Template talk:Conservatism US

Add to "intellectuals" section?

• Dolan
• Bozell Jr.
• Lodge
• Meese
• Podhoretz
• Will
• Crichton
• Hazlitt

Biohistorian15 (talk) 14:56, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I am fine with some of your latest reversions, but Repplier is simply too obscure, and Dreher is already included in the Commentator section. Please remove those two from the Intellectual section. Trakking (talk) 16:24, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm opposed to basically all of these. Counting them as intellectuals reduces the word "intellectual" to complete meaninglessness (although maybe doing such a thing is characteristically American; as a people we have never known how to distinguish thought from a sales pitch). My objections:

- Hazlitt is a newspaper publisher; his claim to fame is Economics in One Lesson. He's better understood as a libertarian, and maybe an economist (though I think that title vastly overestimates the cogency of Economics in One Lesson as anything more than bad propaganda for the simpleminded). If he's to be included here, I would put him under activist.

- Meese is primarily a politician. Whatever intellectual contributions he made were minimal. Same goes for Lodge.

- Podhoretz is notable as a commentator. Counting him as an intellectual would do violence to a category that ought to be reserved for thinkers like Harvey Mansfield, Leo Strauss, and so on. The same goes for George Will.

- I am not even sure why Crichton has been suggested, except maybe that he was a climate change skeptic and that George Bush liked his novels. He is a writer of NYT Bestseller pop-fiction, not a thinker, and he should not be included in any categories. The other people you list are already included where they should be.

I'm not really sure that Timothy Cardinal Dolan is important enough to merit inclusion, but I'm fine with keeping him. I would personally put Bozell under commentators, but can see a case being made for intellectuals. GreenLoeb (talk) 18:45, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 May 2024

Request to add Hispanic and Latino conservatism in the United States under the category "Movements" and Anti-Islamism under the category "Principles".

129.126.202.49 (talk) 11:35, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

 Not done for now: Please clarify why this change is needed. ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 11:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

"Hispanic and Latino" added. But most of the world is firmly anti-Islamist, which makes the term rather vacuous. Trakking (talk) 12:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Add Elon Musk?

Musk, however, may neither perfectly fit in the category of "activists" (in lack of special philanthropy outside of demographics research...) nor the "commentators" one (as Twitter otherwise doesn't suffice either...)

Proposed course of action: add him to both sections (major public figure after all...)

Biohistorian15 (talk) 01:19, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Compact (American magazine)

It feels a bit oversimplistic to include this magazine in this list, given the sort of eclectic makeup of its founders and contributors. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 05:12, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. Its eclecticism is no argument against its inclusion, but rather a feature of the post 2016 right, which has seen broad interest between opponents of liberalism both right and left in collaborating. Most of Compact’s contributors are right coded, two of their three founders are solidly on the right (and the third founder left in a storm of dissatisfaction because Compact took an editorial line against abortion), and the skepticism of the market that the Compact set embodies is quite frankly where the American right is (thankfully) headed. You can find the exact same eclecticism in American Affairs (indeed, many people who publish in the one are published in the other), which no one has objected to including. GreenLoeb (talk) 11:35, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

I feel like we're bridging too far into WP:OR in that analysis. Our personal analysis of who is "right coded" can't be the basis for including a particular periodical in this sidebar, nor can our personal comparison of X periodical to American Affairs be the justification for inclusion here. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 17:40, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

I’m not making a “personal comparison”; objectively, both AA and Compact regularly have the same authors. That Compact publishes some Marxists who are allied with the right in the culture war no more makes it irrelevant to this template than does the fact that WSJ publishes pro-homosexual and pro-abortion opinions, or that The Dispatch endorses and drums up support for liberal Democrats. In any case, I would be curious to hear @Trakking’s thoughts, as well as @Biohistorian15, as both are, like me, regular and long-standing contributors to the template. GreenLoeb (talk) 20:28, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Here are some authors published in Compact: Christopher Caldwell (Claremont Institute), Matthew Schmitz (First Things and The American Conservative), Sohrab Ahmari (NY Post), Nathan Pinkoski, Timothy Cardinal Dolan (conservative bishop), Darrel Paul, Dan Hitchens (son of Peter and editor at First Things), John Milbank (progenitor of radical orthodox theology), Dan McCarthy (ISI), Ryszard Legutko (prominent Polish conservative), Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley (US Senator) and Peter Hitchens.

Recent articles have criticized gender ideology and transgender genital mutilation of children, endorsed Trump’s bloodbath comments, criticized EU attempts to suppress right wingers, criticized pandemic social control methods and the biomedical security state, spoken well of Josh Hawley, criticized the crackdown on religious schools by administrative state equity czars, positively reappraised Intelligent Design, spoken well of European right wing populist victories in the EU elections and in Portugal and Spain, heaped disdain on the idea of “white rural rage,” called for immigration restriction, criticized the lawfare being waged against Donald Trump, called for ending support to Ukraine, called for banning pornography, and published an eviscerating review of Judith Butler’s latest book. GreenLoeb (talk) 20:39, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

As explained by GreenLoeb, this magazine predominantly expresses cultural and national forms of conservatism. I am in favor of readding it to the template. Trakking (talk) 21:09, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @GreenLoeb as well. Good call. Biohistorian15 (talk) 07:36, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

On some recent additions

I made some recent additions that were partially reverted. Here I'm including my rationale for each:

Mel Bradford: Bradford was an important paleoconservative scholar. In 1980, he was tapped by Reagan to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford's nomination was fiercely opposed by neoconservatives in Reagan's circles due to Bradford being in many ways a defender of the Confederacy and the antebellum South, causing Reagan to eventually withdraw his support for Bradford's nomination. This event is to this day seen by many paleocons as a definitive "stab-in-the-back" moment which ignited the feud between paleos and neos, the "original sin" of the Reagan administration against traditional conservatism, and was widely decried by other prominent conservatives on Bradford's side, like Kirk and Buchanan. Besides the importance of this event, Bradford himself made interesting contributions to conservative theory through his novel interpretation of the Declaration of Independence (he interpreted Jefferson as a fundamentally conservative thinker, reading "men" in "All men are created equal" to mean not an equality between individuals but rather between peoples), and made a staunch defense of the Anti-Federalist tradition in conservative thought. I think his inclusion is important also to give balance to the list; paleocons are underrepresented, as are Southerners. To a non-US reader this may not seem important, but the American South forms basically a distinct nation within the nation, with its own folkways, traditions, patterns of life and thought, and these are often in some degree of tension with the broader US. It is a representative of an older, more aristocratic and European order.

Willmoore Kendall: I think this should be the least controversial. Kendall was a founder of National Review, the most important organ in the history of the American conservative movement. He strongly influenced his students and fellow NR cofounders Bill Buckley and L. Brent Bozell. He articulated a distinctly democratic conservatism highly influenced by a conservative reading of Jefferson which privileged the position of land and place over numerical majoritarianism. And he has an entire chapter devoted to him in George H. Nash's "Conservative Intellectual Movement in the United States since 1945," widely considered the standard and still definitive history of the conservative movement in academic historiography.

R. R. Reno: This might be a recency bias, but he is the editor of First Things and has been for well over a decade. FT is the leading journal of the religious right in America. Reno has not been a mere suit, but has indeed shifted FT's editorial line away from the magazine's traditional neoconservatism and towards national conservatism / populism. He has spoken at all of the National Conservatism conferences, he has written a well-received book ("The Return of the Strong Gods") which explains and defends the rise of national conservatism in the past decade, and he sits on the boards of FT and American Affairs. In any case, he certainly seems more deserving of inclusion in the commentators list than, for example, Brandon Tatum.

Let me know what you think. Feel free to also ask me about any other additions, I'd be happy to provide my reasoning for any of them. Thanks! GreenLoeb (talk) 22:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I would be curious to hear what you think, @Trakking, since you reverted these originally. I wouldn't want to revert your reversion without a discussion, as you do a lot to keep these templates in order. Please do let me know your thoughts. GreenLoeb (talk) 07:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for presenting the rationale behind your additions. Biohistorian is making many interesting edits, but he often makes the mistake of adding non-conservatives such as libertarians or fascists. The three additions above are true conservatives without a doubt, as you've demonstrated. Yet, I would prefer not readding them since they seem only moderately important; they're not major figures like most of the other people on the list. If you want, we could make a compromise: you readd the one or two you deem most important to the movement—and we leave out the other(s). The risk of bloat has been raised several times here in Talk, and we should only add the people who are most relevant. Trakking (talk) 20:48, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a fair point. Bradford and Reno can certainly be left out. I do think Kendall should be added, given that he helped found NR, was the teacher of Buckley and Bozell, and is documented as a major thinker in Nash's definitive history of the movement, so I will re-add him. GreenLoeb (talk) 21:07, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Trimming down the politicians section

I think we've done a lot of good work over the past couple years to make this template one of the best politics templates on Wikipedia; it is in any case in far better shape than the US liberalism template. But I still think the politicians section is plagued by bloat, and recency bias. I would think that, to be included on the pols list, one would need to have been a major US conservative politician who is widely agreed to have had a significant impact either on the nation or on the conservative movement. Some of the current choices do not, to me, appear to meet this: Steve Forbes (a never-elected and twice-failed Republican presidential candidate who was more a libertarian Republican than a stalwart conservative), Masters (I campaigned for him and think he's a genuine conservative, but he has never won any office and has disappeared from public life since his last election bid), McDonald (a conservative no doubt and even a Bircher, but I'm not sure he's notable enough for inclusion), and Dan Quayle (a faintly remembered one term VP from thirty years ago), to name but a few.

There are also plenty on here who are currently in office but their significance is not really determinable. Haley, the two Scotts, Scalise, Kevin McCarthy, Mark Meadows, Mike Johnson, Liz Cheney. I'm fine with keeping these so long as they hold office or remain relevant public figures, but we need to be sure they are duly removed once they lose relevance.

I have gone ahead and removed a few who I see no argument for keeping, like Kevin McCarthy (he is no longer in Congress), Masters, and Forbes. But let me know what you think. Perhaps the best route is common sense, or perhaps we wish to hammer out a way of determining relevance for inclusion more strictly. GreenLoeb (talk) 18:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Great initiative; I support it. Yes, we should not commit the error of WP:RECENTISM. I have also been wondering whether we should purge the list of more moderate centrists. What do you think of this suggestion? Trakking (talk) 20:59, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree fully when it comes to purging more moderate centrists. Looking at the list now, I think the following should be struck: Liz Cheney (mostly notable for being an anti-Trump darling of the liberal media, she is widely not seen as a conservative and she is not in the Congress any longer), Nikki Haley (neoconservative in foreign policy but otherwise a centrist, though I'm willing to keep her until her failed 2024 presidential bid is further in the past), Abbott and DeSantis (both conservatives who I have positive feelings about, but again, recentism), the two Scotts (no reason to include them rather than any other currently sitting US senators), Cantor (not a major figure historically and he has been out of the Congress for a decade at this point), Graham (again, recentism), Huckabee (recentism of a sort; he is not a relevant figure today, and is mostly here as a holdover from his brief period of popularity a decade ago), Mike Johnson (recentism), Meadows (recentism), Quayle (not a major figure historically), Scalise (recentism), and Sessions (not notable as a senator, and he is better included already in jurists).

I lean towards purging Romney, given that he is a centrist moderate, though I can see an argument for keeping him since he branded himself a conservative during the 2012 elections. I've left a few figures who are more recent but who I think have enough importance to merit staying, like Rubio and Hawley. Happy to provide justification for that decision if asked.

I also would say we should consider removing a few historical figures who predate the conservative/liberal divide in American politics. Including a figure like Calhoun or Hamilton makes sense, as they had a huge effect on the development of conservative thought decades later and they remain noted parts of the conservative heritage, but Fillmore, Cleveland, and Tilden are not really figures who get widely touted by any major conservative thinkers from the 1920s on (the American conservative movement largely being a product of that time period). GreenLoeb (talk) 21:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Support. Although as an uninvolved Brit I cringe a bit at the notion of "purging" centrists and moderates - if they have left some sort of Conservative legacy then their place should be assured, regardless of whether US Conservatism has shifted since then - Moderate Conservatism is still Conservatism. But yes, there are some such as Liz Cheney who notably opposed more recent Republican leadership but are not going to be lauded as key Conservative politicians in 30 years like Adams or Nixon.

I would also hazard that should US Politics continue to polarise then it may be necessary to develop a new Fascism US template. With hindsight, some individuals here may end up there, which would thin the more extreme end of this template (subject to WP:LAGGING of course).

I would welcome the removal of some WP:RECENTISM inclusions. For instance Ramaswamy is included in Politicians despite never being elected to any political office and having withdrawn his candidacy. Similarly Haley has actually held office (elected and appointed) but only became widely known as a result of her Presidential campaign and is unlikely to stand the test of time in a list with notables like Hamilton and Reagan. Including this cycle's candidates who didn't make it onto the ballot seems to fall foul of RECENTISM. Hemmers (talk) 09:40, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I think all of this seems reasonable. Certainly there are some moderate figures included who deserve to be kept; Nixon himself may be in hindsight a rather moderate figure, but he was absolutely central in the development of the conservative movement and in many ways invented "culture war" type politics in the US. (On the other hand, Eisenhower was a moderate whose relevance to the history of conservatism is limited to the mere fact that he was constantly attacked by conservatives, and he does not merit inclusion).

I'm going to boldly remove the figures you mention, as well as a few others, but please by all means revert any removals you disagree with and we can hash it out here on talk.

I do think I will keep Romney for now, given that he was the nominee in 2012 and, for better or worse, at that time embodied a haughty sort of greed-based conservatism that formed a major moment in conservative politics between the end of the Bush years and the beginning of the Trump era. GreenLoeb (talk) 16:33, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and made the changes I thought necessary. I thought I would give my reasoning for a few choices I kept. Some of these may seem like obvious choices for keeping, but I wanted to cover all my bases:

1. For Rick Santorum, I kept him because he was a major figure in his time and, more than just about anyone, he represents a particular kind of "compassionate conservatism"/religious right politics that was dominant during the George W. Bush administration. It would be wrong not to have someone from that era and strand on the list.
2. McConnell has been a large player in conservative politics for decades, so he has been kept.
3. Rubio has been in the Senate for some time, but plenty of senators who have sat in Congress for decades are not included. So why him? Because he has been a central Republican figure for over a decade, has attracted a lot of media attention, has been in many ways the most outspoken senator, and has since his election widely been seen as a representative of a new generation of Republican politics. While the truth of all that remains to be seen, I do think he ought to stay on the list.
4. Hawley and Vance I have kept because the list needs to include at least someone who represents the kind of post-2016 right-wing populism that has become increasingly important since Trump's first administration. Hawley and Vance seem to embody that more than any others, and like Rubio, they are publically prominent, they all participate in the right-wing "ideas" world (things like the NatCon conventions), and they are likewise touted as the future of the party by many. Vance may merit removal, but perhaps we should wait a few days to see if he is picked as VP (he's currently the favorite).
5. George H. W. Bush has been kept because he was VP for 8 years and president for 4, and though he ultimately was a moderate guy, he was at the top during conservatism's watershed moment. No history of the conservative movement can be told without him.
6. Cruz, similar reasoning to my points on Rubio and Hawley/Vance.
7. Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld kept because they were largely responsible for the debacle in Iraq and representative neocons.
8. Palin kept because though she was a failed VP candidate, she really embodies the Tea Party moment better than maybe any other politician.
9. Ryan kept because he, like Romney, embodied the tax-cuts focused, paeans-to-"job creators" conservatism that dominated Republican politics from the end of the Bush era till well into the first Trump admin.

I've removed figures who predate the liberal/conservative divide and who don't serve as conscious predecessors of the movement or wells from which modern conservatives draw (so Calhoun and Adams are kept, Cleveland and Fillmore are not). I'm wondering about Sherman, but for now have decided to keep him.

GreenLoeb (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

@Hemmers: My use of the word "purge" was kind of tongue-in-cheek. (GreenLoeb's response "I lean towards purging Romney" sounds funny.) You are correct in your observation that moderate conservatism is a variant of conservatism. Indeed, some philosophers argue that moderation is a tenet of conservatism. But we need to draw a distinction between centre-right moderate conservatism and moderate non-conservative centrism. Trakking (talk) 18:11, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I support GreenLoeb's purge. However, I will go ahead and readd two names: DeSantis (a prominent conservative) and Pence (a world-famous arch-conservative). Trakking (talk) 18:20, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

There's another problem we ought to fix while doing these "purges". The template is still incorporated in many of the respective articles for the names we remove. Sometimes the "Politician" section is even extended, which looks extremely awkward given that they're not included there any longer. Trakking (talk) 18:32, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

We need to purge the "Commentator" section as well. Personally I never listen to "political commentary" so I don't know who most of these people are. And their relevance to US conservatism as a political and intellectual tradition is dubious. Yet—some of them seem immensely popular with millions of subscribers on YouTube. So I really don't know who to purge. Trakking (talk) 18:43, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm happy with keeping DeSantis, given his notability over the past decade and the fact that he's widely seen as embodying the future of the GOP, and I am okay with keeping Pence for a little while longer, though I think with time he will need to be struck like most VPs, as memory of him fades. He was always a man out of time, representing a warmed-over and out of date Reaganite conservatism years after its expiry date. But we can get there when the time comes; for now, his inclusion is merited.

I couldn't agree more re: the commentators section. I have taken the liberty of trimming it down, as well as cleaning up the activists section. There were a lot of YouTube personalities and TV hosts; I kept the more notable ones, much as I'd rather not, but there were many who just aren't significant enough to warrant inclusion. The list is now more weighted to journalists and more "serious" writers, albeit with plenty of TV/internet/radio types still in the mix. I have also removed Hanania (he is a right-wing libertarian, he sometimes gets called a conservative by liberal media but he is really just hard-right, an atheist and a free-market self-described neoliberal who also supports race science and eugenics). Yarvin I have removed, he is a right-wing libertarian as well (albeit also a monarchist...). He has strange views and is certainly influential on parts of the right, and may ultimately need to be re-added, but at least for now I find his inclusion to be dubious. GreenLoeb (talk) 19:50, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

PSA: Explosion in included articles

In the past month, this template has jumped from being transcluded on ~370 pages to ~420 with no signs of stopping!

This is not necessarily a bad thing and thankyou to those maintaining it. But the growth needs to be deliberate and I just wished to draw attention to the recent trend to make sure everyone is cognizant of it.

Per WP:NAV-WITHIN:

The goal is not to cram as many related articles as possible into one space. Ask yourself, does this help the reader in reading up on related topics? Take any two articles in the template. Would a reader really want to go from A to B?"

Should the template become too enormous, it will cease to be useful.

I would also note that nav templates are intended to be transcluded in pages which are also listed in the template. Can we please avoid speculatively spamming it across pages on the basis of "considering inclusion". Add it to the page when the page is added to the template!

Please also note Wikipedia:Avoid template creep. This article has been shoehorned into articles such as Property rights which cannot in fact be described as "part of a series on Conservatism in the US" and often already contain more appropriate templates such as Template:Conservatism or Template:Rights. Property rights certainly are a Conservative principle. But they're also principles of other political systems and we don't want to spam those "generic" top level articles with US-specific templates. It might be necessary to make an exception for some of those where we don't actually add the template to the article even though the article is listed in this (and a bunch of other) templates. Thanks again! Hemmers (talk) 16:37, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

A valid observation. We are primarily three people working on this template as of lately. But while GreenLoeb and I have been working on cleaning it up from superfluous information—"purging" irrelevant people, as we jokingly called it, among other things—Biohistorian15 has been making continuous additions. I appreciate some of them, but I have been wanting to raise the same objection as you.

I believe that the "Related" section should be cleaned up from all information that does not specifically relate to US conservatism and/or that is not representative from a wider historical perspective. We should avoid WP:RECENTISM, as stated in a discussion above. Trakking (talk) 17:02, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

There's another problem, which I have mentioned above but which was never discussed. This template is incorporated into many different articles—and often it does not get removed along with removed links. So it is currently available in more articles than it should. An opposite problem is when new links get added without the template being incorporated into the respective articles. In conclusion, we should "clean up" before making any further additions. Trakking (talk) 17:07, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm on a semi-vacation this week but just wanted to say that I cosign everything Trakking says above. The "Related" section should be trimmed, I often say we need not strive for absolute comprehension in the limited space of a template, and for the next month or so we should definitely focus on making sure that the template transclusions are up to date and coherent. I will begin doing some work on that latter front when I return in a few days. GreenLoeb (talk) 18:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I, in fact, thought about making a "Concerns" or "Issues" subsection. Would that help? Biohistorian15 (talk) 03:17, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

You are correct, Hemmers, I didn't know about this policy and thought: why not include the template for clear-cut but only semi-notable conservatives. I'll stop that for the time being. Biohistorian15 (talk) 03:37, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Miscellaneous section for hashing out disagreements about individuals included in the box

Hi all, I thought I would start a new topic on the talk page where we can hash out disagreements going forward whenever we add people to the infobox. This will be an easier way to achieve consensus than going back and forth in our edit descriptions. Let's keep this thread here and use it as a general place to hash these things out going forward.

I see there has been some debate between @Biohistorian15 and @Trakking about the inclusion of Sam Francis. I wanted to say here I am in favor of keeping Francis. I understand why he seems fringe to Trakking, as a non-American, because his article's lede characterizes him right off the bat as some kind of evil white supremacist Nazi. I think this is ultimately not a fair characterization of him or his thought; it is unfortunate that Wikipedia considers the SPLC a reliable source, but sadly its status as a RS is unlikely to change any time soon. Biohistorian is correct to say that Francis is, in many ways, the chief thinker of paleoconservatism and the seer of the "Buchanan moment." Several pieces in the past few years have illustrated his centrality to conservatism over the past three decades, with many seeing him as a prophetic figure who foresaw back in the 1990s the emergence of the populist nationalism that would come to dominate American conservatism since 2016. The first thing that comes to mind affirming my view of Francis here is John Ganz's excellent article "The Year the Clock Broke" and the recently published book "When the Clock Broke." Also, Matthew Rose's "A World After Liberalism" backs me up here. However, if you like, I'd be happy to provide some other sources to solidify my claim in favor of keeping him. GreenLoeb (talk) 22:08, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Arguably valid points. In fact, some time ago, I actually tried to fix the horrendous lede myself, but you know how it goes.[1]

Another point: various conservative politicians (and commentators) have recently mentioned Francis as an apparent inspiration of theirs. This should certainly garner him some notability; whatever it's worth. Adding him to the template isn't exactly a wholesale acceptance of his views either imo. Thanks for the sources though, interesting read so far! Biohistorian15 (talk) 03:16, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

In what way is it unfair to call him a white supremacist? Far more sources than the SPLC describe him as a white supremacist, including other white supremacists such as Jared Taylor. Harryhenry1 (talk) 12:31, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

He has a lot of varied viewpoints. I wouldn't even mind expanding on some of these that may, in fact, be even less appealing to most readers, but I don't understand why people like him basically have their entire controversy/reception section(s) crammed into their lede.

But then you're right, there's much worse examples of this tendency. Biohistorian15 (talk) 12:36, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Now, we probably shouldn't go into this here. And I do not ask anyone to correct anything on my behalf; I just found it worth mentioning. Biohistorian15 (talk) 12:38, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Basically what @Biohistorian15 says; I don't dispute that he is a white nationalist (I do think that's the better term for what he is, having read a lot of his work), but I think his article reads like the controversy section has been misplaced into the lede. It reads as if "white supremacist" was a job title, as if that's what he is most notable for (Christopher Caldwell points this out in his recent review of Ganz's "When the Clock Broke" over at The Lamp). Sam Francis is a serious thinker, as anyone who has read "Leviathan and Its Enemies" can affirm; I understand using "white supremacist" as the first description for people who are only notable as activists for white supremacy, such as Jared Taylor himself, but it reads as overwrought in Francis's case. The lede is unnecessarily crammed with various scholars calling him an extremist and saying little else, and the bit about the Council of Conservative Citizens deserves frankly to be a footnote, as his involvement with it is significantly less important than other facts about him as a thinker and writer. We should be providing readers with an account of a person's thought, rather than just a slew of experts telling them not to worry about even inquiring because the thinker is an extremist. GreenLoeb (talk) 13:37, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Another question: do you think we should add John Finnis to "Intellectuals" as well?

No, since he is Australian (easy to forget as he does make a lot of interventions into US politics, and is published a lot by US outlets, but he has never had American citizenship nor lived here for a substantial length of time). He is an important figure, though, and if there's an Australian equivalent to this template, I'd put him there. GreenLoeb (talk)

I noticed that Walter J. Ong is counted as a conservative intellectual. I'm a bit familiar with his work, but the parts of it I've read don't scream "conservative" to me. Can I ask someone (preferably Biohistorian15, who added him) why he's there? RadarStorm (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 01:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi Radar, thanks for bringing this up. Biohistorian15 has recently been banned as a sock puppet; having looked into the charge against him, it seems shaky and I am not myself convinced by it, but I unfortunately don't have the time these days to involve myself in these kinds of things. All of that is to say that he will not be contributing to this page or answering replies until and unless his ban is revoked.

As for Ong, I myself cannot find anything that characterizes him that way online. Like you, I don't see the connection immediately. Perhaps the rationale for the addition was based on the affect, mood, or tenor of his work; I can certainly see that being the case given Ong's intellectual relation to McLuhan, who was a conservative and whose conservatism is writ all over his thought. But without further evidence of the decidedly conservative character of Ong's thought, I will remove him until someone can provide a reason to keep him. GreenLoeb (talk) 16:12, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I noticed that Biohistorian15 added the template to Flannery O'Connor with the edit summary "Cf. template for discussion". I have been unable to find this discussion, and the rest of the article on O'Connor does not explain why she qualifies (other than perhaps being a Catholic writer who lived in the American South). This change was reverted with an extensive comment, and then a few weeks later, Biohistorian15 added the template again, this time with no edit summary at all. I don't know if the reasoning in the revert comment is persuasive, but at least the reasoning has been shown there; may I suggest offering your own reasoning why the template deserves to stay? Metaclassical (talk) 23:09, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Inclusion of template on articles not linked by the template

In the past month this template has jumped to being transcluded in over 520 articles, many of which are not linked from the template itself. These are not simply articles that have been removed from the template but not cleaned up - the template has been transcluded as "relevant".

I have wound back some of these in accordance with the policy of WP:BIDIRECTIONAL ("Every article that transcludes a given navbox should normally also be included as a link in the navbox, so that the navigation is bidirectional"). The point of navboxes is to create a web of the core related topics.

I have received a representation however that by transcluding the navbox in other articles "they can surely serve as a useful extension of the "See Also" section".

This is out of step with WP's established policies, and is problematic because it presumes that more outbound links are more useful. But to be useful to humans, the article needs to link to the most relevant topics and strike a balance between "enough to be useful but not overwhelming" - sticking in tangential navboxes may cross that line, which is why BIDI exists.

Nonetheless, it is worthy of discussion because there are cases where the template should not be transcluded in an article that it does link to. We should not be dogmatic about WP:BIDI and so I must be sympathetic to the idea that the template could be transcluded in non-linked articles as a route into the web of "core" articles.

But this requires some discussion and guidelines to avoid sprawling navbox-spam - e.g. it would be self-evidently inappropriate to transclude it in the article of every state senator who happens to be Republican - those articles are not about Conservatism and nobody will be including those people in books about Conservatism in twenty years time. (Indeed, most of those individuals are inconsequential to the GOP and Conservatism even when in office - turning up, voting how their whip tells them and collecting their salary. Only a rare few gain wider fame).

So... guidelines. In my view:

• The overarching presumption must be in favour of BIDI. This is established WP Policy. The template bears the title "This article is part of a series on Conservatism in the US". So if it's being transcluded somewhere, is that article highly relevant to Conservatism in the US? Not every article about US Politics or even the GOP actually concerns the topic of Conservatism. If an article isn't sufficiently notable to be included in the template, then BIDI should be presumed and the template generally shouldn't be transcluded in the article. Conservatism is not a synonym for Republicanism and there is a separate template for the party (Template:Republican Party (United States)). In particular, BIDI still applies to:
  • Subsidiary articles (e.g. First presidency of Donald Trump) as above, are generally not about Conservatism and cannot be described as such - they are about the named subject and have only been farmed out into their own article because it would make the core article (e.g. Donald Trump) too long and unreadable. The core article might be included in this template but the subsidiary article is not. Highly notable individuals and orgs/parties/events have their own Template, and subsidiary articles are gathered there.
  • Tangential articles, especially where more appropriate templates already exist. It is absolutely WP:UNDUE to include Conservatism US in articles such as Libertarianism in the United States, which already transcludes Template:Libertarianism US. The same applies above where templates such as Donald Trump or Template:2024 United States presidential election may be more appropriate to the article. Is the article about Conservatism? Or just a conservative person/event?

When not to transclude even though the article is linked in the template:

• International/Non-US articles This is where I would break with the principle of BIDI. The template links to many "general" articles such as Supply-side economics and Right-wing populism. These are are indeed principles of Conservatism, including Conservatism in the US. But clearly:
  • These articles already transclude templates such as Template:Conservatism, Template:Nationalism or Template:Macroeconomics. They are top level articles which may reference the US but are not about the US.
  • These articles are not "part of a series on Conservatism in the US" any more than they are "part of a series on Conservatism in the UK or Germany or Canada" (for which there are also templates). If we tried to stick all the national navboxes in, the article would become unreadable. In these cases we should break BIDI and not transclude national templates in international articles. That's a whole can of worms. You either transclude all of them, or you pick-and-choose, in which case you need to be able to justify the selection and prove it doesn't embed Systemic Bias (WP:GLOBALISE) - good luck with that!

When to transclude without linking:

• I'm generally against this and am not sure there are really any circumstances in which it would be appropriate to transclude in an article that isn't linked. If it's not important enough to be in the template, then is it really about Conservatism, or some tangential or GOP-adjacent subject? However, since I know others think differently and I've made the case for occasionally treating BIDI as flexible, I throw the floor open.

Thoughts? Hemmers (talk) 10:59, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Hemmers. These are all reasonable concerns/rebukes. But then consider e.g. the case of sitting congress members, senators and the like. If they have a long, well-suited "Political Views" section with few to no illustrations (*but were just slightly short of notability for inclusion in the template), why shouldn't we WP:IAR and add it there? I do think it is genuinely helpful for many users. The same arguably applies to cases like Vivek Ramaswamy 2024 presidential campaign that I brought up in my email. Biohistorian15 (talk) 16:20, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the two questions there are:

• Why the focus on sitting members? WP is a WP:LAGGING indicator of notability - it's not a newspaper, nor supposed to track current affairs. It's supposed to list significant encyclopaedic details when the dust has settled and the truly significant events, facts and relationships are established.
• What is their contribution to Conservatism in the US? NOT party politics. NOT the GOP. There are other templates for that. What is their contribution to the cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology of Conservatism?

Being a Conservative or holding beliefs does not mean they have contributed to the body of scholarly or philosophical thought. It doesn't necessarily mean they've thought about it beyond "My daddy told me that the Republicans are the party of business, and all my mates vote Republican, so it must be right" (and the same is undoubtedly true of some Democrats). They might even be highly influential politically - but not necessarily in the ideological sense. Consider Trump, Reagan and HW Bush. All US Presidents, but Bush did not preside over any great shift in conservative dogma or thinking compared with the sea-change ushered in by Reaganomics, or Trump's hugely divisive shift in political partisanship (and people literally attacking the Capitol in his name on Jan 6th). In relation to Conservatism in the US, Bush barely merits a mention (despite being a Republican President)!

Similarly, I asked on your Talk page - how is Ramaswarmy's 2024 campaign relevant to the larger conservative philosophy? Will people write books about how his campaign forced a shift in Trump's policy base? No? Well then it's not really "part of a series on Conservatism in the US" is it? It's an article that details his short-lived campaign. That's it. And it's included in the 2024 election navbox. People reading about that article are far, far more likely to click on an in-body wikilink about the election, or Vivek, or a policy than they are to click on links in a navbox discussing the philosophy of conservatism. I honestly do not believe it is even half as useful as you believe it is to shove this navbox in anywhere there's a space. You're pushing it well outside that core discussion of conservative concepts, ideologies and intellectuals.

As far as WP:IAR goes... the point of IAR is "If you know the policies, and you understand why they exist, then you know when and how it is appropriate to break them for edge cases". It's for one-offs and is not a carte blanche to say "I maintain this navbox and I want to spam it across hundreds of tangentially-related pages because...". There may be individual cases where it is appropriate, which we ought to be able to allude to with some sort of guideline. But I don't believe it's as widely appropriate as yourself, and I would gently and respectfully note that adding it to articles like Libertarianism in the United States, underneath Template:Libertarianism US(!) demonstrates poor judgement in the matter. That's just spam. Sorry. That's all it is.

Just to reiterate the WP:NAVBOX guidance, the disadvantages of navboxes include:

6. May not give the reader enough clues as to which links are most relevant or important

7. Can take up too much space for information that is only tangentially related

8. Includes the full list of links in every article, even though often many of the links are not useful in some of the articles

9. Due to size, the use of multiple nav templates may take up too much space on one article

Transcluding the navbox in articles that aren't sufficiently notable/core to be linked from the navbox basically hits all those.

Hemmers (talk) 17:20, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

TL;DR

• If a subject is deeply important to the topic of Conservatism in the US, it will be linked in the navbox.
• If it is marginal or has a very narrow/specific contribution which doesn't make the cut for inclusion, then there will be enough context and in-body wikilinks to carry the user to the right place for further relevant reading. Adding the navbox would only create confusion by providing loads of tangential links. It is usually more useful that an anti-abortion activist's article has an in-body link to the "Abortion in the US" article than a navbox offering links to supply-side economics or US presidents! In 99% of cases, they will land in the core web via relevant in-body links.

Hemmers (talk) 17:28, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Just posting to say I agree with the above concerns and understanding of the scoping. Springee (talk) 13:30, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

As a more general comment, the lists associated with this template seem to be rather indiscriminate. Many of the events, people, etc included seem to have only a passing association or even less with the Conservativism. For example the Riley Gaines article says nothing about her being a conservative yet she was added to the list and the template was added to her page. Springee (talk) 13:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Lovecraft

Does he really belong in the "intellectuals" section, notability wise? I don't think he's had much influence on anything and his political views are generally only a curiosity as a sidenote to his fiction writing. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 13:05, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

It is a relevant question. I have earlier removed a few literary authors who I did not think qualify as political intellectuals, but Lovecraft might be somewhat of an exception. He published a journal called The Conservative and he seems to have been quite interested in political issues. I am in favour of keeping him, although I understand the rationale for removing him from the list. Trakking (talk) 13:43, 23 November 2024 (UTC)