Right-wing liberalism
Even the conservatives keep the show on the road.
Modern conservatism is not conserving our world. Mainstream conservatives seem to have no interest in the real issues affecting us.
At best they merely wish to slow down our decline. At worst, they are fully on board with the destruction.
When they do act or speak they often pick a safe version of a sensitive issue.
In Britain there is lots of talk of illegal immigration and how the state mishandles it. None about ruinous volumes of legal immigration, almost one million per year, and what it is doing to the country.
Pushback against climate policy falters on the speed of changes, not the underlying fraud of climate science itself.
No conservative will honestly discuss the plummeting happiness of women recorded across the West and yet there it is, writ large in antidepressant prescriptions and social media videos. It may have multiple causes, but feminism cannot be challenged so they say nothing lest they are reprimanded by the sisterhood.
Everything real is forbidden. It is all an act.
Like the left, those on the right are increasingly unable to face reality which means they can never course correct. They are trapped within a self-referencing culdesac designed to maintain their position in someone else’s hierarchy. That is why they have become so ineffective and appear to do very little except moan about the pace of change while they say nothing about the changes themselves.
We sense the conservatives do wish to conserve things but they are inexplicably mesmerized by the opinion of their enemies. They seek reassurance and applause from people who view them as evil.
This makes no sense to ordinary people.
Thinking like the enemy
The problem with modern conservatives is they are animated by underlying drives that cannot create a conservative or traditional society. They have adopted the thinking patterns associated with the progressive left while still using the language of conservatism.
The left is traditionally defined by a series of interrelated traits that manifest in much of what they agitate for.
A desire for centralization;
A notable external locus of control;
Seeking approval from the group.
Central control systems feature prominently in all left-wing schemes. From local councils to national governments, those who gravitate to the left often want to create centralized decision-making bodies to manage society. Institutions, government departments, NGOs and even charities all feature, but only when they act as the controlling authority in some field of interest.
Related to this is a clear external locus of control visible in individuals and their decisions. There is a relief others make the key decisions, so people actively seek out direction from an established authority. This ensures minimal resistance to the many centralized schemes we see emerge.
Acting solo creates discomfort. An older formulation understood this as the rejection of responsibility. Today it often manifests as an obsession with experts making key decisions for us all, partly to mask individual cowardice. People making their own decisions in life are derided as naive or dangerous.
During Covid decision makers became hysterical at the very idea we would reject the advice of experts and perform our own research despite the issue being medical and therefore dangerous.
A related phenomenon characteristic of many leftists is the need for approval, often from a group. Not just others making decisions but a dependency on confirmation and endorsement to ensure thinking and behaviour follows an established norm. This is the antithesis of original thinking or bold action; it is how adolescents often behave.
In today’s world this deep urge is reflected most in the social media landscape of harvesting attention and likes. Every fledgling narcissistic applause-seeking trait is given full expression in the endless search for approval from strangers. Whole sections of society seem lost to impulses we once understood as immature and dysfunctional.
Traditional thinking
Conversely, traditional wisdom took opposite stances on these positions.
Most Western nations espoused the strengths of decentralization in almost everything, from economics to politics and even defence of once’s life and property.
America’s federal system is just one example copied by others, where central authority is de-emphasized in favour of local controls. The ultimate control was the family or community, and this formed the basis for most of the Anglosphere countries and the systems they embraced.
Today the traditionalist points to the chaotic internet as an example of the benefits of rejecting central control and the myriad of wonders it often produces, and yet this has been discarded by most who claim to be on the right. Even they call for censorship, central management and regulation, all left-wing urges.
At the core of these is a suspicion of decentralized systems and the flourishing of individual liberty they often usher in. Today’s conservatives are at home decrying non-centralized systems as chaotic or unregulated. They seem especially allergic to freedom of association that once formed the backbone of our societies and become upset when this is challenged. Like the left, only the melting pot is permissible as other models destroy the blank slate thinking that dominates their minds. The tradition of preferring one’s own and building systems around it is attacked by people pretending to be conservatives.
Similarly, dependency has traditionally been rejected by conservative thinkers. We are encouraged to form bonds with others, including developing networks, but we are most mature when we can stand on our own two feet and are a burden to no one else, especially our country.
This has given way to platitudes about victimhood and disadvantage, all notions emanating from the left and their preoccupation with justice.
Today’s conservatives have lost the ability to sell mental and physical independence as a positive goal. Resilience is rejected and we instead elevate the hopeless as examples of a broken society needing grand gestures to fix it.
Traditionalists also were suspicious of those who sought out applause, anyone who played to an audience. This was understood as weakness. It is key to understanding the strong mind and is the antithesis of today’s performative activism.
Much of what makes us an advanced civilization is unglamorous plodding. Mending infrastructure, financial systems based on mutual trust, educational institutions built to reflect common culture and heritage. There is a quiet pride in getting on with it without fanfare, an idea at odds with today’s broadcast activism and their social media audiences.
The abandonment of these traits — decentralization, independence of mind and working without applause or supervision — has inevitably helped usher in an era of monopolitics where every issue has only a narrow range possible for discussion. Like cars designed in wind tunnels they must all eventually resemble one another when the underlying philosophy is identical and unchallenged.
This is where we are now, with much talk of uniparties and nothing ever changing. It can’t change because the decision makers all think alike whether they are blue or red or anything else. They are pathetically obsessed with how they are perceived, how their views come across, and how close they are to some imagined zeitgeist. They seek authority and control. They view independence of mind with suspicion.
This incestuous weakthink is sinking the West, something today’s conservatives have no response to.
His Majesty’s loyal opposition
The present era is really a kind of crash course in the enormous momentum of institutions and their place in a troubled culture. They lumber forward, after a fashion, taking their hangups and prejudices with them. They seek to survive and to do so they evolve to accommodate the current environment.
Conservatives and the institutions they run are no different. It works, at least for them. Being a right-wing nodding donkey can be profitable. Supporting the obsessions of the current regime while providing the appearance of spirited debate is especially lucrative.
A key example we see often is, “racism against any group is terrible”. It sounds reasonable, but stifles important debates around immigration, group differences and the obvious decline in trust we see in multi-ethnic polities. It retards mature discussion of a serious subject while running cover for a range of policies that even minimal scrutiny would demolish.
It absolutely avoids the elephant in the room, the natural xenophobia of every single ethnic group except whites. Try discussing that with a “conservative” and see how fast they run from reality. See how unable they are to provide any solution to the fundamentals all societies need to function.
This kind of tone policing keeps the whole show on the road. Everyone can pretend it is open minded and fair while ensuring serious challenges are policed.
We see this with most of the major issues shaping today’s culture. Conservatives maintain the narrative through judicious use of targeted condemnation
With climate initiatives in European nations conservatives can question the scale or speed of climate policy, but not the underlying narrative itself. When was the last time you heard anyone prominent dismiss climate change as nonsensical fraud? There is not a single dissenting voice except on the fringes. The appearance of debate is maintained through careful focus on approved areas.
Conservatives lament the decline in female happiness and will appear on podcasts to discuss what it might mean, but no one goes near the role of aggressive feminism and its total rejection of female nature, especially its hatred of the things most women embrace to feel happy like family formation and positive relations with men.
Few in the conservative movement even dare say men and women are different, with distinct motivations and drives, even if complementary to each other. So how can we ever debate real issues?
I don’t think anyone could believe the current conservative machine has any future. It is just the obverse of the liberal clown show with fewer mental patients at the helm. In Britain it was the Tories who passed the Online Harms Bill, a leftist’s ideal policy where just about anything can be classed as “hate” and therefore punishable with jail time.
I suspect our future involves an absence of think tanks, big fancy institutions, major universities, official media outlets or tech companies. They characterize our downfall. They are the problem. They are on the way down, but they needn’t take us with them.
All seem to be regime-approved echo chambers, only allowed to survive if they tacitly keep the mission alive.
Conservatism has become right-wing liberalism. It uses traditional language but maintains the safe talking points approved by the ruling class.
The alternative, based on an older mindset, would be seen by today’s conservatives as extremism because it rejects the weak psychological underpinnings common today. No to central authority, yes to high agency and ridicule of those seeking applause. Indeed, the traditional conservative would reject virtually all that today’s fake conservatives promote.
Agency is the defining feature of now. It is in decline. It has become unfashionable among the chattering classes. No one can be told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or give themselves a shake. And for good reason. Traditional high-agency thinking creates a very different kind of society than the one we now have. Decentralized, run by self-motivated types not looking for a pat on the back every time they do their job, and not beholden to an audience to know what to think. No groupthink, no mass hysteria, no intrusions, no public displays of deviant behaviour and no worrying about offending mentally ill people because they’d all be in asylums getting treatment.
That kind of society looks like 19th century Britain or the USA up to the 1970s, a terrifying prospect for today’s progressives and quite different from the disaster we have become with record levels of welfare dependency, widespread mental illness and a general air of defeat. We seem to be on the way down and we are being cheered on by those who claim to be the preservers of civilization.
This is not nostalgia, simply an observation that today’s conservatives are every bit as progressive as the West’s enemies and just as pathetic. Time to send them packing. We clearly need stronger people at the helm.
Yes, please and thank you for this.
Which is by the way why I don't call myself "conservative" (or "moderate" as the local colloquialism is, despite it being outdate by some 50 years); reactionary atavism all the way.
Reactionary, because that is the actual oppositional position to progressivism.
Atavism, because the biological meaning is equally applicable to sociological phenomena.
My talking-point over here:
"Any and all citizenships and residency permits awarded after 1975 must be supended pro tem and revised and checked against the individual's record. If they are self-supporting, law-abiding, and not engaged in subversive action against the kingdom, they may be granted a temporary citizenship, to be reviewed every five years. They will not be allowed to vote or hold office or any senior position in any official capacity. Any migrant found to be not self-supporting and/or a convicted criminal is to be put in a concentration camp pending repatriation, no matter if they are fourth of fifth generation. Any migrant with claims to asylum is to be put in a camp for asylum-seekers, and never be allowed to leave barring to go home."
While most will call that a bot extreme, 99 out of 100 is onboard with leeches and criminals being put into camps pending deportation, and will ask in an outraged tone: "Why isnät that being done?! I thought criminals were deported!" when told fewer than 5% of migrants convicted of crimes are sentenced to deportation, and that even then most of them are allowed back inside ten years.
In short - for a good ground for normality, look to the pre-1970s era and use that as your "position of reasonable compromise".
Top to bottom, this is extraordinarily well covered. I see much of this motif across the counseling profession (my profession) wherein the therapists defer to collectivism in order to avoid accountability and, in turn, avoid ruffling feathers of the in-group. This begins in the graduate programs that are soaked in postmodern deconstructionism, continues to the community providers and through to the licensing boards.
The thick irony, of course, is that the patients who seek us out want the exact opposite. They want personal agency, individual autonomy, and internal control locus. But the clinicians either cannot or dare not work that direction because it is either too foreign and thereby scary, or their simply too incompetent because they themselves don't practice it.
The ability to stand on one's own two feet and utilize millennia of resilience has been eroded throughout our schooling, labeled as "toxic masculinity" or "white supremacist" or some such other undesirable -ism, so the result is that no one wants to be accused of being the bad guy. That's why there's no pushback on this crap. The few of us who do it, or have done it, risk or experience social ostracization from peer colleagues, which we are told is a cardinal sin.
I decided many years ago I didn't particularly care about those opinions because they aren't the people I'm serving. And it turns out, I was right: the broader populace wants, craves, and in fact needs structure, anchoring, and direction. Unless they're firmly on the left, people are, broadly, sick and tired of deferring to the collective and eschewing personal accountability. Thousands of years of evolution cannot be so easily overridden and reprogrammed.
The problem is that the conservatives are usually not interested in fighting, so they just go along to keep peace but it is at their own peril. Now it seems they're waking up but lack the voice to say so because it's been two or three generations of having it stolen in the schools, from elementary through college. If reasonable people are to correct this trend, they will have to find their voice, and not only use it, but also recuit others to do so as well. This requires a courage to face down the fear of being namecalled, and an ability to withstand the narcissistic abuse that will inevitably accompany taking a stand.
Will we find enough people? It's hard to say, but I am simultaneously optimistic (due to what I'm seeing personally and professionally) and concerned, if for no other reason than our collective response to the Epstein files was a collective shrug rather than pitchforks and torches. I'm afraid we're too fat, dumb, and happy with our streaming services and instant delivery to be too bothered with any kind of pushback. As long as the bread and circuses continue, I don't know that we'll find the motivation en masse to do anything to prevent the inevitable downfall.