i think it would be a lot more interesting to see columnists and thinkers and posters examine and discuss what "conservative" means in the twenty first century, because i don't think the republican party qualifies by any traditional measure of it

aren't the dems more conservative now? in the sense they're just trying to keep the current systems together in their current state, in the face of maga radical threats to blow everything up?

I feel like "we need a strong opposition party" is a reasonable thing to say, because uniparty rule is also bad (see: the NYC democratic party) but yeah arguing that the opposition party necessarily has to be the GOP or even "conservative" does not really follow from there

Buckley mostly had it right, except for what they were standing athwart. Compassion, maybe?

so is the republican party now fascist, or just extremely reactionary and authoritarian?

They don’t even pretend to like America anymore! As a veteran of Being Leftish During the Bush Years, when anti-American was a preferred slur for anyone dissenting from anything, that’s the one that blows my mind

Tom Nichols blocked me on Twitter for suggesting (a few times but not all that forcefully) that he was a good candidate for figuring out what parts of movement conservatism led to Trump, and should be excised from conservative doctrine.

I think the Republican Party is still conservative in ideology because conservativism has always defended privilege and hierarchy, they have just gotten more radical and extreme. Conservatives used to claim they were more cautious defenders of the status quo but that was never true

I'm less generous and think that you have to go back more than a century to identify a conservatism that isn't primarily preoccupied with accommodating, integrating, and shifting society towards fascism (if only because fascism per se wasn't around earlier)

Neoliberals! 1) Folks who are Neoliberals because they did the reading and think liberal freedom and international free movement is good. 2) Folks who are Neoliberals because NAFTA was 30 years ago and they're conservative in the "suspicious of change" way. 1 and 2 are different kinds of folk

I sort of think the traditional measures of "conservative" are and always have been bunk and it's always just been right-wing pro-hierarchy nonsense.