From: Carlos Gonzalia (gonzalia@cs.chalmers.se)
Date: Sun Jul 22 2001 - 14:11:44 MDT
>From: Dehede011@aol.com
> I have read in a very general way the problems you have in Argentina.
>However we also have a slight problem with the terms we use.
> I understand that across the entirety of South America a Conservative
>tends to be a guy that owns a big white house on the hill and doesn't intend
>for the people at the bottom of the hill to accumulate any wealth or freedom
>for themselves. Is that true? Here Conservative tends to mean something a
>little bit different. However as I tend to be a libertarian I shan't attempt
>to explain American Conservatives -- I am too close to them.
I believe that was a correct description 100 years ago. It also changes
a bit from country to country. In Argentina, the political-economical
group you are thinking of, and that tend to call themselves conservatives
in the few times they actually bother with standard politics instead of
calling the army or beating the economy to show their displeasure, would be:
-big landowners, whose income comes from agriculture/meat exports
-usually from "old families" (pre 1880 immigration, the older the best)
-deeply catholic
-very aristocratic and elitist
-believers in the "inherent flawed nature" of the rest of the population,
to the point that shamelessly racist babble about "weak blood" in the
late-immigrant or mestizo-originating lower classes is the reason the country
never reached its "glory" (whatever the blazes that could be)
-authoritarian, oligopolist
C.
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