The Death Of Conservatism Redux

Okay, after re-reading my rant from yesterday, I realized that I didn't quite get around to making the point that I was trying to get at, which was that conservatism, as it is currently constituted, is going to have to figure out a way of adapting to a Brave New World if it is going to survive.

Both conservatism and liberalism make a lot of coin playing off the concept of tribalism. But there is a distinct difference, in my mind, in the way that they do so. Liberalism plays off tribalism in an inherently positive sense: the explicit goal of affirmative action is not to bring down whites, but to raise up blacks, for instance. Not to say that it doesn't sometimes come with some ugly undercurrents of quotas and guilt-tripping, but they're just that - undercurrents.

Conservatism, on the other hand, uses the definitions of 'self' and 'other' in a more negative sense. Keep those (blacks, women, convicted felons) from getting the right to vote. Keep those (interracial couples, gays) from getting the chance to marry. Keep those (Germans, Irish, Mexicans) back on the other side of the border, where they belong.

And that's an inherent problem. While we're always going to have tribal identities, at least so long as we are members of the species homo sapiens, the ongoing march of technological advancement is going to break down our ability to ignore the unhappiness of others.

Which is not to say that there won't be conservatism. There always will be. For one thing, so long as there are tribes (which, again, will be the case so long as we're human beings), there will be wars, and arguments about which ones are good ones (all of them, if your last name happens to be Kristol) and which ones are not. But it is sure as shit going to have to reconstitute itself on several axes. That's what I mean about the imminent death of conservatism; conservatism, as we know it, will not exist in 50 years. About that, I am quite confident.