# Conservative culture doesn’t conserve anything (Part 1 of 2) Date: 2024-05-16 Next Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/conservative-culture-doesn-t-conserve-anything.part2.md --- --- ### Conservative culture doesn’t conserve anything The problem is the disconnect between a headline like [Japan’s new births fall to record low in 2023 as demographic woes deepen](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/number-births-japan-hits-record-low-2023-2024-02-27/) and a typical Japanese anime shown below where the grandmother barges in unannounced on a young couple and exclaims, “I hope you weren’t doing anything naughty.” ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/conservative-culture-doesn-t-conserve-anything-079d788d34.png) The impulse to keep a society stable and the same is perfectly understandable and defensible. If that’s what conservatives were about we should all be understanding and tolerant. But modern times have exposed conservatives as not really conserving or caring about anything (not even consistently greed): ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/conservative-culture-doesn-t-conserve-anything-d8d8d3a8b9.jpg) Even on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) where conservatives are supposedly fighting “woke” culture to keep society the same, when you look deeper its the same pattern of not really trying conserve anything. Take for instance [Japanese immigration](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-08-03/foreign-workers-japan-quietly-prepares-for-more-immigration): ![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/conservative-culture-doesn-t-conserve-anything-ca53ab932f.png) If the conservative stance were that Japan not allow immigration that would, in theory, be conserving Japanese culture (other than coupling it with such a low birth rate). But the reality on immigration is that conservatives all around the world want to have their cake and eat it too. On top of which are “conservative” policies like lowering taxes for the rich which, far from conserving anything, just tear society apart. At the bottom of any conservative stance is just some form of domination and control — not societal stability. Young people’s sex lives should be constrained even if it means society crumbles. The fight against abortion and birth control should be carried on indefinitely even if it means radical changes for a society that has already stably had these technologies for over fifty years. Women and minorities should be oppressed even if that oppression means continual upheaval. So in the end conservative culture is really just domination culture and even there domination is not being preserved. Domination culture needed a stable society to keep its own hierarchy in place and instead encouraged a [universe 25](https://www.the-scientist.com/universe-25-1968-1973-69941) style dystopia. ![UNIVERSE 25: John Calhoun crouches within his rodent utopia-turned-dystopia that, at its peak, housed approximately 2,200 mice. Calhoun was studying the breakdown of social bonds that occurs under extreme overcrowding, a phenomenon he termed a “behavioral sink.”](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/conservative-culture-doesn-t-conserve-anything-c1c2cf5270.jpg) *UNIVERSE 25: John Calhoun crouches within his rodent utopia-turned-dystopia that, at its peak, housed approximately 2,200 mice. Calhoun was studying the breakdown of social bonds that occurs under extreme overcrowding, a phenomenon he termed a “behavioral sink.”* Effectively “conservative” culture is more radical than any of the supposedly radical ideas they reject. Once the human population exploded beyond any historical precedent, we entered an era where true conservative thought can no longer exist. No even worse that era probably began with the age of agriculture. War on the scale that agriculture allows is historically radical. War is too disruptive to claim it is part of any “conservative” culture and so with the perpetual wars that agriculture brought conservative shifted to domination culture. Weapons of mass destruction, globalization, and the current human population explosion just further ends conservative lines of thinking by making even domination culture too radical. The perpetual wars of old are just too risky and any society attempting that lifestyle will crumble. Open warfare is increasingly replaced with behind the scenes assassinations conducted via technology. Again conservative culture doesn’t conserve anything as thousands of years of military tradition are willingly replaced with drone warfare in the blink of an eye. Again domination culture has more staying power but without tradition and stable society dominating purely by force doesn’t have much chance. The root problem is that humanity is by nature radical. Human speech and thought are radical instruments and any kind of socially stable construct built on them is a castle in the sand. Not surprisingly then the longer lasting “conservative” constructs are those that constantly change. So it comes down to conservative marketing to convince conservatives that new things are old or, in other cases, that old things are new. In this way any radical agenda at all can be called conservative. For instance discrimination is supposed to be “old” but with religion off the table two nearly identical people of the same occupation, class, and nation discriminating against each other based on parentage or gender is historically exceptional. This isn’t the historically frequent case of royals discriminating against commoners or even educated commoners discriminating against uneducated or even a large majority discriminating against a much smaller minority. And LGBTQ which is supposedly “new” is actually ancient — predating humanity. Even discrimination against LGBTQ, in its current form, isn’t very old. One married, child rearing couple discriminating against another married, child rearing couple on the basis of anatomy might be brand new. What might be actually new is the amount of immediate scrutiny that “conservative” culture can find itself under. An ever increasing viewership is now aware that conservative is radical — this is what people complaining about “woke” are actually upset about. What woke really means is that mainstream ideology isn’t mainstream anymore and is just as exposed to scrutiny as all other ideologies. Here’s that complaint from the [conservative horse’s mouth](https://mises.org/book/export/html/133090): > In all variations and colors the ideas of socialism and syn­dicalism have lost their scientific moorings. Their cham­pions have been unable to set forth another system more compatible with their teachings and thereby refute the charge of emptiness by the theoretical economists. There­fore, they had to deny fundamentally the possibility of theoretical knowledge in the field of social science and, especially, in economics. Even the most hard core economist is reluctant to call his discipline a science or compare economic theory to scientific theory in any practical way. Here, as with immigration, conservatives want to have their science and eat it too — believe what we say for no other reason than we said it but still call it science. Here again from the horse’s mouth are [7 core principles of conservatism](https://mikejohnson.house.gov/7-core-principles-of-conservatism/): 1. Individual Freedom 2. Limited Government 3. The Rule of Law 4. Peace through Strength 5. Fiscal Responsibility 6. Free Markets 7. Human Dignity With each of these points the radical nature of conservatism is, in 2024, obvious. Taken to an extreme individual freedom IE refusing to pay taxes or contribute to society and limited government IE no regulation of big business are obviously radical enough to destroy a society and we see that happening. Rule of law is pure word play — obviously laws have to come from humans so this is rule of humans and you haven’t said anything. If the point was that you right down some system which is then forever immutable that’s again a very radical notion and none of the American founders would agree. --- **[Continue reading Part 2 of 2](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/conservative-culture-doesn-t-conserve-anything.part2.md)**