How to Unveil the Conundrum of Conservatism

One of the main structural differences I've found between being a liberal and being a conservative is that as a liberal you can basically transfer your political ideas from one place to the next and you're still a liberal - not so with conservatism. In this article you will learn how to unveil the conundrum of conservatism by seeing how its values don't transfer across cultures.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Just the ability to see that the content of conservative values varies by culture

1. See The Transferability of Liberal Values
   
   Liberals worldwide share basic values of keeping religion out of government, protecting the environment, increasing civil liberties, equal rights for women and minorities, multicultural diversity, favoring peace over war and sex and love over violence and hatred, and decreasing the distance between rich and poor.
2. See The Meaning of Conservative That Refers to Conserving
   
   While there are various aspects of conservatism that address laissez-faire economic views, localization of government, cultural isolationism, strong military, and so on, one of the overall features of conservatism is of course to conserve. The status quo is revered so long as that status quo is in keeping with tradition.
3. Tradition And The Status Quo As Having Non-Transferable Contents
   
   Tradition varies as cultures vary and as nations vary. The status quo too varies across borders. What's traditional in America is not remotely traditional in ancient cultures of for instance the Middle East and Far East. What the status quo is in America isn't what the status quo is in Iran.
4. See the Example of Economics
   
   Economic systems do not occur independently of cultures, rather cultural values and economic systems interact and affect each other. In the United States for instance, it's all about chasing the buck, so much so that somehow Christianity and capitalism ended up as unlikely bedfellows (for one famous explanation of this, please see Max Weber's book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, linked at the bottom of this page under Resources).
   
   In today's America, the value of capital and its pursuit has of course turned the entire country, or what's considered "most real" about the country, into a market of exchange values. Note the popular phrase "when you get out into the real world", which usually means the world of commerce, as if somehow advertising were the bedrock of reality. Postmodernists such as Jean Baudrillard call this "hyperreality", in which the simulations of consumer society (i.e. advertising) aren't so much reality as they are replacement for reality. The distinction between fantasy and reality is destroyed. Casinos and Disney, two mainstays of American consumer society, are stark examples of this.
   
   Such an economic system that's based upon the consumption of all that glitters, in which marketing/advertising takes center stage, is the status quo of America, and so it is endorsed by mainstream conservatives. But America has a short history, and in other places the status quo (or the status quo they see melting away) has very little to do with this sort of commerce, so the end result is that conservatives of for instance the Middle East maintain values much different from conservatives of America. In America, all that glitters is gold, whereas in other cultures all that glitters is distraction, intrusion, crass perversion. The Golden Arches, the McEverything is good ol' ingenuity in America, but it's decadence elsewhere.
5. See Religion As the Main Example
   
   Put three old conservative men together, of the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian faiths respectively, and they might commiserate first on the standard "the young people today" stuff, they might talk about the immodesty of young women "these days", and they might exchange photos of their grandchildren. These are transferable conservative values. But the love-in stops shortly after that.
   
   This then is the conundrum of conservatism: that its manifestations across cultures directly conflict, and in days of yore, when the world was big, this didn't pose as much of a problem as it does today. The conservative Jew of Israel claims Zion wheras the conservative Muslim of the same region feels that Israel as a state is thievery. The conservative Christian may not care which way this goes as long as there are open markets (which will likely lead to Christian domination anyway). The list of disagreements is nearly endless, since each religion, each culture of conservatives wants to conserve its own ways, not the ways of the other.
6. See that the Conservative Conundrum Means Warfare
   
   So then, each conservative is a heretic in another culture, a fish out of water, and ironically enough might be seen as a progressive, a liberal, a reactionary, a demon - anything but a conservative! This non-transferability of most conservative values must lead to warfare - either perpetual warfare or an ultimately vanquishing warfare.
   
   Sadly though, perpetual warfare isn't necessarily seen as a bad thing by Western ultraconservatives (even though they'd likely not admit it). Perpetual warfare keeps a population at the mercy of Big Brother as protector, as we see today with things such as the curtailing of civil liberties in the "War On Terror", and it keeps the money pumping through the military-industrial complex. A warfare that vanquishes has its own more self-evident seductions.

Tips & Warnings

• Note the animosity especially between Christian conservatives and Muslim conservatives.
• See also how Jewish ultra-conservatives are part of the fray
• Liberal Muslims, Jews, and Christians conflict much less than do conservatives of all three basic stripes. For instance, conservative Christians have more in common with liberal Muslims than they do with conservative Muslims