On the Conservative Left

On the Conservative Left

 

I am moderately confident that peace and sanity can be restored to this country; and where this country was never peaceful or sane, then peace and sanity can be successfully imposed. But at a price.

 

The price is that the Left must explicitly present itself as the small-c conservative faction. If they’re the radical right, who are all wrong, then let us be the conservative left, who are all that’s left.

 

Small-c conservative, not big-C; for “Conservatism” is no more conservative than Pravda was pravda. (=‘truth’) The very name that big-C Conservatism chose for itself is a Big Lie, and I say that we should call them out. Emphasize how they consistently favor destruction. Guns? Check. War? Check. Killer cops? Check. Capitol punishment? Check. Violent bigotry? Check. Sedition? Check. Lies and madness? Check. Ecological devastation? Check. Climate chaos? Check.

 

To be small-c conservative one must wish to conserve. Fortunately there are many things that the Left sincerely seeks to conserve, unlike the Right. The environment, human rights, and the middle class, for three.

 

Also small-c conservative are rationality and order and good manners; about which every faction, and every human, in truth has mixed feelings. So to advocate for these stuffy old-fashioned values is necessarily somewhat hypocritical. But it’s a calming hypocrisy, in harmony with the natural hypocrisy of all humankind.

 

So call the insurrectionists scary, though admittedly exciting, and ourselves reassuring, though admittedly boring. Biden gets that much at least.

 

Fortunately, the natural hypocrisy of all humankind allows even the stuffiest of small-c conservatives to accomplish radical systemic change, if that change is successfully sold as necessary to right the ship of State, restore order, and affirm the virtues of the past. This works even if the past never actually had those virtues, but only claimed them. Giving force to those claims will feel like restoration, rather than innovation.

 

So wave that flag, play that stirring music, and call all the Founders liberators, even the slaveholders, if that’s what it takes to pass the necessary reforms. The people will see right through your flattery, but will go along with it if your program makes sense. Abandon purity, ye who enter here! ‘Tis the price of power.

 

Once, in my youth, and during one of the many arguments that I had with my father, he cynically predicted that I will become a conservative in my old age. Stung to the quick, I retorted that if so, then it shall be on my own terms. Half a century later, I see that we were both prophetic.