It has become increasingly clear to me that American conservatism is a movement primarily concerned with defending a certain largely made-up conception of traditional American identity against the sort of secular-rational social change that has made the rise of Julia Gillard and Johanna Sigursdottir possible and Elena Kagan’s elusiveness necessary.
I've found myself increasingly alienated from conservatism in the last year or so, largely for the reasons Wilkinson is talking about. Arguments from tradition are maddening: some assume the present back into the past, which is difficult enough. Other arguments cover themselves in a kind of pseudo-history. But it's never the proposed history that matters, it's the assertion of a tradition: one can offer counter-arguments by pointing out false historical claims, but this falsity never seems to make a difference, no matter how many places it accumulates.
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