John Stuart Mill said.....?

Question

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative." -

Do you know any smart conservatives?

Answer 1

Oh there are plenty of very, very smart conservatives.

(Just HUUUUGE quantities or really, really, stupid ones)

BTW This idea that J S Mill was, in todays terms, conservative is just, well, point -proving! At root he denied the key conservative assumption: that of a time-based ethics. "Conservatives", whatever they claim, tend to want to Conserve - they like things the way they are/were in the very recent past. So attacking the dogmas of the status quo is a very, very unconservative thing to do. J S Mill was VERY radical, he argued against the status quo on the major issues of the time: slavery, women's suffrage, birth control etc.

He was also the author of "On Liberty" which, if its principles were applied to todays issues would mean:

1. Legalisation of drugs
2. Gay marriage
3. Complete seperation of church and state (no "In God we Trust", no school prayers, not even a prayer to open the Senate)

Very republican!

Answer 2

Yes. Me. (if you consider a Libertarian a conservative)

...and anyway I've found the opposite to be true. Most undereducated and unintelligent people want the government to give them stuff. They take an extremely short-range view of the future and to me that's what liberals do. They want to feed the homeless NOW, but they don't care if doing so creates a bigger problem in the future. Liberals are feelers, not thinkers.

Answer 3

Just like meatbot I have found the opposite is true. Not so much the politicians themselves, but the voters. The liberal politicians cunningly go after the "stupid" vote in my opinion. I would bet that if everyone had a college education the liberals as we know them today would cease to exist.

Answer 4

I don't know many "smart" liberals in the current use of the word liberal either..
19th Cent British conservatives were even more reactionary than the modern conservatives who are ,when all is said and done,also moderns.
19th cent British Liberalism was closer to modern Americam Republicanism than to what is labeled liberalism today.

Answer 5

I do.

But the smart conservatives I know tend to be social libertarians or social liberals. They are more "Goldwater*" conservatives; they aren't neo-cons or Bush style conservatives. They don't want to mix religion and politics.

Me - hard core lefty.

Answer 6

I know some reasonably intelligent conservatives... technology engineers etc... but they say a lot of dumb things so in spite of their intellect I can't call them 'smart'.

Possibly what they are lacking is not IQ but wisdom. Conservatives are those who don't want things to change or who want things to go back to some way they were before. Wise people know you can't stop change. It's the only constant in the universe.

Answer 7

conservative with a small c isn't necessarily bad.

I know a few Conservatives that are actually pretty smart.

I also know a saying: if you don't vote socialist when you're 21, you're a bastard. If you still vote them when you're 40, you're an idiot.

Answer 8

I do believe Mr. Mill was speaking autobiographically as this is clearly amongst the most stupid statements ever recorded.

Answer 9

Excellent point except that JSM had the same fundamental beliefs and what he thought was 'progressive' was actually 'regressive'. Ayn Rand made it clear on several occasions that she wasn't a conservative. She said she was a 'radical for capitalism'.

Answer 10

Ayn Rand if you consider her conservative