Whatever “conservatism” is, it does not involve the conservation of a stable climate, or the polar ice caps, or the coral reefs, or the global food supply.
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I’ve always concieved of the “conserve” part of conservativism to be that it cleaves to solutions that no longer work. It’s arguable that it’s a conservation of aristocracy/monarchy as well.
I know we live in a political environment where a lot of people expect you to automatically give conservative ideology some default level of legitimacy as if it’s just a natural reality of human endeavours, but it really is a fundementally irrational political philosophy except in the case that someone’s goal is to preserve the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few.
Humanity, despite all our recent progress, is still fighting the war started by the French revolution, albeit in a less clear and obvious way. The mistake comes at thinking tyranny wouldn’t try to adapt to democracy.
So I’d argue against even the premise underlying this article that there’s a “good” conservativism. Rather than trying to reconcile with it, we should push to put it on the trash bin of philosophically bankrupt ideas (like monarchism itself).
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Francis Wilhoit
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but it conserves the status quo
This is literally it. The thing they want to conserve is the way society is, or rather, the way it was back in the mid-1900’s. That’s why they’re on the other end of the spectrum from progressives, who want progress and change.
The thing they want to conserve is the way society is, or rather, the way it was back in the mid-1900’s.
I don’t even find that to be true. They adopt technology based on the whims of advertising they consume. Donald Trump was king of Twitter and they ate that up. They just don’t follow what they say. They say they hate California, but consume every bit of technology (like Twitter, Apple, Disney, sports teams) they can that comes out of it.
Not technology, just society. They want men to be the defacto head of all households, they want women to be stay-at-home mothers, and they want white people to be in charge of everything.
I had a funny experience of this recently. I was looking for conservation and found what I thought was an empty “Conservative” community over on kbin so I started posting conservation articles there.
Turns out it did have one poster but they are banned by Beehaw so I only saw them when I was logged out. Anyway he was annoyed and told me Conservative is a political term meaning conserving traditions.
So I started posting articles about conserving traditions, especially about how conserving the traditions of Indigenous people is good for the environment. But he still complained.
They ended up polling the !conservative@kbin.social community to see what it should be about, majority voted for environmental conservation anyway.
Lol, what a cute and effective troll.
It’s ®egressive now. The democrats are conservatives now.
Pull your head out of the American political dichotomy.
Looking at Le Pen, Krah, Sunak, and Meloni, I don’t think this is a US-centric take anymore.
Reactionary is the word you’re looking for.
Conservatives want to conserve their privilege, that’s all
It attempts to conserve an outdated way of life/views on morality and ethics.
Conservatism may look irrational, outdated and destructive. In fact I’m fairly confident it is all those things *right now * in many places.
Look bigger though, imagine why it exists.
It is the natural end point of any push for change. Any system that manifests in the world will inevitably be challenged by further future. Each revolution is faced with the next one.
It is inevitable that when a system comes to dominance there are those who wish to preserve and conserve it, all the energy that was put into change is focused on conserving the system.
The problem is the context keeps changing and the revolution never fits reality for long.
Im still trying to work out a functional public-serving system of government.
If the system can adjust to the changing needs of the public, then policy can be modified while retaining the system.
Once the system stops producing public-serving policy, that’s government failure (such as regulatory capture), and then the system needs to be adjusted.
When the system fails to serve public interests more than it serves other interests (say, elite interests) then it sucks and needs to be changed at the systemic level.
I’m pretty sure Marx goes through this in Das Kapital
They do conserve one thing: the status of the wealthy.
I find the whole self-labeling of conservative to be founded on shaky grounds. Basically it’s authoritarianism by another term. I often don’t see conservatives actually cite some great example of it by some philosopher or even a nation. Because they don’t want to face that Middle East nations are what conservatism looks like. The Taliban taking over Afghanistan and regulating women and building a class system is the kind of thing they seem to express in roundabout ways as the desired outcome. But, of course, they don’t just outright say “I want to be like the Taliban”. But the threatening people with guns, economic system that favors those in power, women’s rights, anti-education, discrimination against other faith systems… all fits. And, monarchy, I see them praise powerful monarchy. Many want business kings they admire to rule everyone with an iron fist.
Donald Trump has sure inspired a lot of follower who are incredibly loyal, and he openly praises North Korea as some kind of model nation. But I notice the followers are unwilling to outright say “we want things run like North Korea” either… they just describe a system of powerful rulers who “fix” problems using the same techniques.
I was taught its only in relation to spending. You can be a conservative democrat, if you believe in traditional democratic values but also believe we should spend money conservatively A liberal believes we should spend money liberally to achieve those results. It’s like two spectrums overlayed. A graph of political identity.
Sure especially these days where everything is extremism in American politics it doesnt seem that way. Everything is right wing or left wing.
I remember when it was rude to talk about politics or religion. Everyone was allowed to believe what they want and still be friends with each other. Crazy.Not taking a stance, just saying what i was taught at least. Times have changed since i was educated.
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