Conservatism is a movement of fighting for freedom. That is, the freedom to do nothing in the face of tyranny.
The conservative movement is about trying to sweep everything under the bed so that it doesn’t have to actually put forth the effort of cleaning the mess. Establishment conservatives only do something if it preserves the freedom of inaction. They categorize enforcing the law and protecting moral values as unpatriotic because if you have to enforce the law, that means there are flaws in how America currently operates, and to admit that is unpatriotic. Thus, inaction is the most patriotic action. Similarly with morals, binding educators within a certain range of thought—say, forcing them not to promote communism or gender dysphoria—would violate conservatives’ sacred freedom to do nothing; they would have to actually legislate what they believe instead of letting the Left legislate leftist beliefs.
The moral imperative for conservative politicians is to never use the government to conserve American culture because, “If we do that, then the Left will use government to enshrine their own idea of American culture!” And they don't realize the Left has been using government to do that for decades, precisely because conservative politicians don't use power when they have it. The conservative movement, for politicians, has become a fight to have the smallest influence on public policy and avoid being called mean names.
At every turn, conservative politicians and pundits are falling over themselves trying to keep the Left from slapping them with unfavorable labels like “racist,” or “homophobic,” or “bigoted,” ignorant to the fact that they must abandon any meaningful agenda to do so. Freedom doesn't mean anything to them unless they earn the approval of their enemies.
Leaders of conservatism love having the freedom to let the country close down, freedom to watch Americans get fired for making their own health decisions, freedom to let kids learn that society is irredeemably racist, freedom to leave citizens detained without bail, freedom to let schools and the FBI treat parents as terrorists, freedom to ignore biological reality. Because the worst evil facing the country right now is actually high taxes.
The only way to earn society's praise instead of its scorn is to become agents of the Left. Liz Cheney, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney have proven this true. Romney morphed from a man who would “put y'all back in chains,” as Biden informed the black populace in 2012, into one who was a brave hero of the country. That was, of course, after he worked against his own constituents and voted to impeach Trump. Bush has been steadily moving to the left after he left office: he recently said that “the Republican Party has a shot at future elections if it curbs its 'white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism,'” he condemned the Republican Party as “isolationist, protectionist and, to a certain extent, nativist,” and he has advocated for “border enforcement with a compassionate touch.” After Trump began questioning the integrity of the 2020 election, Cheney urged the GOP to reject him from the Party, and she supported the Democratic effort to investigate the Capitol protest that caused zero non-participant deaths and 1,300 times less property damage than the BLM riots.
“I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
—Liz Cheney
The hostility doesn't end with Trump, however; the Party elites harbor equal contempt for us rabble who supported him, because we “undermine our democracy.” Before COVID-19 hit, Trump saw that the Left was corrupting American law and culture, and he used his power to stop them. That violates modern conservatism’s moral imperative, so its thought-leaders must put an end to that strategy and all who support it.
After four years of leftists questioning the 2016 election without condemnation, conservative leaders forbade any criticism or allegations of illegitimacy against the Left's actions in 2020, publicly saying that the protestors who rose in disagreement should rot in prison. If there were crimes during the election, that would 1) signify that U.S. elections are insecure and 2) require Republicans to use power to correct it. The GOP rejects both of those conclusions; that's the only way they can justify doing nothing.
Conservatism was satisfied to use its freedom to idly let the Left manufacture a conspiracy implicating a sitting President, conduct impeachment hearings, and assault U.S. election integrity. However, when conservative underlings bring justified impeachment demands and suspicions about an election, leaders have an obligation to restrain them. The actions are unpatriotic regardless of who takes them and whether there are valid accusations, but countering those unpatriotic actions is only patriotic when conservatives restrain conservatives. Restraining the Left’s unpatriotic actions would be likewise unpatriotic since it takes more effort to do—conservative laymen esteem conservative figures’ instructions, leftists don't. Restraining conservatives means the movement keeps its freedom to do nothing.
Following a summer’s worth of riots, murders, and arson, conservatism simply shrugged, but the movement lent no help to its laity, who had to protect their neighborhoods from destruction on their own. Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) said, “People will do what they will do,” and conservatism agreed. One brave teenager traveled to help his countrymen in a different state, bringing medical supplies and a means of self-defense. When he shot three men in self-defense—one who had sexually abused five children, one who was a felony domestic abuser, and one who had a history of disobeying police orders—after they chased and assaulted him, conservatism made no move to aid him, though Trump and Tucker Carlson gave him nice words.
The FBI has now begun to restrain lay conservatives, making the conservative establishment’s job even easier. They recently responded to a request to designate COVID restrictions as terrorism, and traditional conservative writers are justifying it. Specifically in question is the right of American citizens to address their school boards and demand accountability from those who oversee their children, but that would entail using power and abandoning the freedom of inaction—and your children aren't that important. Fierce devotion to your children and your own values is terrorism in the eyes of modern conservatism because it violates the freedom to allow government employees to teach your children anything they want.
Conservatism also applies this logic to governors, businesses, families, and immigration. The movement says that, to the greatest extent possible, every entity should have the power to do anything it wants without interference, consequences be dammed.
Trump followed that principle by letting governors exercise absolute control over their states’ economies and workers. He did so again by refusing to activate the National Guard to protect Americans when governors let rioters run rampant. Governor Noem (R-SD) followed that principle when she refused to act against a concerted effort by major companies to control their employees’ health and force them to take a vaccine. Several governors and pundits follow that principle when they refuse to enact or support bans on curricula teaching that America is racist at its core. Trump and Governor Abbott (R-TX) followed that principle by—despite their bold words—taking soft action on the border and refusing to solve the immigration crisis; there is still no border wall, and there is a consistent flow of people breaking the law to cross into this country.
Conservatism used to be the movement of Christian morals and traditional family values. It has abandoned those principles due to the fact that they impose limitations on people instead of allowing them to do anything imaginable. Modern conservatism ardently defends perverting the definition of marriage from a covenant between a man and a woman into one that mutually joins two men or two women; it refuses to say any longer that a child needs a father and a mother. Similarly, modern conservatism refuses to say that a man cannot be a woman or that a woman cannot be a man; conservative leaders praised and promoted Caitlyn Jenner, a man who believes he is a woman, as the Republican candidate for governor of California. American youth will, in increasing rates, desire to mutilate their bodies to become whatever they desire. Already, Nickelodeon star Keiynan Lonsdale contends that he is a tree. A tree. And conservatism has allowed such thinking to flourish.
The root of all these problems is the desire of the conservative elite, and many laymen, to have their movement viewed positively by their opponents, and they think that redefining American culture to only encompass the concept of “freedom of everyone except conservatives to do anything they want” will achieve their goals. They’re both right and wrong. They’re right in that the Left will enjoy that they have abandoned their values and paved the way for the Left to have free reign over government and society. They’re wrong in that the Left will never admit to seeing them favorably because the Left needs an enemy against whom they can justify continually coercing the country into conformity to their own vision.
This is today's conservatism.
____________________________________________________________________________