| HN Mirror

> And I am now curious about your beliefs that conservative politics will lead to a just society.

Of course not. Politics will never lead to a just society. There is no such thing as 'conservative' politics; or at least, such a thing is not advocated for in the United States. This is because most 'conservatives' are united not in any particular vision of the country but rather by what the country should not be. This isn't to say that individual factions don't have clear ideas of how society should be; just that no faction predominates. With that aside, by most meanings of 'conservative', it is used to mean limited government, little welfare, lower government spending, and policies encouraging social conservatism. Yes, I am broadly in support of these things.

On its own however, these things will not lead to a just society.

You need both conservative politics and a moral society to achieve a just society.

Unfortunately, the government cannot create a moral society. That is up to individuals to accomplish. We cannot vote on society being good. Many individuals in the united states view their only obligation to politics and the community is via voting and government. This is the worst take ever imaginable. After one votes, after one protests, after one calls their senator/representative, there is yet more to be done for community. Most people do not ever get to this level. It's not just volunteering to help those who are of a different class than you. No no no... that's the uninteresting part of civic duty. The interesting part is what you do for people like you. Do you spend time making your friends worlds a better place? What about your family? Do you make sure your friends and family aren't falling into destitution? Those things are the intangibles that no amount of voting or politics will ever fix, when a culture is broken.

For example, many liberals want universal child care paid for via public money. I don't think this is a good thing because I don't think children should be raised by businesses. They should be raised by their parents (they should be educated by them as well, in the early years at least) and their families.

In order to achieve this goal of having more parents stay home with their children, we both need to not have universal child care (should probably severely rethink public schooling too), as well as create a society that understands that parents staying home is the right thing to do, and thus does not do it. The first part is easily governmentally achievable; the second part is not. Although it's true that our current society incentivizes both parents working, there is no fundamental reason they have to (other than most people's desires for more material goods). Many subcultures in America achieve a one-income family (Amish, many evangelicals, many conservative Catholics, etc).

As another aside, I give thousands of dollars to direct action charities. I have no problem with this and would like to give more. Yet, I would resent if government took this money and instead used it, preventing me from giving it to those in need. In a lot of countries with more welfare, the people themselves become less charitable, because any social problem they expect someone else to fix. Those who fall behind anyway are looked at as failures. Far from forming community, welfare atomizes society. Thus, I am very suspicious of government welfare. Better for it to come from individuals. Tax breaks to encourage charity are fine, and better, indeed.

So no, I don't think conservative politics will achieve anything other than not directly incentivizing people to do bad. Fundamentally, I'm conservative because I want the freedom to do good.