re: #6 EPR-radar

If conservatism is understood as the effort to preserve privileges of a in-group, then this is inevitable. “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition…” etc.

To flesh this out a bit more, as soon as conservatism evolves past a mindless resistance to change in all its forms, that evolution is actually a degeneration, since the resulting ideology is (in a modern setting) necessarily a fascist reaction vs. democracy.

An example of this was made clear in the marriage cases — the least offensive arguments the opponents of marriage equality made in court were mindless tradition arguments. All positive arguments for marriage inequality were more or less inherently offensive.

Gore Vidal was 100% correct when he referred to Buckley as a crypto-fascist. These days, of course, there is no crypto-fascism on the right, because there is no crypto- about it any more.

Buckley et. al “throwing out the kooks” was always much more about PR than about the substance. E.g., Birchers have been writing WSJ op-eds for decades.

Yes, but American conservatism isn’t supposed to be about preserving privileges of an in group. It’s supposed to be about preserving institutions while implementing gradual change for the better. The institution in this case is the constitution and the branches of government described therein. Republicans don’t practice conservatism. At best they’re populists. Their power structure is built around enabling poor white trash and their revival tent religion to literally take over the people’s house and to shit on its floor. This strain goes all the way back to Andrew Jackson, though he certainly didn’t invent it.