Introduction
Why "Conservative Revival"?
I believe we are living in the middle of a conservative revival. Right here and right now, there is a nascent conservative revival, and it is growing. It is still young, and it has not yet added a lot of people to our ranks, but it would have been a strange revival if it started with a mass conversion. It is not the numbers that makes a revival; it is the revival that makes the numbers.
A revival is first and foremost a change within a movement, a revitalisation. It is not the introduction of new ideas or new impulses that changes its core tenets, but rather it is a return to these tenets and to its origin. A revival is a renewed focus on the fundamentals of the movement and a purge of all that is alien. And it is this return to the basics that creates the revitalisation. When those who belong to the movement rediscover their origin and are able to fully express the potency of its thinking, then they are compelled to spread these ideas. And that is when the revival causes the movement to grow.
From what I see, we are in the beginning of such a revival, where conservative thinking is revitalised, and re-expressed in our day and time.
This is not the first conservative revival we have seen. Russel Kirk’s landmark book: The conservative mind sparked a revival in the 50's. Conservativism became an intellectually viable alternative and emerged as a political movement. But even so, it is not conservativism we associate with the following decades. The 60's and 70's will always be remembered as the decades where radical ideologies and progressive thinking took hold and became mainstream.
And these radical ideas are still with us today, dominating our cultural institutions and guiding the ruling elite. Russel Kirk wanted first to call his book “The Conservative Rout”, as he felt that it was a good description of the state of conservativism. And even though the book was instrumental in creating the modern conservative movement, it could not turn the tide. Perhaps it turned the rout into an ordered retreat, but it is safe to say that the previous revival failed to achieve any political goals.
But that may be about to change, because we are in a much better position this time. The situation now is very different from what it was in the 50’s and 60’s. First, the sense of urgency is much greater. Back then we spoke of the dangers that the radical new ideas would lead to in the future; now we see them in full bloom, worse than we imagined, and we experience the tangible consequences of them in our lives. That has heighted the sense of urgency to a level where it compels us to act. We do no longer speak of a hypothetical and distant future; we speak about how the Western Culture disintegrates around us. Our history, our customs, our societal structure, our way of thinking, all that could be lost, or relegated to live on as a memory, bereft of meaning or influence.
And if that does not compel us to do something, then we might be motivated by the growing receptiveness in the people around us. That is the second thing that is different now. They may not yet share our sense of urgency, and they may not yet see things as we do, but they have lost the positivism and the faith in a brighter future that was promised them by the progressives. The progressives may dominate and control the public discourse, but they no longer own the hearts and minds of people, not like they used to.
This conservative revival is set in a time when more and more people suffer the consequences of the radical transformation of our culture. Back in the 60's, when we fail to stem the tide, the society was relative robust. The traditional social structures were more or less intact and there was a time of economic growth and optimism. Could a few changes be so bad? For the majority, who did not concern themselves with the potential trajectory of "a few changes", nor that they came from ideologies that aimed at more than a “few” changes, it may not have seemed so bad. But now, we live in a time when the basic structures in society are becoming increasingly dysfunctional, when we see our institutions hollowed out and when we have lost our sense of belonging or even purpose. This is a profound difference between then and now: we are in a much better position to explain conservative thinking. People are more open to explanations of what went wrong, than claims of what can go wrong.
The third way we differ from the conservatives of the past, is that we can hardly be blamed for the problems of our time. The destruction that has taken place in our society is not our doing, as it at least should be clear to everyone that we fought it as best we could. Back in the 60's, the radicals rose by protests against the flaws in society, creating a counterculture. And they succeeded in convincing people, even though the ailing of society back then cannot compare to what we see today. One factor in that was that the radicals were partially right; there were things that needed to be changed, but the establishment were not willing or able to make those changes.
Conservatives are not without blame in that; to deny that is to deny an important historic lesson. We should have been able to sift the critique and separated the valid complaints from ideological claims and done something about that which needed improvement, but we did not. That gave the progressives’ critique justification and made people more open to the counterculture.
But now, we are the counterculture, we are the ones protesting against the flaws in society and we are challenging the ruling elite. And it is the radicals who must take full responsibility for the ailing of society. We now hold the prerogatives of the opposition.
It could be that these differences are the source of this nascent conservative revival, but I think there is more to it. It seems to me that there is a generational shift in the movement. I hear more and more young conservatives who raise their voice in the public discourse. There is a great variety to it, but they seem to demonstrate a sound conservative instinct. They argue for the preservation of our customs and traditions, but they also seem to understand that they must be adapted to the time we live in, avoiding the golden-past fallacy. This is very promising, because this is a revitalization of our movement, a revitalization that comes from a return to our core tenet. And also, because young voices tend to be more persuasive than old voices. They even think that we can win, because no one speaks in terms of a “great last stand”, which has been a sentiment among conservatives before.
This has made me a cautious optimist; I sense opportunities that we did not have before. But there is a lot of work to be done between “opportunities” and “achievements”, the question is therefore, where do we go from here?
I do not suggest that I know what we should do or have the right strategy for the conservative movement. I leave it the ideologues to conjure up absolute answers; they never work out any way. But I would like to make two suggestions that may at least point out a general direction.
First, we must understand that a revival is about revitalizing ourselves. We must make sure that we are fully convinced about the necessity of conservative thinking, but also make sure that we are able to express our thinking in a way that is relevant and persuasive. We must be able to truly understand the core tenets of conservativism, the fundamental principles, and we must explain this to the world around us. That means we must spend some time thinking through how we express our fundamental principles, first and foremost to convince ourselves.
Then we will be able to convince others. It seems almost banal to say it, but my second suggestion is this: our most important goal must be to convince others. Has that not always been our goal, one may ask. Well, a lot of our time and energy seem to be spent on achieving political goals. That could of course be a good thing, but it seems to me that we do not always act in a convincing way. Besides, our rare victories are soon undone, and it seems that our defeats outweigh them by an order of magnitude. We will not gain political ground and hold it until we have convinced a majority. Until we achieve that, we are continuing the orderly retreat towards a brave last stand.
I am not saying that we should stop engaging in the political discourse, on the contrary, but we should make sure that we do that in a way that demonstrate what conservativism is and what we would like to achieve. We must not only explain why we oppose ideological changes, but make sure everyone knows why. And we must also present our alternatives, how we would solve the problems, but in a way that fits our culture and is based on experience, not theories. I think that the most important purpose of our political engagement should be to make proposals that demonstrate the fundamental difference between conservative thinking and progressive thinking. More so than winning an occasional victory.
This is why I have made this publication, if that is the right term for it. I would like to offer my thoughts on how we should understand and express conservative thinking; how we can convey the fundamental principles of conservativism to those around us and how we can demonstrate these principles in our political work.
My thoughts are not as much intended to convince others of my particular interpretations or understandings, as they are intended to inspire others to develop and present their thoughts in the same way. We need to think together and keep the revival going.
I have a vague idea that I will publish my thoughts under three different banners:
Our foundation, which will be my suggestions on how we should understand the conservative principles.
How we see the world, which will be my analysis of the world, and if I can, demonstrate the principles in my analysis.
What we want; which would be suggestions on how we demonstrate the conservative principles in specific issues.
I will not do this full-time, so I do not know how frequent I am able to publish something here. I am a family man with a full-time job and various other engagements in my community; time is scarce and precious. And I have no idea about neither the necessity, nor the usefulness of a publication like this. But I do have a sense of urgency, and I do feel compelled to do something. The unravelling of the world I grew up in, the great loss we already have experienced, and to be frank, the madness of the ever-increasing radicalism we see today, makes it impossible for me to not do something.
Well, here is my contribution, for what it is worth.