Abandon "Conservatism"

“What is “conservatism?”

It’s a serious question these days. It would be impossible to pin down a useful definition simply by incorporating commonalities among those claiming the title “conservative.”

So, what does it mean to “conserve” in this sense?

Broadly, it is the disposition towards the maintenance of existing and historic characteristics of society: politics, ethics, relationships, traditions, customs, mannerisms, and so on. Simply, it is the respect for, and perpetuation of, culture.

If you’re paying attention in recent times, there should be several-fold reasons already apparent that this term should now be abandoned. One obvious indicator is that the present and recent state of our public politics and ethics, the dissolution of our traditions and customs, the adoption of perverse mannerisms and practices ought not be something anyone otherwise inclined towards the label “conservative” should rightly want to conserve.

However, it goes much deeper than that. Language is good when it is correct, precise, and suits the purpose of transmitting an idea that is clear in order that we might share an understanding of something. As the concept of “conservatism” is broadly applicable to the idea of maintaining and perpetuating culture I must ask you to consider carefully this question: “if somebody tells you they are a ‘conservative,’ and you cannot see their face, you cannot hear their voice to determine accent or inflection, and all you know about them is that they live in America, is it at all clear to you what culture they aim to conserve?”

Herein lies the problem that points to the insidious nature of what has been done in the name of “multiculturalism.” The project has been so successful and splintering and balkanizing American culture, and dissolving that which held for generations, even the language that we use to describe our circumstances has become useless at best, and dangerously manipulable at worst. This project has gone by many names over the years, from the now-popular “pluralism” to the Prussian “Volkish Nationalism,” all the way back to the “demos” of “democracy” as described by the early Greeks.

So, does “conservatism” mean an attempt to return to some prior American culture? If so, when? Founding era? Post-Reconstruction Progressive Era? World-Wars era? Reagan era? Does it mean to conserve the founding documents that began to fall out of favor only decades after the founding with the creation of the “Democratic” party, and the courts seizure of the power of absolute judicial review? Does it mean conserving Christianity in these lands? Is that Puritanical theonomic, postmillennial Christianity, Scofield’s dispensationalist mega-Christianity, revival-era esoteric and mystical Christianity, Papist integralist Christianity, or the deity-of-Christ denying Social-Gospel Christianity? Does it mean to conserve the rights to life, liberty and property guaranteed to us, but, perhaps, only if it doesn’t pop the housing bubble and hurt your equity? Does “fiscal conservative” mean anything at all under an imperial central-bank paradigm, or after racking up tens-of-trillions in debt?

Aristotle mentioned that tyrants import foreign hordes to oppress their own countrymen, because these foreigners make no claim against the tyrant. A people unified in culture and beliefs are the most dangerous thing there is to a tyrant. Where there is unity, the foe is he who is external to that which is unified. Where there is unity, a tyrant is intolerable. We now have so many built-in fault lines, from many, many years of immigration and importation of ideology, that it’s hard to see where a persistent unity might be found.

What the Greeks were telling us about was a strategy as old as time: import foreign “hordes,” that is, foreigners in such numbers and concentrations as to eliminate any need for assimilation, because they form new “demos,” or “Volkish nations,” with different cultures, beliefs, ethics, religions, and so on, and these divisions can be flamed at any time to break unity, and scuttle threats to the tyrants. In the disunity of a “multiculture” tyranny can flourish.

This is the lens through which all policies facilitating mass-migration should be viewed. It’s done now, as it has for thousands of years, as a destabilizing mechanism against the citizenry to facilitate the looting and pillaging of the oligarch class. This is the reason that in our late hour we ought to entirely abandon the term “conservatism.” It’s worse than meaningless – it’s an opportunity to keep us disunified through confusion and manipulation. We need to build out movements around more precise and useful language than this.”