Why Today's "Conservatives" Cannot

Conservatives cannot win because the enemy to which they are opposed is a revolutionary enemy - an enemy with revolutionary goals and guided by a revolutionary way of life.

The advantage has always lain - and will always lie - on the side of the contender who is prepared to take the offensive, rather than maintaining a defensive position only. And the evolutionary natures of the conservative and the revolutionary determine that the one shall always play an essentially defensive role and the other an offensive role.

The conservative may launch brief counterattacks - he may sally forth from his fortress to harry his revolutionary besieger - but in the long run he is always the besieged and the revolutionary the besieger.

The goal of the conservative is to protect what is, or, at the extreme, to restore what recently was. The goal of the revolutionary is to radically transform what is, or to do away with it altogether, so that it can be replaced by something entirely different. Thus, the conservative talks of halting crime in the streets, of keeping down taxes, of fighting the spread of drugs and pornography, of keeping Big Government in check. And the leftist strives for a utopia in which there shall be no war, no "repression," no "discrimination," no "racism," no bounds on the individual's freedom of action - a raceless and effortless nirvana of "love" and "equality" and plenty.

The conservative's goals may seem reasonable enough - and attainable. The leftist's goals, on the other hand, lie in a never-never land far beyond the horizon of reality. And that is precisely what gives the advantage to the left. When the conservative makes some minor gain - getting a conservative into office - he is likely to act as if he had just won the whole war. He sees the achievement of his aims just around the corner, he lowers his guard, and he settles back to enjoy the fruits of his imagined victory. But the leftist is never satisfied, regardless of what concessions are made to his side, for his goals always remain as remote as before.

If the leftist makes new demands - for example, for the forced racial integration of schools or housing - the conservative will oppose them with a plea to maintain "neighborhood" schools and "freedom of association." When the smoke clears, the leftist will have won perhaps half what he demanded, and the conservative will have lost half what he tried to preserve. But then the conservative will accept the new status quo, as if things had always been that way, and prepare to defend it against fresh attacks from the left with the same ineptitude he displayed in defending the old position.

Continued:

http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=3476

All I will say is that many revolutionaries have already lost. There are many communist parties in France with some 5 percent of the vote, they may be on the 'offensive' but they've already lost.

Politcal correctness is proof enough of gradual leftist victory. Compare the 1700's or even the 1950's to now and although there are still conservatives, we are further left than we used to be.

Of course, right now I'm speaking about the Western world.

You can still buy Che Guevara t-shirts in NYC. Communism will probably remain a symbol of heroic revolution and the fight against tyranny despite its realities we've seen thus far.

For the most part, I agree with Siegfriedson on this theory.

Maggy Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought great revivals of conservatism.

Both of them challenged the power of the unions and brought them down.

In fact, I think the word 'conservative' is misleading. In France, we have castrating social laws ranging from paying the unemployed for months on end, 35h week, limitations on hiring and firing etc... In France, conservatives and leftists exchange roles. Leftists start are on the defense because all their social laws are already in place, it is the conservatives who must push for reform and facing stubborn resistance from mass union strikes. In that situation, the conservative's goals seem unattainable.

I hope I was clear.

It's so hard to talk about these issues when there are so many nations to be considered. I definitely don't know enough about European politics.

I guess something that can apply to all of today's Western nations is the idea of political correctness and this "liberal mindset." In this respect, would you not agree that the West has generally moved left?

For example, wouldn't a French politician recieve as much flak for their racist remarks as an American one?

Absolutely. Its true in certain areas we are very liberal and egalitarian compared to some years ago. But equally in many countries who were extreme leftist (China, Russia for example) they have only gone towards freedom and capitalism (more right-wing ideas)

So what I think we can say, is that the old order (whether conservative right or conservative left) gradually gives way to a more middle view.

Liberalism is about changing things that don't need to be changed, and they only want to actually change it when it works to THEIR advantage.

So nothing needs to change in today's world, UnderDawg?

I never said that. I was merely stating the fact that liberals only want things changed that will work to THEIR benefit, not the world as a whole as they would would want you to believe.

Name some of these issues.

As soon as I think of em, I'll be glad to. But at the moment, I am playing Magic so I'm a little preoccupied.

Very interesting...