The Case for Conservatism by Ian Millhiser [Vox] | “Move fast and break things” has no place in government.
Posted by PolyrythmicSynthJaz
The Case for Conservatism by Ian Millhiser [Vox] | “Move fast and break things” has no place in government.
Posted by PolyrythmicSynthJaz
4 Comments
It’s textbook conservatism to break the government if the function of the government is to uplift marginalized groups
Judging conservatives by what they do in power vs what they write in magazines is eye-opening. It’s not a complicated movement when you get down to brass tacks
Real traditionalist conservatism is a mostly European thing. Here, it’d be mostly boring and most Republicans would see it as too weak to fight liberalism.
Idk if I’d say the conservatism Millhiser describes ever existed in America at all. His idea of conservatism describes a desire to keep the status quo to protect institutions. I don’t think the protection of institutions was ever an inherent goal of American conservatism beyond the desire to protect social values and the freedom of markets. The conservatism described by Millheiser feels like a conservatism more common in Europe where influential aristocrats and powerful families conserved status quos to retain power and influence. The 20th century transformed European conservatism from a desire to preserve power to a desire to preserve the status quo for outside actors.
Its hard not to look to most present crises and not see in them tedious naval gazing and downright dishonesty or catastrophic miscalculation passed off as a scutcheon of thoughtful consideration in order to stop and slow any effective response.
Not every problem is static. Many are metastatic. Failing to act makes them worse, and means the corresponding cure gets increasingly costlier and more radical.