Comment by PaulHoule
3 days ago
An essay in the 1964 book Ideology and Discontent makes the case that the public isn't qualified to have an opinion and found that shockingly low numbers of people can define "liberal" and "conservative" but (1) that was when hardly anyone went to college and (2) the author had the structuralist view that ideology was a fight between "marxism" and "anti-marxism" and wouldn't really recognize, say, a black nationalist or an ecofeminist as having an advanced ideology.
It's a running gag that liberals don't liberate and that conservatives don't conserve but I think liberals who liberate and conservatives who conserve have something to contribute.
I think Jane's respect for existing institutions, places and organizations that arise out of markets and fear of centralized planning are conservative. It makes me think of how Petroski wrote a whole book about pencils that comes to the conclusion that central planning doesn't work because no individual knows how to make a pencil.
I see that 'conservatives' and 'libertarians' are claiming her. I'm not sure she'd claim them. She was anti-ideology.
But this conservativism you speak of, it's such a squishy term. Respect for existing institutions, places and organizations fits when it fits and then doesn't when it doesn't. Right now, it doesn't.
Buckley (oh so nobly) said A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it. But then he also said that he'd be for the most right, viable candidate who could win. So much for standing athwart history.