February 26, 2017

What do conservatives fear?

Hi,

What is it that conservatives fear? They talk a tough game at all times and in all parts of the world, but there is something that they fear, viscerally, and on an existential level. What is it?

The Belgian writer, Lauryssens, writes of a proto – fascist in pre ww11 Germany:

“For Moeller van den Bruck there is no doubt that again the arch enemy of German culture is liberalism, which stands for everything that is corrupt.”

The last line of the above could have been written by an American Christian Republican in the year 2017. “..liberalism, which stands for everything that is corrupt.” The line is universal - “everything” and finally judgemental - “corrupt”. For those that hold to this belief, the words 'crooked Hillary' would likely have been a lighting rod to what they already know is true, and the sight of Obama's polished shoes on the president's desk in the oval office? I'll leave that to the imagination.

Of course there is a religious ontology to this thinking for the American Christian Republicans: the “fall” of man. Again, for those who believe this story, there is no reasoning to be done, for the world is fallen and can never be put right by liberal, and as they believe, tainted secular tinkering with God's plan. Such dangerously wrong ideas and practices lead straight to the horrors of socialism, communism and the demon. For them, it is a done deal.

I'll confess that there is little comfort in the above analysis, but sometimes it is reassuring to look into the distorting mirror of the other's mind and see it as it is. Fearful.

D.