Political Perversities and Misnomers
How to predict ‘conservatism’: it
always chooses the more destructive option. Whatever injures, ruins or kills
more; that will be called conservative. This is, of course, straight-up
doublethink. War is peace, slavery is freedom, destruction conserves.
Why this perversity? Why
don’t conservatives conserve? Is the very name a Big Lie?
And in other perversities:
why don’t liberals liberate? Why don’t libertarians
liberate? And why don’t progressives progress?
I suppose it has to do with
the corruption of power, the limits of language, and the inherent dynamism of
the world. I propose these corrections to the misnomers conservative, liberal,
libertarian and progressive: respectively destructivist, regulist,
propertarian, and retreatist.
I am not sure progressives retreat so much as stay where they are.
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