Conservative Correctness vis-a-vis the Built Environment

Harry's Place also offers a nice post on chip-on-the-shoulder whining of so many self-proclaimed "conservatives."

Harry says:

Here then are the main elements of this Conservative Correctness in the UK.

1. The white, heterosexual male, is a victim of our currently "PC Society". His freedom of speech is restricted, job opportunities are denied to him, his viewpoint is never reflected in the liberal-left dominated media and people who try to raise families and live a decent law-abiding, hard-working life are penalised in favour of all manner of deviants and minorities.

2. The law and the courts and the political elite are biased in favour of the criminal rather than the victim of crime. Criminals are being "understood" rather than punished while the victims of crime are being ignored and left to the mercy of the muggers and burglars. Criminals enjoy the life of Riley in so-called prisons --- at taxpayers expense.

3. Racism doesn't really exist. The accusation of "racist" is just used to shut down any debate about immigration and the threat to our national identity and to assist in the continued PC fuelled attempts to denigrate our indigenous heritage and culture. The term also helps build the continued growth of the 'race relations industry'.

4. Sexism or gender discrimination doesn't really exist. The concept was been invented by feminists and is used to further weaken family values and continue the persecution of men. Women are attracted into this easy but destructive lifestyle by generous government subsidies denied to ordinary families.

5. Homophobia certainly doesn't exist. It has been invented by the "gay lobby" as part of their campaign against the traditional family. We are now reaching the stage whereby to be straight is to be considered deviant. Schoolteachers and the media constantly promote a positive image of homosexuality while denigrating traditional heterosexual, sex.

6. The European Union is our enemy. It aims to destroy the British way of life and our institutions and force us to live under a Franco-German, anti-American, high-tax, federal, socialist super-state.

7. The PC left has succeeded in taking control of almost all areas of society. It dominates not only national and local government but also the civil service, the media, education and the police force.

Now I am trying to figure out how to translate Harry's schema to considerations of the built environment. How do conservatives whine about the physical world? What is CC when it comes to the built environment? Well of course they blame it all on liberals!

Maybe the CC refrain would be:

Liberals caused urban sprawl through the Rockefeller's sponsorship of that notorious socialist Philip Johnson at the Museum of Modern Art; he turned us away from "tradition" and destroyed cities. Liberals insisted that everyone drive a car. The reds at the National Association of Home Builders insisted that the single-family MacMansion be established as the norm. Socialist real estate developers built shopping centers with huge parking lots. All we need to do is return to "tradition" -- subways and tenements.

Hey! I admit that that's not such a great parody. But you get the drift: it's always somebody else's fault; conservatives can never take responsibility and acknowledge that they have been in charge -- uh, this is a capitalist society last time I looked -- for the past several hundred years and that as capitalism takes just bows for its magnificent achievements -- (said with no irony whatsoever as I do believe it is a remarkably effective & even beneficial system in many ways) -- and that since conservatives have been in charge they have to admit that maybe, just a little bit, the system has some flaws? No? Not even a teensy-wheensy itty-bit of flaws?

Maybe conservatism would have more credibility with me if there really was a conservative position on urban design & planning which went beyond a fetish for "columns," hysterical defenses of private property, demands for "tradition" --- a code-word for god-knows-what reactionary repressions ---and vague, usually ill-informed generalities which indicate little practical knowledge of how the built environment is formed.

Comments

[Thomas]

What is this? The technocratic modernists were conservatives?

Or, we're all conservatives?

Or, everyone's a conservative, except for those who like what I like?

And what's with the criticism of 'tradition'--it seems odd, considering the sorts of traditional designs that you do like.