"Conservative" is another term for loser. The loss is guaranteed; the only question is the pace. If the past 80 years of American history are any guide, the most successful conservative is he who loses slowest. Forgive me if I’m not inspired to follow the lead of that direction. Life conserves nothing. It’s fluid, it evolves, it expands, and, yes, it dies and contracts. It never remains just as it is. It never fights a successful defensive battle in perpetuity, maintaining the same lines and borders as if they were immutable.
What a tragedy for the right side of the political spectrum that they, for multiple generations, have bound themselves to such folks. That they’ve lost—that they’ve conserved precisely nothing—should come as no surprise to anyone who observes, even casually, the nature of the universe, of all existence. Always developing, expanding, contracting, fighting, changing lines. The by-the-book conservative’s dream is one of perpetual trench warfare, both sides dug in so well that the lines don’t move an inch for years and years! I, for one, don’t aspire to live in a trench. Do you?
Here’s the truth: the only way to defeat a revolution is with a competing revolution (or a counterrevolution—history is ripe with such examples). All direction, in the end, is relative. Think about it. When floating in outer space, is there truly an up and down, a left and right? It’s more a matter of the direction of your head. A man flipped upside down in space is still right-side up, if that makes sense. Which is to say, a revolution aiming toward an ideal of the past might be just as effective as one aiming toward some as-yet-untested future. Perhaps more so, because they’re aiming at the demonstrably possible! Direction being relative, the key thing is that one’s movement must not only have a destination in mind—at least somewhat well-articulated—but already be in motion from the moment of its conception!
How many movements today self-describe as such yet remain more fixed than boulders on flat land? Movements that have never even known the presence of a strong wind in their vicinity, much less movement in themselves! The truth is self-evident: those who wish to go nowhere will go nowhere. Thus, American conservatism—from Goldwater to Romney. What in our culture, from the late 1950s onward, have they managed to preserve? And if their only argument is how much more might have been lost without them, that just means they were mere seasoning on the revolution they opposed. Perhaps that’s all they ever were? Salts and condiments, making the inedible palatable so that those who never wanted it might be tricked into stomaching it.
And now that those well-fed on modernity (should I say postmodernity?) are getting sick, might we blame their deception? Like ketchup on an undercooked hamburger, it was easy enough to eat. The salmonella—another matter altogether. The substance was rotten from the beginning. And those who seasoned it, who made it tolerable, might in the end be the greatest evil—the real opponents. Those who disguise your enemies from you are your greater enemies still.
If you are so bent on changing the world for good, why ape their language? Why stumble over your intended words, stuttering about conserving? Of course, the best should be conserved! Just as evolution intends, the best is naturally selected. It evolves, it reproduces—new and better combined with the best. That’s the recipe I want. No condiments needed beyond that.