What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?

What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?
Philip E. Agre
August 2004



Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

These ideas are not new. Indeed they were common sense until recently. Nowadays, though, most of the people who call themselves "conservatives" have little notion of what conservatism even is. They have been deceived by one of the great public relations campaigns of human history. Only by analyzing this deception will it become possible to revive democracy in the United States.

The Main Arguments of Conservatism

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.

The defenders of aristocracy represent aristocracy as a natural phenomenon, but in reality it is the most artificial thing on earth. Although one of the goals of every aristocracy is to make its preferred social order seem permanent and timeless, in reality conservatism must be reinvented in every generation. This is true for many reasons, including internal conflicts among the aristocrats; institutional shifts due to climate, markets, or warfare; and ideological gains and losses in the perpetual struggle against democracy. In some societies the aristocracy is rigid, closed, and stratified, while in others it is more of an aspiration among various fluid and factionalized groups. The situation in the United States right now is toward the latter end of the spectrum. A main goal in life of all aristocrats, however, is to pass on their positions of privilege to their children, and many of the aspiring aristocrats of the United States are appointing their children to positions in government and in the archipelago of think tanks that promote conservative theories.

Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice.

~snip~

This is an important piece. I recommend adding it to your permanent collection. I did.
read the rest at:http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html

Aristocracy v. egalitarianism. The fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals.

is stark terror of change. It's why they're meddlesome, controlling, loath to admit error, and afraid actually to fix anything they've screwed up.

The people in power now are worse, they're radical reactionaries, trying to push things back into a wondrous past that never was.

Both groups have been masterfully used by the extremely wealthy.

Conservatives are afraid of equality. They are afraid of justice. They live in a constant fear of anything that is foreign to them. Conservatives justify torture, police brutality, abuse from the powers that be, etc...all in the name of "security". Conservatives are by nature afraid of anything that is not who they are.

In short:

Conservativism is "Law and Order".
Liberalism is JUSTICE!

Maybe, it's down.

Sorry for your trouble.

Giving someone the finger instead of a helping hand.

Telling someone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they have no boots.

Spending the national treasury on bullets rather than on books.

Giving millionaires more millions while keeping the masses indentured.

Raping mother earth for profit.

Decrying religious fanaticism abroad while encouraging it at home.

You had better crawl back into the womb, if you want to be protected by conservatives.


On edit left out a whole word out of haste, me bad.

that a good revolution can't fix.

don't realize where those terms come from.

The terms come from the 1789 French National Assembly, prior to the French Revolution. Inside the chamber where the National Assembly met, members of the Third Estate sat on the left side and members of the First Estate sat on the right. The Third Estate consisted of those who represented the interests of the people against those of the aristocracy, while the First Estate were nobles. Thus, the left wing of the room was more liberal, and the right wing was more conservative.

Thanks! :thumbsup:

To the OP, great thread. I'll be checking back & will probably compile the responses to send to the few conservatives still on my address list.

is putting yourself and your enrichment first and hating and fearing other people, whom you are prepared to exploit and fleece for your own good.

A lot of conservatism is nostalgia for a feeling about the way the world was. It seems to a lot of people think the world was a better place a couple or more decades ago. I don't think it is primarily a traditional resource allocation isue or a resistance to social change, just a sort of desperate knee-jerk reaction on the part of most conservatives. "Don't change anything!" is what they are saying. Then they target the things that are obvious to them, not the things that are really causing the problems.

When I see a conservative, I usually see a person trying to make the world make sense. They don't really know what to fight, so they fight gay marriage. They don't know what to pursue, so they pursue empty ideologies and sterile ideas of religion and feeling. Times are very complicated, IMO, and I sympathize with so-called conservatives. Their approach is all wrong, but I feel kind of sorry for them.