Please Stop Using That Word!

 

One summer on Nagonaba Street....

What do the dictionaries say about the meaning of the term ‘conservative’?

 

The American Heritage Dictionary says it means “favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.” 

 

Merriam-Webster defines it as “tending to favor established ideas, conditions, or institutions. 

 

Oxford Languages (a new “brand” under whose umbrella resides the Oxford English Dictionary, it seems) defines the adjective ‘conservative’ as follows: “averse to change or holding traditional values.” (And now I cannot find that page again online.)

 

The Cambridge English Dictionary describes the same word as meaning “not usually liking or trusting change, especially sudden change.”  

 

Britannica calls ‘conservatism’ this way: “a political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices.” 

How many “principles” of political conservatism are recognized in the U.S. Some say five, some seven, others ten. It depends on your source. Congressman Mike Johnson, present Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who claims to be a conservative, cites seven “core principles,” and let’s take him at his word, since he is the Speaker. Those principles are, he says: 

 

1. Individual freedom

2. Limited government

3. The rule of law

4. Peace through strength

5. Fiscal responsibility

6. Free markets

7. Human dignity

 

In your opinion, how does the current Republican administration in Washington stack up on these core principles, taken one by one?

 

As for the more general term, I do not see the present administration’s scorched earth raids on government as “favoring traditional values,” “favoring established institutions,” or “opposing sudden change.” There is nothing conservative about filling the most important Cabinet positions with loyalists (most of them unqualified, even unfit for office; many guilty of all manner of crimes and ethics violations) who see their mission as eliminating the very departments they are appointed to oversee. There is nothing conservative about handing the keys to government over to an unelected billionaire (an immigrant, therefore ineligible to be president himself) and his hastily assembled “team” of young, inexperienced tech nerds. And there is nothing conservative about the Supreme Court of the land deciding that the man in the Oval Office is above the law. None of this is conservatism. A coup d'état is by its very definition anything but conservative.

 

So if what's going on in our nation these days isn't conservatism, what is it? Perhaps anarcho-capitalism comes closest. What a dream come true that is for billionaires frustrated that none of them yet controls all the world’s wealth!  Someone else suggests technofascism for what is planned and will shortly be executed if not stopped. Question: Are anarchism and fascism contradictory? An answer to that would depend, I guess, on how one regards law.

P.S. Don't lose heart!

Targets of Our Rage

I’ve been thinking recently about grief and about heartbreak and about how a heart does not break all at once, like a glass dropped on a hard tile floor, but over and over and over again. The breakage of a material object is a one-time event. (Okay, maybe you glue it back together and drop it again, but the events are still each singular.) An aching, breaking heart may stop hurting for a while, but new pangs can come unexpectedly, sharply, deeply, at any time. That was one thought. Another is how much anger can be generated by grievous heartbreak, anger which so often has nowhere to go. I might feel anger toward a late friend or relative who “didn’t take care of himself” and/or with whom a relationship had suffered and not been repaired, but if I allow myself to feel angry with the dead I feel guilt on top of grief and anger. So either I add guilt to grief or repress anger. At present I grieve and fear for the future of my country, and there is anger there, too. Third thought: What I’m thinking now is that the anger of fear and grief can be repressed but not done away with by repression, and that means anger – even rage -- can erupt (like the pangs of grief that come on unexpectedly) at any moment. And it WILL find a target. The target will not be appropriate to the feeling at all, but the feeling – justifying itself – cannot be stopped. And so these days we Americans are like blindfolded archers, shooting arrows of rage in all directions. And if that doesn’t grieve you, I don’t know what will.