, for example, Stui is intelligent. |
stui magpie wrote: | I think Tannin's post is the biggest load of crap he's ever written. |
I agree. Obviously, I got it wrong. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Post subject: Re: Why is the arts so hostile to conservatism? | |
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Mugwump wrote: | Tannin wrote: | Jack Spain is well-educated
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Really ? A bad case of polishing a suede shoe, then |
Just so. Educated != intelligent != sensible. Never knew a man with a better-honed talent for getting it wrong. But outstanding language skills, which he presumably learned somewhere. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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