Everybody has conservative interests. In a world of inequality and in which the individual and his circle of intimates are fragile specks in the long durée of history and politics, everyone has an interest in the defence of their particular privileges and in a political calmness that provides order against the potentially climactic tides of history.
Based on their inherent conservative interests, the populations of modern democracies share strong conservative political impulses, hence Tony Blair´s rightwing New Labour party and the conservative nature of both the Democratic and Republican parties in the US. The basic list of these conservative impulses is obvious and barely needs enumerating: an attachment to property rights and to opportunities for private wealth creation, support for a strong economy, for relatively low taxation, for a strong state capable of behaving robustly in international affairs, an aversion to what one might call “government-knows-best social engineering”, and perhaps most importantly, the conservative impulse which wants to resist morally high-minded calls for ever greater social justice, either on a national or on a global level.
“Liberal” politics is distrusted, and very vehemently distrusted in some conservative circles, because the moral high-mindedness in which it frames its discourse is wide open to radical transformative agendas. And the one thing that conservatives know, their Berlin´s Hedgehog as it were, is that they don´t want things to change very much.
But importantly, there are also what we might call “social democratic” impulses too. In Europe especially, and you feel this tangibly in for example France, Spain, Germany and the UK as well, there is a strong attachment to the social democratic state, whereby education, healthcare and welfare are available to all, and that for all the inequalities that persist in these societies, some minimal “fairness” and redistribution is necessary and desirable.
However, I would maintain that part of the tension in the political circus that entertains us every day between liberalism and conservatism is an hypocrisy whereby social democratic affections are strongly felt and expressed, but that conservative interests remain paramount even in the minds of most self-professed liberals.
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