{"id":1991,"date":"2013-03-23T19:27:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T19:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/the-way-conservative-should-sound.html"},"modified":"2013-03-23T19:27:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T19:27:00","slug":"the-way-conservative-should-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/the-way-conservative-should-sound.html","title":{"rendered":"The way conservative should sound"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Sometimes conservatives and conservatism get confused. \u00a0One of the triumphs of the progressive movement has been to define conservatism by the worst conservatives, while shielding liberalism from the character flaws of its\u00a0adherents\u00a0 \u00a0As a result, the message of just what\u00a0conservatism\u00a0is supposed to be can get lost in the din of\u00a0various\u00a0progressive attacks, as well as various non-progressive oriented individuals insisting that they are the pure conservatives and it\u2019s everyone else\u2019s fault. \u00a0But in reading a link that a reader sent me, to an article by Jonah Goldberg<\/a>, I stumbled across one of the best, and quite frankly beautiful, expositions of conservatism and what it\u2019s supposed to be:<\/p>\n

My dad, a Jew, loved the spectacle of it all. (The Vatican, he said, was the last institution that \u201creally knows how to dress.\u201d)\u00a0From what he could tell, he liked this new pope too. \u201cWe need more rocks in the river,\u201d my dad explained. What he meant was that change comes so fast, in such a relentless torrent, that we need people and things that stand up to it and offer respite from the current.<\/span>I loved the literary quality of the expression \u201cmore rocks in the river,\u201d even though the imagery doesn\u2019t quite convey what my dad really believed. Dad was a conservative, properly understood. By that I mean he didn\u2019t think conservatism was merely an act of passive and futile defiance against what Shakespeare called \u201cdevouring time.\u201d Unlike human institutions, the rocks do not fight the devouring river of time, it just seems like they do. My dad believed that conservatism was an affirmative act, a choice of prudence and will. In the cacophony of perpetual change, the conservative selects the notes worth savoring and repeats them for others to hear and, hopefully, appreciate.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I really like that. \u00a0An affirmative act, a choice of prudence and will, of selecting the notes worth savoring and repeating them for others to hear. If more who would resist the worst elements of this post-liberal progressive juggernaut ceased with the circular firing squad and reflected on this, I think there could be hope in maintaining the best of what conservative should really mean when people hear the term.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes conservatives and conservatism get confused. \u00a0One of the triumphs of the progressive movement has been to define conservatism by the worst conservatives, while shielding liberalism from the character flaws of its\u00a0adherents\u00a0 \u00a0As a result, the message of just what\u00a0conservatism\u00a0is supposed to be can get lost in the din of\u00a0various\u00a0progressive attacks, as well as various […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe way conservative should sound<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sometimes conservatives and conservatism get confused.  One of the triumphs of the progressive movement has been to define conservatism by the worst\" 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