Let’s Think About the Right, not Conservatism

There’s nothing, or at least very little, left to conserve. As a good friend asks, “what precisely are we trying to preserve?” Not much I say. We need a new right wing ideology, a set of beliefs that guide decision making. Try some of these on.

  • Man is not perfectable. We aren’t progressing towards any perfect end state. We aren’t even changing. Knowing this means that we need a politics that protects man from himself. This means no weed, no porn, no gambling, no no-fault divorces, etc.
  • Governments are never very good. Governments always cause harms. We want to minimize those harms.
  • We’ve been to Wal-Mart. We know that the voting franchise should be limited. In light of recent fraud, perhaps voting should be eliminated. Voting doesn’t seem to perform the function we were told it performs, but it does make normies believe the rulers have a mandate. They do not, and the perception that they do hold a mandate is very harmful.
  • Monarchy is best. Fewer to remove from power if it becomes necessary. The rulers have a property right and familial interest in good government.
  • Free trade ain’t. Ricardo was wrong.
  • Open borders are tantamount to foreign invasion.
  • Free speech is a weapon used to transgress proper authority and norms.
  • America first, above all other nations and interests. The American government exists solely to protect the domestic interests of the American people.
  • Pre-revolution Christianity IS Western culture. The West cannot exist without it, as such it must be protected, promoted, and promulgated. The government promotes several secular religions now, leftist environmentalism, minority worship, scientism, etc., let’s promote proper religion.
  • There is such a thing as objective truth. It can be known. Proper epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and ethics follow.


  • I’m going to work towards coming up a list of guiding principles with explanations. It’s what’s needed now because Conservatism is dead and has been since birth.

21 thoughts on “Let’s Think About the Right, not Conservatism”

  1. Saul Victor Ambulando

    I vacillate on the subject of monarchy versus a severely restricted franchise. I’m persuaded by the distributists, mostly, and believe if we’d limit the franchise to property owners or an authorized representative thereof, we’d be in far better shape… the question then is whether “far better shape” is better still than a monarch. He’d have to be bound by Christian orthodoxy (or perhaps Orthodoxy?) and a constitution.

    I enjoyed this piece. I’ve had many similar thoughts. Thanks for sharing.

  2. Virtue is key to rebuild Christendom, but it is largely forgotten or ignored in schools and even churches!

      1. Ha! I could make an argument on both sides. But the Medieval stability of monarchs would probably lean me towards before.

        1. I can make an argument for both sides. The better argument is for pre-reformation. The reformation is beginning of the post-modern era. I’ll just stop there for today.

    1. Russell Kirk is a progressive. He states as much in his tenth point.

      Again, let’s not talk about conservatism anymore. They’ve conserved nothing. Kirk is at the epicenter of that failure.

      From Kirk. “Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world.” He absolutely is on board with changing with the times. “Social Improvement.” His movement was DOA by point 10. Don’t get me start on “vigorous.”

      1. Again, let’s build upon and improve Kirk (and Burke).

        One cannot both be a true “Progressive” and also believe in Kirk’s point 6, that humans are imperfectable (your point 1). But, change is inevitable, and sometimes that change might even result in what we can objectively say is “social improvement” (e.g., emancipation). And it is the responsibility of the conservative to temper the impulse towards change with permanence–to be anti-radical. Change that is very slowly undertaken–dare I say change that occurs “organically”–is likely to be change of the kind that results in what we’d objectively deem to be “social improvement.”

        That said, when there is radical change and the claim of Permanence is cast aside in its entirety as being an evil in and of itself, the answer is not ideology–history has taught us that ideologies never lead us anywhere good–the answer is more steadfast and robust conservatism. Think St. Benedict.

        1. You can be progressive and believe that man is imperfectable. In fact, a great deal of the modern progressive movement is a direct offshoot of Puritan Calvinism. The belief that he is base and irredeemable leads to horrific treatment of people. Many progressives are utopians who are seeking perfection, most are not.

          You committed the Kirkian sin. Slow change is ok with you. How fast is adopting tranny kindergarteners ok? Really slow? Really, really slow?

          Change in terms of ethics and politics is not inevitable or virtuous.

      1. If you lived in the Fens of England in 1065, that was probably a pretty good year. 1066 not so much.

  3. Maybe it was always this way but it seems to me that at some point conservatives stopped conserving Western Civ and started conserving Classical Liberalism. And it turns out Classical Liberalism is an ephemeral ideology.

  4. Proposal to you list: Control of the means of production should be widely owned amongst the consumers rather than concentrated in corporations and governments. Social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate (local) level that is consistent with their just resolution.

    Most people should be able to earn a living without having to rely on the use of the property of others. People are likely to work harder and with greater commitment if they themselves possess the land, tools, material, and profits in which they labor.

  5. Of course we can’t govern ourselves. Our entire concept of freedom and liberty is the unencumbered gratification of every desire that is not technically illegal. There’s a word for people that can’t say no to things they want. Children. And they can’t govern themselves.

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