The Death of Conservatism

Sam Tanenhaus has just published a short book entitled The Death of Conservatism.   American conservatism is dead, Tanenhaus reports, because it lost its connection with its own essential modesty; its proper role was to act as a counter to “liberal overreach,” of which there was plenty in the 1960s and 1970s. Once it sought to advance policies of its own, and attempted to devise a philosophical justification for those new policies, it was done for.

Now we have a bunch of theatrical talking heads pandering to a minority of right wing radicals.  As a guy who always thought of himself as a conservative, I have had to distance myself from the right wing. I am still a fiscal conservative but a moderate in most other elements of life.  As a political persuasion Libertarianism is tantalizing since it promotes what I value – supporting strong personal rights to life and liberty.

Perhaps we should start a new political philosophy based on fractals – A fractal is generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.”  This new Fractal Party would be homogeneous and represent the individuals fondest dreams since it individual parts would be smaller copies of the whole Fractal Party.  In other words we would be represented as per our wishes since they would be the same as the founding equation and thus the Fractal Party would be a positive force with positive attitudes.

In a way the right wing of today (radicals) is a Fractal Party since they pretty much agree on everything but in a negative direction.  Maybe the radical left wing is the same thing if you come full circle.  What to do?

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