[link|http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg.shtml|Any questions?]

Excerpt:

The United States was launched as a new kind of nation with new kinds of institutions. Hence, in America conservatives sought to conserve these institutions. Many of the ideas put forward by Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison are perniciously radical to conservatives in monarchical societies like those found in 18th-century Europe or 21st-century Saudi Arabia. But here you aren't a radical, you're a conservative if you try to conserve notions of liberty, private property, a free press, etc. This is why Friedrich Hayek believed that "conservatives" in the United States were still classical liberals and hence lovers of liberty \ufffd because we intend to preserve those institutions and ideas set forth by the Founders.

Today, so much of conservatism isn't an attempt to conserve at all, but to impose an ideological agenda. We talk about "taking back" and "tearing down" left-wing institutions which shouldn't be left-wing or right-wing at all. Universities, for example, are supposed to be dedicated to abstractions \ufffd truth, learning, free inquiry \ufffd not agendas. But the Left has decided to infuse their ideological agenda into the schools. They ridicule the "idea" that "Truth" exists and conservatives in response have been forced to make abstractions into ideological issues too. It's just very sad.

Personally, I wish that we didn't need ideology. As Russell Kirk was fond of noting (but as H. Stuart Hughes said), conservatism is "the negation of ideology." Conservatism is supposed to be practical. It is supposed to muddle through and rely on democratic and undemocratic institutions (the university, for example, precedes democracy by centuries) to dilute and channel ideological fervor in a constructive manner. Politics is not supposed to be about everything. There should not be "conservative" universities or conservative "art." When I hear people talk about the need for such things I find it deeply depressing because it shows how profoundly ideological considerations have penetrated into the warp and woof of everyday life.

I say:

When Leftists ideologues say there is no real truth, the truth itself becomes politicized. But remember, truth was here first.

Though you dodge the point in more ways than I can count, I'll just address the most blatant case.

The whole nuclear family is a stepdown from the extended family that preceded it. It constitutes a compromise between the extended family and no family. And the conservatives who espouse the nuclear family, instead of the extended family, are in fact capitulating. The gratitude of their opponents for this willingness to meet halfway is underwhelming.

I think it was mistake for modern conservatives to make this sort of concession. To an ideologue, any concession is a sign of weakness, not of reasonability.

That was a concession to reality, and there's nothing wrong with that. It wasn't any "new" reality, either, so shut up all you "things change and we must keep up-to-date in our thinking" yammerers. It was the ancient reality that those who don't defend themselves adequately are doomed.

Reality doesn't respond to concessions in a mean manner. (At least not to concessions made to it.) Rather, it punishes refusal to concede. And this is why it's good to make concessions to long term reality, but not to ideological opponents. To the ideologue, concession is a sign of weakness, to be exploited. To reality, concession is a friendly overture, to be rewarded.

And we shouldn't concede too much to short term reality, either. It'll change back and catch you unprepared. Clinton did that with his fiscal priorities, and now the U.S.S. Kennedy is scrambling to get itself back into fighting trim.

Truth is that which is the case. Long term Truth is that which remains the case over time. All of you quit your pomo whining and deal with it.