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Why should I be agonizing over the death of conservatism?
Haven’t I been saying for years that all the existing forms of conservatism are deeply inadequate, compromised, not based in non-liberal principle, and thus, in reality, forms of liberalism? Haven’t I been saying that the greatest obstacle in the path of true conservatism was these various established schools of “liberal conservatism” which gave conservatives the comforting illusion that a conservative opposition to liberalism existed and was fighting the good fight, an illusion that thus prevented conservatives from actually fighting, whereas in reality these existing forms of conservatism were only facilitating and surrendering to liberalism? Haven’t I wished for the demise of these false forms of conservatism, particularly the most important and dishonest one of all, neoconservatism? So, instead of seeing the events of the last week as a historic defeat, we should see them as a historic victory. Existing conservatism has taken off its conservative mask and revealed its liberal face, which I have been saying was there all along. This acceptance of reality doesn’t change the fact that the liberals who have been pretending for all these years to be conservatives are deserving of contempt. But—the deeper realization—that doesn’t matter any more. The faux conservatives were only a problem because of their claim to be conservative. Now that they have come out undisguisedly as liberals, now that conservatism as we’ve known it is dead, now that there’s no remaining plausible pretense of there being a conservative opposition to liberalism, now that the triumph of liberalism is manifest and undeniable, the ground is finally cleared for the creation of a real opposition to liberalism.
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