Friday, 15 March 2013

Revolutionary conservatism

We do indeed live in an era of revolutionary conservatism.

Generally, conservatives are characterised by wanting to keep things like they are at present.
More often than not, conservatives are also traditionalist: they want to maintain the present's continuity with the past.
Not infrequently, conservatives are also regressive: they want to turn the clock back to a lost, glorious bygone era.

However, our conservatives, the ones who dominate our politics at present, are revolutionary: they want the future to be like the present, only more so.

More prosaically, our conservatives identify the prevailing power structures and inequalities of the present, find them to be pleasing and seek to entrench them even deeper, extend them even further, build them even taller.

It's a particularly fearsome kind of revolution that is driven from above, by the most powerful.