Chapter Thirteen - Conservatism Isn’t Conserving Anything

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Conservatism Isn’t Conserving Anything

ASK SOMEONE WHAT “conservative” means, and you’ll usually get something about values.
Tradition. Faith. Family. Responsibility. Freedom.

Sounds noble, even grounding.
But zoom in, and it falls apart.

Because when you look at what’s actually being conserved, it’s not tradition.
It’s power.

And that’s not just critique, it’s math.

Today’s conservative movement isn’t about maintaining what works.
It’s about attacking what threatens control, even if it means burning down everything they claim to protect.

Start with fiscal conservatism, the idea that conservatives care about budgets, debt, and economic restraint.

Now look at the receipts.

The Reagan deficit.
The Bush tax cuts.
The Trump tax cuts.
Every GOP presidency since the 1980s has ballooned the deficit.
Because fiscal conservatism was never about spending less.
It was about spending differently. Funneling cash to the wealthy and cutting lifelines for the rest.

What about social conservatism?

The kind that says we need to uphold morality, decency, and family values.

This is the party that backed a president who cheated on three wives, paid off porn stars, bragged about sexual assault, and held a Bible upside down for a photo op.
They’ll tell you marriage is sacred while banning books, ignoring hunger, and gutting childcare.
They scream about drag queens while electing men who assault teenagers.

Morality isn’t the point.

Control is the point.

Control over what people can read.
Control over who gets to vote.
Control over who gets to exist in public.

Then there’s religious conservatism.

It used to be about humility, faith, and loving thy neighbor.
Now it’s about owning the libs and building Christian nationalism.
Jesus flipped tables.
These guys flip elections.

Even constitutional conservatism, the belief in preserving the founding principles, has turned into performance art.

These are the people who say they love the Constitution, while supporting executive overreach, disregarding election results, and stacking the courts with loyalists who reinterpret the law to match their politics.

They’ll swear by the Second Amendment while ignoring the First.
They’ll cry “freedom of religion” while banning other faiths from public life.

Conservatism, as an idea, once meant restraint.

Now it means reaction.

Not “let’s preserve something good,” but “let’s stop anything that feels new.”

Progress isn’t debated, it’s attacked.

Public health? Tyranny.
Climate action? Communist hoax.
Racial equity? Wokeness.
Education reform? Indoctrination.
Voting rights? Fraud.

The guiding principle isn’t stability.
It’s resistance.
Not because the system is sacred, but because losing power feels like extinction.

That’s why the modern right is louder than ever.
Angrier than ever.
More aggressive than ever.

Because conservatism isn’t conservative anymore.

It doesn’t build.
It burns.
It doesn’t protect.
It polices.

And deep down, it doesn’t even want to go back to the past.

It wants to punish the present for changing.