Conservatives and Conservatism have a Probability Problem
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt was an interesting read, especially since in it Haidt, a self-avowed liberal, yields some central moral ground to conservatives. But…
Conservatives are stuck with one position, holding to the traditional past. Their name means to conserve the past. That puts them in the position to hold to one future — continue what is. That past position/circumstance could be great and what the people want. But it could also be horrible. Conservatives want to keep things as they are. It could be a monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, imperial rule, a dictatorship, an oligarchy, a plutocratic oligarchy, or totalitarianism. What all these ‘states’ are is some degree of illiberalism. Liberalism is, at its heart, a flux and changing reality that allows for the people, the democracy, to change the form of government as it sees best. Some people call this the ‘mob,’ a mindless horde, but that thinking is itself elitism in its essence and anti-democratic/illiberal on the whole.
Now that we have shown that conservatism tends to be and/or at least leans toward illiberal, anti-democratic, and maybe even anti-people persuasions/position (AND may be stuck in the mire of its own self-existent or current inefficiencies) let’s dissect its possibly worse elements.
First, conservatism, by its very essence and name, cannot be fully open to the best ideas, the will of the people, the decisions of democracy, or the newest trends; OR it would force a situation where it, conservatism, must change, even to the point of the elimination of itself. Revolutions are in the greatest example and essence a forceful removal of a conservative establishment. Antiestabllishmentarianism, everybody’s favorite 25-letter word, is often seen a mere anarchism, but it really is more aptly seen as resistance to any conservatism (corruption) when and where it refuses to change and/or remove itself from control or power when the people ‘will it’. Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” is supposed to be ‘controlled’ by mini-revolutions called elections. Enlightened, modern, Western, constitutional, and democratic societies are built on this fundamental and foundational standard. every society loves its revolution. That is its ‘birthday’. Revolutions were supposed to usher in a permanent revolutionary atmosphere of an ‘openness’ to change — via those enlightened-modern-Western-constitutional democracies.
Second, Republicans call themselves conservatives and in some ways they might be, but it is possible in many ways they are not. There are areas where conservatism runs many elements through its movement that might be a corruption of these democratic virtues. Each area must be viewed individually. I believe, before I write the rest of this, that we will find conservative Republicans actually are a variety of different ‘manifestations of themselves’ in different situations: classical liberals, modern liberals, illiberal conservatives, and traditional conservatives.
All conservation and conservatism is not bad. Every political ideology seeks to ‘value’ certain values. Just conserving trees and water and money and values and roads and civilization itself are good things. Conserving them only for an elite class and in exclusion of everyone else is not good. Conserving them in such a ways as to hurt everything else is not good. Many questions must always be considered in the process of conserving. The worst ‘conservative’ movements today conserve everything for the people and in the name of the people, but oddly do not give ‘the people’ control of what is conserved, how it is conserved, and for whom it is conserved. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a great example of this. This uber illiberal and anti-democratic state hides its totalitarianism behind the label of ‘People’ all while being an extreme conservative position. Some libertarians call it ‘statism’, but it is just another conservative ‘position’ in a different era and with different labels. It is similar to the royals of Europe, when they were actually functional monarchies. Statism is really a ‘loose’ idea without much use or merit, but it is an idea that does explain how some governments have been able to create more modern autocracies without the blessing of deities or some acclaimed righteous destiny or origin story.
The degree to which conservatives are not willing or able to change with reality, facts, science, trends, progress, world humanity, markets, and history itself the greater they risk the probability of being on the wrong side of history. Liberalism, as understood in its modern roots in the 17th century, has the ability to pivot with change — or the consent of the governed. It was the guiding force that John Locke penned in Two Treatises when he refuted patriarchalism - the divine right of kings, one of the many forms of and arguments for conservatism in history. England lead the way away from this conservative tyranny with the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. 1689 was the same year that John Locke published his work. During the American Revolution many Englishmen in England aligned themselves with the colonist sentiments as they had already fought this ‘revolution’ in their own country and settle for a more liberal and evolving course.
For the most part the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth [which at this very moment is on very shaky ground] partners have decided on their own accord not to completely discard the monarchy, but every year it becomes more of a ceremonial institution. They know that they can ditch it at any moment they wish. The monarchy exists at the will of the people. For the same reason that the Parisians and French have come to embrace the clunky and formerly disdained Eiffel Tower (especially during the early stages of it construction), the British have decided that the frivolity of the royalty is good for their image and tourism. Antimonarchists never gain wider support because the masses are not so infuriated and motivated. If anything, getting rid of the royalty is always pushed to another day.
Yesterday, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were overturned by a 6-3 vote in a decision of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case — with all of the Republican-appointed conservative justices voting against “the right to privacy” defense of abortion, even though Roe v. Wade was initially decided with a 5-vote, Republican-appointed-judge majority within a larger 7-2 overall majority. Justice Samuel Alito called the Roe decision “egregious.” What is conservatism doing here? Do the 4th, 9th, and 14th Amendments preserve/conserve freedoms and a rights of privacy, and/or does liberalism protect people from excessive state ‘control’? Or does the US Constitution (and its created state) give preferential treatment to non-citizens — that are not even counted in its constitutional census? Do non-citizens have rights above citizens? Even illegal immigrants and mere residents are counted in the US census. Is a religious view of life being imposed in a secular justice system? This may seem like a counterargument of my main thesis, that conservatives cannot or do not change, but it is not. Instead, it represents the confusion that conservatives face in deciding what position to conserve. This uncertainty lends an air of arbitrariness to their ‘precious’ position. If they are conserving something initially conceived in a ‘whim,’ then there is a great chance that even then, they may just be holding to a harmful civic foundation — as slavery was, as gender inequality was/is…
Today, conservatives defend the amoral and near absolute right(s) of private and publicly-traded corporations, so these corporations do as they wish in the free market and the ‘open' Earth environment. Their acclaimed 14 Amendment ‘right to personhood’ and Due Process often seem to rise above the rights of the actual human citizens in the US. Have corporations and unborn baby non-citizens become greater than actual living US citizens? Conservatism’s illiberalism has become a very confusing tangle of conflicting positions. They say “no” to abortion, but yes to capital punishment? How is the ‘infinite value of life’ preserved there? Praise unborn babies but demean and criminalize their mothers? It is very possible that actual conservatism does not exist today. This perceived loss of their locus of control may be why conservatives are longing for autocracy and why CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) was in Hungary in 20222, within Hungarian President Viktor Orban’s very confusing petri-dish of illiberal policies, anti-semitism(s), and violations of international law.
Conservatism has an identity crisis as it struggles to make a meaningful stance against progress and learning within in a modern and changing world, where it already benefits from the profits of liberal and rapidly-shifting economies. In contrast, it tries to pull society toward regressive and/or static, anti-scientific social and political policies. It wants to profit from markets fluctuations and freeze people in a time capsule of static values that are not supported by our current sciences. This is just one of dozens examples of how science and history obliterate conservatism’s positions and arguments on topic after topic. This book is actually not new in most of its findings. Anyone steeped in biology will know that its claims have been known for decades.
The shallow-thinking rhetorician Ben Shapiro and his ally Mike Walsh ask “What is a women?” but they act like they are looking into some kind of presumed absolute “what is female?” as a simple binary opposite of male. This gender inquiry is a science and reality exploration as old as the Greeks and their “sleeping hermaphrodite,” one of which is in the Vatican Museum. (Go ahead and look that up, it is an easy find.) Intersexuality is a real thing just like cyclopia, which even occurs in animals. Breast cancer rates in males are close to the intersexuality rates of humans. All humans ‘start’ female until hormonal fluctuations separate people on a scale of variations. [So, actually female is ‘X” and male is ‘X+1,’ or the modification of ‘female.’] If gender characteristics are so set, then why are conservative talking heads selling male vitality treatments? Can you lose male vitality? Can your maleness weaken? Is Alex Jones suffering from papilla mammae?
Conservatism is fueled by the enormous profits from liberal economies built on extreme scientific progress. But it wants to freeze humans in an anti-scientific reality without choice, variation, liberty, or a ‘progressive world.’ It seeks futuristic homes with stone countertops and stainless steel appliances and medieval minds.
A broken clock is correct twice a day and conservatives are correct as long as no one opens a science book or questions the proposition that “the best progress is stationary.” Probability says that conservatism is wrong much of the time and in most of the places where it makes its stand for “let’s make the future the same as the past.” Statisticians have known for some time now that conservatives really oren’t living by ‘conservatism’ anyway.
Be OPEN …to see change, to value change, to actually change, and for the world to progressively change.
