Epistome

My quest to understand the inscrutable nature of conservatism has been very challenging, and may hopefully be coming to an end.
    I have found simple and benign definitions, such as conservatism is an ideology of conserving the best of the past for present day needs and the future. It is best to rely on what is tried and proven, than to take chances with the unknown. Who would contend or disagree with that sentiment?
    But then we too often see that it is trying to conserve not only what is best from the past, and often not that, but what is worst. It produces a resistance to change that protects and encourages bigotry, a crippling disrespect for democracy, a committed denial of fact even in the face of immediate and catastrophic danger. How does that conserve the best from the past, unless that best is something that predated the Age of Reason, and seeks to annihilate the intellectual and technological advances of modern times?
    It seems that two very different perspectives of reality are at war with one another, when there should not be any war at all.
    We hear that conservatism is the protector of freedom. It tries to restrain big government from unwarranted control, and keep taxes low. Sounds good, although it never achieves either of these goals, even when it is in power. In fact, it produces the opposite, if one considers the deficit a future tax burden. But the freedom they defend is not freedom at all. They wish to impose religious dictates, devalue science, which has gone a long way to free us from ignorance and disease, elevate creation myths to factual curriculums, bring us to war under false pretenses, and destroy progress by promoting political strategies based on lies.
    Occasionally you find eloquence in the words of their more intelligent thinkers, people like Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. They work hard at substantiating conservatism as not only acceptable, but as the only hope society has against the perilous rush of liberalism. They consider all points of liberalism as extreme, of course, even though without liberal democracy and the open mind of reason, the world we live in would be a dark, restrictive place where freedom was limited to the privileged. Even Adam Smith's capitalism, remember, was a product of the Age of Reason, and once resisted by conservatism. All this saps conservatism of its credibility.
    If you stay with these shapers of modern conservatism a while, you will eventually hear a dark distrust of human nature, which reflects upon themselves as well. You will hear a disdain for democracy, and a fondness for aristocratic rule. There you will find the early formation of the propaganda machine that feeds the crassness of today's conservative talk radio and television. They makes no qualms about admitting that they want to preserve the privileges of the advantaged, and the twisted sort of privileges of the bigoted, who are merely being used to help the former. Hence the mob of angry supporters fighting against their own interest in the supposed defense of a Constitution that they undercut at the same time. The only ones who benefit are those who form the oligarchy of wealthy CEOs, who pull their strings in the name of corporate greed.
    The more I learn about conservatism, the more it does not make sense. How can so many people believe in it? And with such dumbfounding pride?
    A vital clue leapt out at me from a small book I was reading about a 20th century French philosopher named Michel Foucault. I certainly do not buy into his entire philosophy, but he does raise an interesting point applicable to conservatism.
    He talked about the archeology of knowledge, how each age defines its understanding of things according to precepts of the times.
    For example, reason had to be defined and honored before un-reason could be recognized. In ancient times, madmen were considered sages and soothsayers, and oracles of the gods whose nonsensical ramblings had to be deciphered for their wisdom. Superstition went unchallenged because there was no reliable way to challenge them. Things were what they were, and people submitted to their ignorance.
    Foucault explained this by saying that every age has its own assumptions, prejudices and mindsets that define its relationship to knowledge. He called this peculiar mix episteme. Every age is limited to its unique cluster of psychological perceptions. Change occurs over time, usually by some Copernican revolution that catches the imagination. Truth is therefore defined by the particular moment it is perceived and articulated.
    As long as this episteme supports power in some respect, it remains in control. Hypocrisy is shamelessly overlooked, and tradition supports the status quo.
    As far as our understanding of conservatism goes, the question is this: can two epistemes survive in the same age? I'm don't know if Foucault considered that. Are we witnessing the struggle to maintain or resurrect a pre-Enlightenment vision of the world, wrought with superstition and distrust of reason and science, in a world of ever advancing modernity? In the name of preserving the best from the past, surely a worthy endeavor, are we not entangling ourselves with the inappropriately worst as well?
    The pre-Enlightenment episteme cares little about contradictory fact, shuns intelligence as derogatorily elitist, and generates unreasonable anger at anything that fails to fit its outdated paradigm.
    We are experiencing that today. You cannot reason with people of non-reason. Birthers and Deathers cling to their own self-conjured superstitions no matter how discredited, in order to resist a world they cannot understand. Not "will not," but "cannot." A changing world, based on reason instead of unbending tradition, seems to threaten their entire existence. Liberalism epitomizes that threat, and causes them to aggressively attack it, even while benefiting from its enhancements.
    When conservatives demand their country back, and deface photos of President Obama as Hitler, what do they mean? What threat are they seeing that the rest of us do not? No one has taken the nation away from them. The Constitution still stands. They still have their guns and churches and freedom of speech. The Communist threat does not even exist anymore, despite the rhetoric, and yet they yell and shake and disrupt town hall meetings as if they were under siege.
    The actual threat is that the comfort of their conservative mindset is seriously being questioned. Not so much by liberals, who bend over backwards to placate them, but by the results of conservatives who were previously in power and made such a mess of things. How do you turn that around, except by blaming liberals.
    They are losing the security of their mindset and fighting to reclaim it, no matter how badly it is suited for today's world. The idea of freedom devoid of bigotry and superstition, and some enemy to panic about, is more then they can handle. It is asking too much from those who distrust their own powers of discernment. They literally need the stability of tradition, and nothing more. They have to rebel, and display their guns, and blatantly advertise their prejudices as if by doing so they can reclaim what was lost.
    They see their world as dying. Whereas the Constitution they praised previously seemed limited to states rights, gun ownership, and the abuse of free speech, they now have to face the fact that the federal government was charged from the beginning with promoting the general welfare as well. It is not the Constitution they are defending. It is their partial view of it, and the conservative slogans that try to limit it.
    Only a pre-Enlightenment mind, steeped in fearful superstition and afraid to evaluate things reasonably, would view universal healthcare as a national threat.
    The Rush Limbaughs of the world are fighting dragons from another age that no longer exist. Truth doesn't matter in this war. Morality doesn't matter. They are sadly trying to preserve the values of another age by rejecting the values of this one.
    The sad thing is, today's values need a historic foundation and context. We do need to preserve the best from the past, not to confine the present and restrain the future, but to make human society work. As knowledge and epistemes change, values need to evolve. Not in character, but in depth and relevancy.
    Conservatives have lost their real purpose in this, mostly through the falsehood that accompanies short-term partisanship. Resisting change that has already occurred, benefits everyone, and does not make sense.
    Both sides suffer from this conflict. We all do.

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