Tonight my boss and colleague Paul Griffiths asked me who I would exile in the Greek manner for the good of the polis in which I live. After some thought I suggested George Pell, Cardinal of the Catholic Church and general ignoramus about science. Paul asked why, and I said that he was divisive in our society.
It hit me: Pell, like all conservatives, thinks that social cohesion is paramount to political activity (of course, like most, but not all conservatives, it is his form of cohesion that he wants, to the exclusion of all others). But things have changed since the 1950s when conservatives could say of any reformer or "liberal" that they were divisive. Now it's the conservatives who are destructive of social cohesion and polarise society.
Given this, conservatives should strive to eliminate themselves from the political landscape. They'd add to the cohesion of society if they'd just stop attacking their opponents as terrorist sympathisers, climate nancies, and marriage destroyers, and shut up. Then we'd see some social cohesion start to form.
Just a passing thought...
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and an accurate one.
"...Then we'd see some peace perhaps
Provided Swann and Flanders
Get the end without the taps..."
Familiar symptom - "If only everyone would just do it my way." Far from unique to conservatives, unfortunately.
I think that "conservatism" is often a loaded term. In the U.S., for instance, many observers have noted that we really don't have a conservative tradition. The right-wing of our political spectrum is formed by a series of reactionary movements that catalyzed in response to social and economic progress. From the libertarians (a movement that came into it's own in response to the New Deal and later the Great Society) to the religious right (which grew in response to the increase in secularism and social permissiveness) all the way to the neoconservatives (a movement that got started after WWII, but got pushed into the mainstream after the onset of "Vietnam Syndrome"). It can be contrasted with nations like Britain, which have established conservative traditions (i.e., Toryism).
So to say "conservatism emphasizes social cohesion" is remarkably simplistic in an American context. Libertarians would outright reject the premise, for instance. And the religious is not so concerned about that as the waning political hegemony of (mostly) Christianity.
However, George Pell and I are in the British tradition, here in Australia...
Oh, you just have to throw that little technicality of my entire rant being irrelevant in my face, don't you? :(
I don't care if you're on the other side of the world, I bet I could still hit you with a rock if I threw hard enough.
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