AJ: For the sake of conversation: What is it happens that Conservatism does become as active and let's say as demanding as Left-Progressivism?
IC: Then it can become another kind of totalitarianism, I would say.
There is a problem I notice in what you say. I will try to explain. One is that you define Conservatism as a
method but not necessarily as having a specific core in some value-set. As I understand things this is not quite right. For the reason that when the Conservative ideology arose (was defined as such) the social situation, the attitude and the existent, practiced ideals of people were already established along more or less specific lines. It is likely that those *lines* were those of more-or-less traditional Christian-oriented culture. So, the natural tendency in the culture and among people generally was what we would now call 'Conservative' but Conservative not as 'method' but as an array of
established social values.
So the word Conservative has two senses: one is perhaps as you say: a sort of
method. A way to situate oneself in a given present, in any given present, and be of the sort of person who resists rapid-moving social change by holding to time-honored traditions; by seeking to demonstrate, and perhaps to prove, that these have value and purpose that should be respected.
But the other definition is, and I think this is generally true today, of a person who attempts to define a conservative ideology through active assertion and definition of what, in his view, is of value, is necessary, is right and proper, and also what must be insisted on when the education of youth is considered. That issue -- what is taught to youth and what is insisted on -- implies the exercise of
authority. And for there to be an authority that is respected there has to be a defined set of values that are asserted, and these have to be explainable. That is, the utility and value of them must be proved.
A conservative
method has no internal content, no authoritative internal structure, through which concrete ideals are proposed and even demanded. It occurs to me that this is why some dissidents refer to Conservatives as Cuckservatives. The reason they apply this term is because they notice that "they conserve nothing" and here is the core reason: they have sacrificed or left behind specific sets of values and no longer defend them. They are said to have come essentially under the influence of value-sets defined by their opposition. And as that opposing group (say Left-Progressives for the sake of a general term) move that much further toward some radical definition and outcome, the so-called Conservatives are simply pulled along because
they do not have an anchor in specific values. Or to put it more directly the values and ideals they do have are more or less the same as those who they pretend to oppose with some conservative
method.
I must mention, to be clear, that the things I am mentioning as values or ideals that they have sacrificed and left behind are some of the more knotty and difficult topics. For example (I mention this because it is a very real issue for those on the Dissident Right) the deliberate policy of changing the demography of a nation because a newer ideological stance is that all human beings are one and the same, can be switched and interchanged, because the Nation is defined as a 'proposition' and not in the sense of an ethnicity.
And that is just
one of the more knotty issues and problems. In fact there are a whole slew of issues which could be mentioned.
AJ: What if it chooses (let's say through democratic processes) to become retrenchant and by that I mean value-defining and value-insisting?
IC: I think that's its only way forward. I'm not crazy about calling it "retrenchant," because the "re-" sounds backward-focused. But I think that you're right to say that an insistence on particular standards, procedures and values -- most of which we have already discovered in our basic constitutions and inscriptions of human rights -- is absolutely imperative. And first of these, right now, are freedom of speech and conscience. Conservatism simply CANNOT concede anything to the Left when it calls speech "violence," or when it suppresses the free conscience of citizens, including their choices about how they believe, vote, use property and, within reasonable parameters, live. It HAS to insist on those things. Anything less is fatal.
But your definition of what is conservative and conserving remains rather vague. Or, as I suspect, your established value-set is essentially that of the Liberal status quo. It is expressed here:
I think that you're right to say that an insistence on particular standards, procedures and values -- most of which we have already discovered in our basic constitutions and inscriptions of human rights -- is absolutely imperative.
What I understand you [the *you* here is a general you for a whole set of people and a faction] to be saying is something like: "We have already done the progressive work. We have remodeled our societies and our constitutions and in our ideals about human rights and we have established protective laws. You radicals and you woke must stop your excessive activism, and we must stop your activism, because the required work has already been done. Your activism is trouble-making. Your activism is undermining. It is divisive. You seek to tear down institutions that we believe should stand and be strengthened."
But in essence you have accepted the core set of tenets (about human rights, about our *propositional nation*, etc.) that have been defined by Left-Progressive activism.
This is largely what many I have read on the Dissident Right complain about. They say that 'Conservatism' has sold us out. They say that Conservatives do not really conserve in any real sense of the word.
So again this leads to what I said earlier: What happens when through
democratic methods a given people begins to define value-sets that I will here define as right leaning or even radical-right leaning that turn against those value-sets defined by our modern Liberal (and Hyper-Liberal) ideologies?
