The transformation of the movement has been so complete that what goes by the name “conservative” is often no more than the proclamation of leftist positions that the left has now abandoned for even more radical ones.
One is reminded in this instance of the caustic definition of “conservatism” made by the Southern divine Robert Lewis Dabney in the second half of the 19th century:
…[A] party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable growling, but always acquiesces in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism.
Dabney was ridiculing what he took to be the party of “Northern conservatives,” whom he believed were gulling his fellow Southerners and who he thought were out to advance their own careers while lining their pockets. These Northerners were transparently lying pols who claimed to be what they were not.
Today, faux conservatives are a more serious threat to the right than they were in Dabney’s day. They steal the right’s identity by rewriting its history and enshrining “the resisted novelty of yesterday.” They throw out narratives that no longer fit their desired image or satisfy the tastes of their donors. They also throw out empty rhetorical references to “values” and “principles” that they attribute to conservative thinkers whose real views they shy away from, lest they alienate patrons. Whether we are talking about disquieting thinkers being thrown into a memory hole or being reduced to innocuous objects of celebration, those who suffer either ignominy need to be made once again fitting subjects of discussion. That is what the contributors to this series will try to do.
