David Shemano wrote:
>I am not sure what your question is, so I will answer as follows. First, I
>am conservative, so I don't believe in perfection and am willing to defend
>and conserve imperfection -- I am not going to throw the baby out with the
>bathwater.
In this sense I am also a conservative. Over the past 20 years in North
America radical policies have been introduced in the name of conservatism
that have had the effect, literally, of throwing out the baby. Ten years
ago, the Canadian parliament unanimously passed a resolution calling for the
elimiination of child poverty by the year 2000. Of course it didn't happen.
But more specifically, child poverty increased as a direct consequence of
changes in government policies, many of which have been enacted in the name
of conservatism and with the proclaimed purpose of encouraging and defending
private initiative, etc.
One can, of course, justifiably argue that there was nothing genuinely
conservative about the policy changes and that in their implementation they
didn't in fact pursue their proclaimed purpose, but sought instead to coerce
and regulate low-income people. One rationale articulated by one of the
drafters of unemployment insurance reform in Canada referred to widely-held
*perceptions* that large numbers of people were abusing the system,
acknowledged the lack of substance to the perception and went on to
recommend sanctions against claimants as a palliative for the hostile
perceptions.
I've said before that one can't dance with two left feet and I can't see how
the "expropriation of private property" offers more than a rhetorical
solution to the achievement of the good life. Beyond that, though, I think
there's an important issue of how and why it is that under capitalism -- and
uniquely under capitalism -- private property comes to refer exclusively to
the ownership of things and not to other traditionally established
relationships and why it is that the notion of private property couldn't (or
shouldn't) evolve to refer, for example, to universal entitlement to a share
of social production instead of decaying to refer to the ever more exclusive
ownership of an even bigger pile of things (i.e., "intellectual property").
>From my perspective, it seems that a major thrust of so-called conservative
initiatives over the past 20 years has been to usurp established
entitlements to a share of social production in the name of promoting
incentives to work and to invest. That is to say, the direction has been to
expropriate one kind of private property in the name of narrowly promoting
the accumulation of another kind (the ownership of things).
Tom Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
Bowen Island, BC
