e.g. a serious escalation towards war in the middle east.

Nothing new in a serious escalation towards war. Just not expecting one (nuclear?) with Turkey.

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}

Can I be boastful and remind you of what I wrote nearly 3 years ago when discussing Obama's policies ?

It was Matt Taibbi who first identified the real problem with Barack Obama, that he is a largely self-satisfied exponent of the status quo. Jerome's recent (and necessary) evisceration of his foreign policy statements only underlines the fact that, should Obama become US President, nothing much will change. Not on the foreign policy front, and, especially, not on the domestic front.
[....]
But it's different for Obama, they believe in him: And he can't deliver on those expectations; nobody really could, but he won't even try.

We knew back then that Obama was the second most centrist of the Primary candidates and it should be no surprise to us that, by and large, he's not really changing Bush's policies. For one thing, he's too busy fixing the emergencies he's been saddled with. For another, he's got a hostile Senate who wouldn't allow him to do too much anyway. But finally, he's not somebody who would want to do "radical" policy shifts in the first place; he really is the consensus guy who wants everybody to get on and do the thing they'd already agreed upon and take credit for it.

It's tough that this is not a time of consensus, but we deal with the President they got......

keep to the Fen Causeway

Normally I write from a pragmatic perspective respecting the realities of what is possible given the interests of the elites and the structures of power.

That is why some around here consider me a moderate or even a conservative.  Sometime I see things getting so dysfunctional that there is a serious risk of things going seriously awry - e.g. a serious escalation towards war in the middle east.

Traditionally conservative and right wing have been linked. I think that has been a mistake. I would see Noam Chompsky as a conservative. There are a whole lot of radicals on the left who do not like him, I suspect because of it. Angry Arab had a nasty comment about him (I felt out of context) recently.

[Conservatism] is a political and social philosophy that says that traditional institutions work best and society should minimize change. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to the way things were.

The first part I agree with, the second part I disagree with. A left-wing conservative would seek gradual change towards a particular left-wing type of system.

There's a lot to be said for gradual change as opposed to revolution. (That's not to say that revolutionary change is never desirable.) I believe that the parliamentary system is better than the checks and balances system. The Parliamentary system evolved over time, and I believe actually provides better checks and balances than the US system where there is no clear chain of who is responsible. I remember cringing as the Soviet Union broke up with how it appeared that the US was encouraging things to happen as fast as possible.

By temperament, I would probably like to be on the conservative end of things... Maybe that's why I like reading your posts. I want to be a far left radical conservative.

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}