Of course, MAGA isn't conservative in any meaningful way: it is radical and reactionary in equal measures, just radically bigoted. It is not 'going back to' or 'preserving' a system we had, but inventing an entirely new one.
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If you go back and look at the intellectual horsepower of the Reagan movement today, guys like Buckley and Gilder, pretty fn racist. The southern strategy brought the racist elements of southern society to their real home. It's been a challenge for Democrats ever since.
aug 29, 2025, 9:42 pm • 0 0 • view
It is traditional for radicals trying to create a new system to pretend that they were restoring an earlier (since "corrupted") one, stretching back millennia to at least that "...and put together the common thing causa". These "conservatives" are proudly continuing this most ancient tradition. /s
aug 28, 2025, 11:43 pm • 2 0 • view
I’ve had a lot of thoughts about the difference between conservatism as a mindset and right-wing reactionary radicalism lately.
aug 28, 2025, 4:11 pm • 7 1 • view
re "conservative in any meaningful way", that seems to imply that there's a "respectable" form of conservatism, but i'm starting to feel like all conservatism is just varying degrees of adherence to Wilhoit's Law. sometimes conservatives tolerate democracy, but they always really want Wilhoit's Law.
aug 28, 2025, 4:32 pm • 41 1 • view
I think in a country founded, however imperfectly, on liberal values which is, on the balance, substantially more liberal than most countries, it is possible to have a sort of 'liberal conservatism' which is suspicious of change but nevertheless affirms the liberal values of a free society.
aug 28, 2025, 5:15 pm • 99 1 • view
That basically describes Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republicanism. The last elected politician to fall under that category was probably Arlen Specter, and he had to switch to the Democratic Party at the end of his career.
aug 28, 2025, 6:58 pm • 2 0 • view
This basically sounds like the old strain known as Rockefeller Republicans.
aug 28, 2025, 5:36 pm • 0 0 • view
If that's the case why not use cautious-liberals or pragmatic-liberals instead of including those that are hostile to liberal values? I think the problem with liberal conservatives is that its a contradiction in terms, what values are going to win out when push comes to shove, tradition or liberty?
aug 29, 2025, 7:17 pm • 4 0 • view
i agree with you in general but i think we're also down the rabbit hole of the Labeling Trap™ where we're concerned more about whether a concept matches a preexisting label than we are about the details of the concept 1/
aug 29, 2025, 8:52 pm • 13 1 • view
[spitballing from here on out] it occurs to me just now that people being "resistant to change" (or "cautious" as you put it) is also vague. i'm resistant to some kinds of change because those changes are obviously bad and wrong. i'm perfectly happy with other kinds of change. 2/
aug 29, 2025, 8:52 pm • 10 0 • view
the changes "progressives" want are typically changes in power structures so that fewer (or ideally no) people are oppressed. people who resist such changes value hierarchy and domination. if "conservative" means "adherent to Wilhoit's Law" then yeah, you can't have liberal conservatives... 3/
aug 29, 2025, 8:52 pm • 10 0 • view
...because liberalism is inherently cooperation-based and conservatism is inherently domination-based, and those are incompatible. for a while we had conservatives wrapped in some amount of liberalism, but as you say, when push came to shove, they chose domination. end/
aug 29, 2025, 8:52 pm • 11 1 • view
other than some of them, who chose freedom, again, mostly the never-trumpers in an american context, but also i’d include right-wing market liberal reformers in post-soviet states, or italian monarchists fighting in the partisan movement against the fascists
aug 29, 2025, 9:11 pm • 1 0 • view
notably i think liberal conservatism gets its coherence, as Bret says, from having an authoritarian enemy to define itself against, an actual, red-line choice between domination and cooperation, because when the choice is purely theoretical it’s very easy to make exception after exception to freedom
aug 29, 2025, 9:14 pm • 1 0 • view
I think the incompatibility between the two is that Conservatism worship of tradition means it cannot stomach the inevitable culture tides and changes that liberalism allows. Eventually conservatives will seek the coercive power to prevent change and that means destroying liberty.
aug 29, 2025, 9:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Generally speaking, I break up current ideologies as: 1) Progressives believe in shaping institutions to produce positive change 2) Liberals believe individual liberty is a high (or highest) value 3) Conservatives are skeptical of (1) 4) Reactionaries want to return to an imagined past.
aug 29, 2025, 9:05 pm • 50 5 • view
5) Authoritarians want the warm embrace of an all-decided, all-controlling state and to wield it against their enemies. You can obviously have authoritarian-progressives (those are your Maoist/Stalinist communists) and liberal-progressives (social democrats, democrats).
aug 29, 2025, 9:05 pm • 50 5 • view
Equally, you can have both conservative-authoritarians and reactionary-authoritarians, but conservative-liberal is, in fact, an ideology that functions and they exist, in limited numbers (again, they're NeverTrumpers).
aug 29, 2025, 9:06 pm • 46 0 • view
an eminently reasonable taxonomic starting point, but [deep breath, 8000 word rant]
aug 29, 2025, 9:06 pm • 0 0 • view
I think conservativism needs to have a positive definition, not merely skeptical of change or progressivism. The less hostile definition I like is that conservativism believes that some people are more capable than others, and society is better off when those people have more power and privilege.
aug 30, 2025, 12:17 am • 2 0 • view
That definition is coherent with both reactionary conservativism that sees men/white/rich people as more capable, and a liberal conservativism that sees capability as something proven through fair competition.
aug 30, 2025, 12:17 am • 2 0 • view
It's a sort of 'Chesteron's Fence' conservatism that wants to be careful about reforms, but is willing to enact reforms that are proved to have a high likelihood of enhancing liberty or improving wellbeing without injury to liberty. That form can exist and does exist, but it is not MAGA.
aug 28, 2025, 5:16 pm • 84 0 • view
A hesitance to enact reforms paired with a willingness (at least ostensibly) to enact well justified ones is *centrism*, not conservatism. Conservatism is a desire to prevent / roll back reforms, and this is the natural outcome of pursuing that even after losing the battle to prevent change.
aug 28, 2025, 6:18 pm • 0 0 • view
I disagree here. 'Centrism,' I see, as an ideology of consensus and compromise, regardless of the ideological coherence of either. Meanwhile 'roll back' reforms is not conservatives, but reactionaries, a distinction that matters.
aug 28, 2025, 6:23 pm • 11 0 • view
I think you're focusing on political behaviors, in which respect yes, the positions you're describing are different. But when interrogating party transitions, I think that's less useful than focusing on how political ideologies behave in different contexts.
aug 28, 2025, 6:56 pm • 1 0 • view
What I'm describing as centrism can be incoherently focused on finding a middle ground, especially in the current context. But in a different context with broad political cohesion and functioningly moderate parties, it looks like hesitance and possible acceptance of light reforms.
aug 28, 2025, 6:56 pm • 0 0 • view
What I'm describing as conservatism often looks like hesitant resistance to reforms in the same context, because often an most effective way to resist change. But once that change has happened it becomes reactionary, because that's what's required to roll reforms back.
aug 28, 2025, 6:56 pm • 1 0 • view
And I think you are taking some conservatives at their word when they protest that this isn't the inevitable reaction of conservative parties which fail to prevent change. They say they were just legitimately hesitant about radical reform, and all this chaos is evidence they were right to do so.
aug 28, 2025, 6:56 pm • 1 0 • view
But that's a convenient mask, and only believable if you don't belong to a demographic that was under their bootheel during that period. "Liberal conservatives" have *always* embraced authoritarian methods of controlling and suppressing minorities and leftist change, they just didn't have to upend
aug 28, 2025, 6:56 pm • 2 0 • view
Not sure that works because the reforms are radically faster than a human lifetime now. If you are conservative to the values of the 80s then you will oppose gsy marriage and be sceptical about interracial marriage. The Status quo goal for conservatives does not change as fast as the Status quo.
aug 29, 2025, 7:54 am • 1 0 • view
But not one that conservatives can hold to because they aren't going to suddenly end up okay with a new status quo when progress happens. They want the status quo of their past, and that means reaction.
aug 29, 2025, 2:20 am • 1 0 • view
Exactly. Conservatives will ask you to believe that they are resisting change out of hesitance because it implies a more reasonable response to those changes happening anyway. But that's just not how it has ever worked in practice.
aug 29, 2025, 12:13 pm • 1 0 • view
That said, this sort of 'liberal conservatism' really only finds expression in opposition to radical authoritarianism, which is why, I think, it was relatively more prominent during WWII and the Cold War, when there were obvious right- and left-authoritarian models that attacked liberty.
aug 28, 2025, 5:18 pm • 63 1 • view
I'd suggest you see a resurgence of this kind of 'liberal-conservatism' among what remains of the NeverTrumpers: both the Bulwark and Dispatch crowd, annoyed by the radicalism of the farther left, but also far more alarmed and angered by the authoritarian radicalism of MAGA.
aug 28, 2025, 5:20 pm • 66 2 • view
one problem that I have with the 'Never-Trump'ers is that they have yet to repudiate the reactionary bigotry and conspiracy theories of the neo-Confederates, allowing what used to be the 'John Birch Society' to morph into MAGA
aug 28, 2025, 6:41 pm • 8 0 • view
also there’s a sense in which all of the progressives now calling for a return to civic virtue espousing traditionally conservative positions: there is a correct standard of behavior, a proper way of doing things, that people must be held to for the good of the community.
aug 28, 2025, 5:25 pm • 22 2 • view
this is a common joke among the liberal currents folks, recognizing the kind of irony of how more and more of us progressives start to sound like old-fashioned small-c civic conservatives because we're reacting to such open evil and moral degradation
aug 29, 2025, 9:17 pm • 9 0 • view
After 2016, I observed: when reactionaries are ascendant, the progressives become conservatives, to preserve their gains.
aug 30, 2025, 3:59 pm • 1 0 • view
like i legit know more than one progressive that's started going to church (UU or open liberal nondenom sects) this year, and not out of newfound religiosity
aug 29, 2025, 9:20 pm • 8 0 • view
FWIW, as a European I feel the US-progressive debate about convervatism sorely lacks examples from beyond their own borders. No broad political movement is without sin, but many Republican sins are particularly American. E.g. for all her faults, Merkel's convervatism couldn't be less like MAGA.
aug 28, 2025, 5:42 pm • 7 0 • view
I am not sure Merkle is a conservative in a german context anymore. And looking at the trajectory of german politics since her...nah, this works.
aug 29, 2025, 7:46 am • 2 0 • view
This seems true, though it’s sad they are so few. Short of a universally recognized disaster (which I’m not ruling out given gross incompetence) it’s hard to see how those guys can become the core of moral conservatism. Maybe best case is dems becoming big tent that dominates 55-60% of electorate?
aug 28, 2025, 8:53 pm • 1 0 • view
i suppose that "l-c" idea manifests as people who identify as conservative but cannot be frightened into supporting illiberal forms of governance. [conjecture] US conservatives in the post-WW2 era were mostly pro-liberal, but applying neoliberalism to them for 40+ years made them mostly anti-liberal
aug 28, 2025, 5:41 pm • 4 0 • view
I think the brainrot of Fox News needing to present a vision of the world that justified voting deep red even when GOP policies were not succeeding played a big role in it.
aug 28, 2025, 5:56 pm • 10 0 • view
On some level, I think personalities are just naturally either excited by or worried by change and I don't think the slice of people in either group changes very much. A healthy politics is when the first group is excited by pro-freedom change and the latter group worried by anti-freedom change.
aug 28, 2025, 5:57 pm • 12 0 • view
Yes, though the latter group will also naturally be scared by trying to right lacking Implementation of liberal values.
aug 29, 2025, 7:47 am • 1 0 • view
Right liberal conservatives are just Dems, now, Generally. We just don't have political language in this country for such a thing as in the US 'liberal' means something more specific as, until quite recently, all actors in US politics were politely assumed to be liberals in the classical sense.
aug 29, 2025, 9:13 pm • 1 0 • view
Which itself was not true, as it's difficult to call a segregationist classically liberal, but whatevs.
aug 29, 2025, 9:14 pm • 1 0 • view
It's possible, sure, but does it have any actual traction over the decades-long flood of shit that modern conservatism has become?
aug 28, 2025, 5:33 pm • 3 0 • view
I mean, "conservatism," in the sense of wanting to CONSERVE things, can in fact apply to good things. I would like to conserve the New Deal and the Civil Rights Act, among other things.
aug 28, 2025, 5:24 pm • 3 0 • view
In my lifetime Canada had a conservative Prime Minister who was the greatest creator of protected public spaces the country has ever known. Now, conservatives spend their days hacking those spaces to pieces for their billionaire sponsors. The whole movement is as corrupt as it is bigoted.
aug 29, 2025, 9:55 pm • 0 0 • view
Wow. I hadn't heard of Wilhoit's law before, and I'm glad you brought it up. Not only does it seem to fit the situation, when I looked it up, I stumbled upon an interview with Wilhoit, where he comes across as a very intelligent and interesting person, very worth reading. slate.com/business/202...
aug 29, 2025, 11:07 am • 4 1 • view
glad to help! it's the gift that keeps on giving. other fun eponymous laws you might not have heard of * Brandolini's Law * Betteridge's Law
aug 29, 2025, 4:23 pm • 2 0 • view
I'd say its bigotry is very conventional for reaction - reaction has been tied to bigotry just about forever. What makes it radical, like Nazism/fascism generally, is that it is anti-institutional. Institutionalism is typically part of at least small c conservatism but very much is not for fascism
aug 29, 2025, 9:11 pm • 0 0 • view