The Core of Conservativism Radical Bleeding Heart image

Three Themes

From the point of view of an observant progressive, there appear to be three main themes to the conservative point of view:

  • To be a conservative means to be unstintingly devoted to preserving and augmenting the power and the privileges of the powerful and the privileged.
  • Conservatives are dividers. They see the world as divided into Us and Them, Good and Bad, Light and Dark. There are Good People (generally people like themselves) and Bad People (different people, naturally). They see great virtue in hurting or killing those they have declared to be Bad.
  • Conservatives are morbidly obsessed with sexual purity.

Not all conservatives share all these or share them in the same degree. But there is a commonality here, a thematic thread. [THERE IS MORE HERE.]

Purity. You will find the key word in that last one. The word is “purity”. You mean that you don't see it? Yes, I know. It is like Where's Waldo. I will explain.

The world is a complex and messy place. It is morally complex and messy. That messiness is in us and all around us. Conservatives hate that. They deal with it through a process of mental sanitation. They mentally sweep up everything they find nasty, frightening, uncertain, “dirty”, questionable, confusing, or otherwise psychically painful and dump it into a mental HazMat container to be sent off into space. Psychologists call it “projection”.

OK, so you probably now see how purity is the key note in the last two of the three themes of conservative thought. What about the first and most disturbing of conservative obsessions, their slavish devotion to the rich and powerful?

Authority. That is a bit more indirect. Their veneration of the powerful is a function of their conviction that all moral and ethical decisions must bow to Authority. Their single and all-compelling point of honor is Obedience to Authority.

They are convinced that such obedience is the essence of goodness.

Irresponsibility. It is in fact the abdication of moral responsibility. Indeed, it is abdication of all responsibility. It is the Stockholm Syndrome as guiding moral principle. Once you surrender, once you give over your soul to authority, you are free from the pain of decision, of the possibility of taking a wrong step. The weight of the world evaporates and floats lightly from your shoulders.

You are now blessed with certainty. You have received the truth from above and can never be wrong so long as you maintain your unswerving faith.

This is of course why it is pointless to try to explain to conservatives, however kindly and politely, why their idiotic ideas are in fact idiotic. They would have to think about it. On their own. The beauty of being a conservative is that you never have to think. You have someone else to do that nasty work for you. It also explains why the alpha conservatives — the ones who dream up this outrageous stuff — have become so outlandish in the lies they feed their faithful. They know that the true believers will swallow absolutely anything they choose to ladle out. Anything.

Yes, We All Do It. Now, some clever and observant readers may have noted that in making these kinds of observations about all conservatives, we are indulging in exactly the kind of behavior that we are criticizing.

And it is true. We said before that the kinds of irrationality that are characteristic of conservatives actually afflict us all, at various times and in various degrees. Conservatives just wear them with pride.

Progressives, however, really cannot afford them. If you want to change the world, you would be advised to understand the world and how it works as well as you can. And you need to have a clear idea of where you are going. You also need to distinguish between your goals and the means by which you hope to achieve them. If one becomes wedded to a particular strategy one can lose sight of the real aim.

And that is what has happened. We have lost our way. What follows is an attempt to clear away the fog and get us focused on our true aims.

[Next: Where Are Progressives Progressing?]