Professor amazed: today's "conservatives" aren't actually conservative.

[DemocracyMouse]

Jeffrey P. Kimball, Miami University professor emeritus, has finally articulated what has been needling me for years. So-called "conservatives" should be conserving the New Deal, national parks, polite manners, and other longstanding US traditions. They aren't, in fact, conserving much of anything – especially under the current Russian puppet despoiling the Whitehouse. Referring to dictionary definitions of conservative, Kimball states in Raw Story:

These definitions are unhelpful and misleading. Self-proclaimed political and social conservatives are not necessarily inclined to support or maintain the “traditional” social order – that is, long-standing majority views, conditions, institutions, or legislation. These include government regulation of corporations, banks, and Wall Street, progressive income taxes, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, civil rights, voting rights, environmental regulations, and public-lands conservation. Self-identified conservatives also oppose other traditional institutions, practices, and measures, such as the United Nations, international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war, labor unions, collective bargaining, fair labor standards, and, for some, public fluoridation of water. The measures conservatives oppose were legislated, created, or practiced 50 to 100 or more years ago.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/shouldnt-use-label-conservatives-describe-americas-right-wing/

[marybourg]

1. They've been radical reactionaries for decades!

Conservatives, my a**.

[Beartracks]

2. They support the needs of an elitist minority.

That being the far right Christians and the rich. Republican voters have been co-opted and don't even know it. Sad.

========

[Baitball Blogger]

3. Please. If you look at my old posts you would see that is no new revelation.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. The benchmarks of Burkean conservatism were prudence, moderation, and a respect for tradition.

That's not the GOP.

[dawg]

5. They aren't "conservatives", they are fascists.

I'm not even being hyperbolic.

One can be a fascist without necessarily being genocidal.

The true "conservatives", by the way, are the incrementalists within the Democratic Party.

[DemocracyMouse]

6. So why do journalists/pundits keep calling them"conservatives"?

It gives them a kind of middling respect they don't actually deserve. Some good alternatives proposed in the dialogue above:

—Reactionaries
—Fascists

What, however, would the pundits be comfortable actually using? (Even though those terms are actually more accurate!)

Pundits are always seeking the "acceptable" term – we need to start calling folks out when the use "conservative". As in:

"Really? I didn't know Trump (etc) wanted to conserve our National Parks and our tradition of Social Security and Constitutionally mandated national welfare."