I want to say that any critique of conservatism should not be one that aims at its lack of consistency, at for example the blatant contradiction of its strong support for capitalism and its rhetoric of abhorrence at any “change” which might disturb communities and values (capitalism of course being the cause ne plus ultra when it comes to upsetting established social organisation).
Rather I want to say that conservatism is really a politics of attack, mockery and denigration of progressive politics per se, and that this is neither incoherent nor cynical.
It is a strategy born out of a belief that progressive politics contains an enormous capacity for unleashing volatile and unpredictable social change, and change based not on a sanguine appreciation of the benefits vs. the costs of launching such an effort, but on a moral high-mindedness, a wilfulness borne of its sense of its own virtuosity, and that it is very difficult to attack this progressive politics head-on, given the emotive appeal within political discourses of notions of justice, fairness etc. Hence, rather than engage directly with the progressive calls for greater social justice, conservatism acts to discredit progressivism on all sides, raising haunting spectres of social upheaval or conjuring nostalgic images of a god-fearing contented social order.
The key question for liberals is how to prosecute any kind of progressive agenda when the charge of Jacobinism against progressive rhetoric is, I believe, essentially a correct one. How far do progressives want to go, and what are the causes they will fight for and those they will surrender instead to a “gradualist” rhetoric of inertia?
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