What’s in a Name?
The term ‘conservative’ was invented by the ‘progressives’ to describe anyone who was not a progressive. Like goyim, gentile, or heathen, it is just a word that says what you are not.
Now, obviously, no one is in favor of ‘progress’ without some notion of the goal toward which one is progressing. In the case of Progressives, the goal is socialism in slow stages (Wilsonian Socialism, New Deal Socialism, Fabian Socialism, and Communism).
The word was a propaganda term only, because people like things that are new and exciting. And so the Progressives called themselves ‘NEW!’ and called their enemies ‘OLD!’
But age has nothing to do with anything. The so called Progressives have certain ideals (solipsism, untruth, aberration, death, perversion totalitarianism, nihilism) and these define their goals. They are driving toward tribalism and a police state, and all the ancient horrors left behind in the bronze age, left behind as two-year-old levels of moral insight. The goal is called progress only in the sense of being precisely the opposite.
Like them, we who oppose them, we have certain ideals, and these define our goals. I identify as a conservative, because when I call myself any other name, no one knows what I mean.
We conservatives have seven core beliefs:
1. Reality is real. Reality is not optional.
2. Speech which does not conform to reality is falsehood; thought, madness.
3. Beauty is real, and ennobles the soul; ugliness is foul, and fit for satire only. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder.
4.Human life from conception until natural death is sacred; animal life is livestock; abortion and euthanasia are satanic.
5. Virginity and monogamy are sacred; polygamy is adultery, and adultery is a crime; sodomy is a crime against nature, or a mental disease, or both.
In order to justify vices in sexual areas, the enemy denounces the concept of virtue and vice. While the sexual arena is the only topic where moral relativism is preached seriously (no adulterer thinks smoking cigarettes is not evil, but instead merely a matter of personal opinion), the more general attack on virtue itself requires the comment about chastity to be expanded to other virtues:
Actions which do not conform to reason are vice, and those that do are virtue. It is only by the practiced habit of virtuous acts that virtue is gained, and reason comes to rule the passions.
The four cardinal virtues are fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice.
Using reason rather than using fearfulness or rashness to decide when to fight, when to endure, and when to retreat is called fortitude. Using reason rather than passion is called prudence. Using reason rather than appetite is called temperance. Using reason rather than self-interest or expediency is called justice.
Intemperance in sexual matters is unchastity. Merely because the romantic desire is strong does not give it license to overrule the reason.
6. The Rights of Man are sacred, including the rights to life, liberty, property.
- The right to life means all men are equal in rank at birth: a peasant and an aristocrat have the same right to life: they are equal.
- The right to liberty means no man is required to support an able-bodied man. Slavery and the welfare state are equally abhorrent.
- The right to property means the government must back currency with gold, and have no central bank.
From the equality of man, we deduce that no man can be trusted with unbridled power over another: pragmatically, this means creating and upholding laws and customs that promote morality; legally, it means upholding objective law, constitutional and limited government, separation of powers, federalism, and limiting the franchise to landowners, clergy, professionals and tradesmen taking no money from taxpayers. It means an armed citizenry jealous of its rights and suspicious of central government.
The government is a necessary evil meant to promote morality and defend these sacred rights.
Defense against internal corruption means having a strong moral fiber; defense against crime means a strong police force to uphold the common law, it means public trials by jury, and no double jeopardy and no self incrimination; defense against foreign powers means having a strong military freed from political fashion-statements.
7. All sacred things come from God.
To all of which we can add an eighth point, which is not an ideal, but a pragmatic preference: sad experience teaches that sudden changes to laws and customs, even if well intentioned, are chaotic. All changes should be made slowly and organically, from within the system. Revolutions and judge-made laws are innately tyrannical and breed contempt for law. For conservatives, slow and steady wins the race.
These goals define our means and methods: we favor law and order, Church and community, and do not trust any king or parliament to have power over Church business. We do not trust the government to disarm the common man, to police the press, or to police free assemblies.
We trust the free market to a greater degree than we trust the government, because we believe greed drives men, but even this trust is moderated sharply, because we mistrust the rich, and do not think the market cures all ills; and indeed presents temptations poverty-stricken nations rarely confront.
Now, for the life of me, I have no idea why these seven simple ideas (and one pragmatic observation) have no name to sum them up.
You can call us ‘conservative’ only if we live where these ideals are currently in place and need to be conserved, but the term is deliberately misleading, because it implies loyalty to the ideals not because the ideals are good, but only because they are the status quo.
No one loves the status quo for its own sake, for the same reason why no one of healthy mental balance loves change for its own sake: the so-called progressives seek progress toward chaos, immorality, rebellion, unfreedom and misery because they love hell.
All their progress is progress toward hell.
They look at hell on earth in places like soviet Russia and Castroist Cuba, and become damp with lust and hunger. Meanwhile, the so-called conservatives favor constant change, growth, and evolution toward more and more heavenly things, because we love heaven.
Calling us Constitutionalist is misleading, because we oppose the seventeenth amendment and federal tax on incomes. We uphold our ideals because they are true and good, not because they are or are not written down in a constitution. That is like calling Christian “Biblidolaters” as if we loved Christ not because He is God, but because and only because His disciples wrote about him in a book.
You can call us objectivists, because we think reality is real, but that name is dumb, and taken.
You can call us humanists, because we have discovered the sole moral way human beings can live in peace with each other, or call us liberals because we love liberty, or call us progressives, because progress in industry, art, and science is only IMAGINABLE in a society upholding our virtues: but all these words have been coopted by our enemies, and mean the exact opposite of what they should mean.
Conservatives are trying to progress toward a society run on Constitutional principles recognizing the equality of the rights of birth (and no other type of equality, thank you) limited government, with a separation of powers designed to slow the process of corruption. Culturally, we want Christian virtues to shine in our culture, and that is not a matter of conservation, because real Christianity has never been tried.
In the modern age, the Progressives interbred with large, lazy, corporations, and realized it was mutually beneficial to bribe and be bribed. Many a wealthy millionaire realized that Progressive demagogues could both denounce millionaires and become millionaires by cooperating in fleecing the taxpayer. So this generation of Progressives are globalist crony-capitalists, that is, plutocrats.
Meanwhile, people like me, small-government, armed-citizen, free-speech, strong-borders, limited immigration types who think the US Constitution will only work for a Christian nation, and should not be dismantled, are called ‘conservative’ because there is no other word left for us. We are not Republicans, who are merely the rightwing arm of the Democrat Party, who are merely the leftover love children of the Communist Party, who are merely the modern version of ancient Gnostic heretics from the First Century.
I would be called a Federalist, if the Federal government were not a slow totalitarianism. As of the last ten years of Supreme Court decisions, there is now NO AREA of human life held to be beyond Federal power, including states who wish to enforce federal laws the feds unconstitutionally and illegally fail to enforce. The Federal government can now make the most intimate imaginable decisions concerning your health insurance coverage, and even force Catholic nuns to pay for contraceptives and aborticides which are strictly forbidden by the law of God. States can no longer define marriage, as has been their right since before the founding of the Republic.
I am a Catholic. I believe what Thomas Acquinas had to say about he rights of man and the duties of the sovereign.
I am also a Virginian, and our commonwealth flag has the figure of liberty trampling a tyrant, from whose hands falls fetters and flails.
I believe in the Anglo-American common law and the wisdom of the common man.
I believe in the Fall of Man, and believe anyone who worships his fellow man as monarch or fuhrer is a fool and craven.
No matter what term we use to call my political position, the Left will rob it of meaning either by using that term to refer to their other enemies, or using that term to refer to themselves, and we will be right back where we were.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
