"We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives"

So what kind of politics should conservatives today, as inheritors of a failed movement, adopt? For starters, they should stop thinking of themselves as conservatives (much less as Republicans) and start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries. Indeed, that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not.

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Put bluntly, if conservatives want to save the country they are going to have to rebuild and in a sense re-found it, and that means getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it. Why? Because accommodation or compromise with the left is impossible. One need only consider the speed with which the discourse shifted on gay marriage, from assuring conservatives ahead of the 2015 Obergefell decision that gay Americans were only asking for toleration, to the never-ending persecution of Jack Phillips.

The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

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To those who worry that power corrupts, and that once the right seizes power it too will be corrupted, they certainly have a point. If conservatives manage to save the country and rebuild our institutions, will they ever relinquish power and go the way of Cincinnatus? It is a fair question, and we should attend to it with care after we have won the war. For now, there are only two paths open to conservatives. Either they awake from decades of slumber to reclaim and re-found what has been lost, or they will watch our civilization die. There is no third road.

Source: We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives

"Fascists" is it, then.

One thought on “"We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives"

  1. wj

    I’ve been saying this for quite a while: whatever they are, conservative definitely isn’t it.

    My first response tends to be “libertarian”. Albeit massively ignorant libertarians (c.f. “Government hands off my Medicare!”). But more recently they’ve embraced using government against their enemies, so “libertarian” appears to no longer apply. If it ever did.

    “Fascists” works. Although straight up “authoritarians” also seems a good fit. Fascists, after all, have principles. Noxious ones, certainly, but principles nonetheless. Whereas these people will turn on a dime if their Dear Leader changes what passes for his mind.

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