> The actual cornerstone of conservatism is an instinctual preference for stability, order, and the familiar.

Yeah, that actually is an inability to process reality. Stuff changes, and things have never been stable or orderly.

Not every change is good, so we should be cautious. That's also a cornerstone of conservatism.

Fear is quite distinct from caution, conservatism consistently seems to be defined by the former and not the latter.

Not every status quo is good.

Staunch adherence to the familiar in a changing world is dangerous in-and-of itself. It is inherently anti-science.

And "order" doesn't fully capture it either, because the concept it gestures at can be more accurately described as "hierarchy" - as Kirk puts it, "a conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural" distinctions".

In other words, everyone has a proper place in society, with some above and others below, and any attempts to remove that hierarchy are moral wrongs which require the transgressors to be put back in their place.

You can see how that core belief is intrinsically dangerous, and how nearly every controversial conservative belief about social classes falls out of it.

(It's also worth noting that this explains why conservatism's earliest champions were supporters of the aristocracy, and also why conservatism is more beloved by the old-money wealthy than move-fast-and-break-things new-money tech.)

Ah yes, in a world where half of all published "science" is fake or fraudulent (and dominated by leftists), being conservative is "anti-science".

>in a world where half of all published "science" is fake or fraudulent (and dominated by leftists),

See here is the thing- you don't know this is true. You never actually went and looked at the science or verified how much of it is fake. And yet, at the same time, you benefited from this science when its convenient to you because you probably don't realize that a medication or something you are using came from left leaning university.

This is what I mean by being out of touch with reality.

Sigh. Stop. I read the parent's post and his concerns are not without merit.

<< See here is the thing- you don't know this is true. You never actually went and looked at the science or verified how much of it is fake.

Technically speaking, neither do you unless you went over said data yourself. That said, some people did[2] and found that a good chunk of current studies can't be replicated. What does that say about the state of said science? Does it support your position? Does it support parent's post?

<< something you are using came from left leaning university.

The problem is not with left leaning or even right leaning. It is with people who blindly proclaim "Science!", but, at best, are an equivalent of annoying fanboys and, at worst, dilettantes, who feel compelled to use power of the state to squash people, who, in their mind, undermine their POV[1].

<< This is what I mean by being out of touch with reality.

And somehow, just to top it all off, they feel superior.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko [2]https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778

Respectfully, the replication crisis in science doesn’t invalidate scientific consensus. The stuff that actually is thoroughly checked and widely accepted still stands, and is a much stronger foundation because it has been challenged and verified many times.

It’s a misconception that every published paper must be true. Testing and invalidating results is a part of the process.

Talking about leftist ideology in science hints that you want to reject the consensus because it disagrees with your dearly held beliefs.

<< Respectfully, the replication crisis in science doesn’t invalidate scientific consensus.

Sure, but it does undermine it.

<< The stuff that actually is thoroughly checked and widely accepted still stands, and is a much stronger foundation because it has been challenged and verified many times.

Which part of replication crisis is hard to understand? If it cannot be reliably replicated, then the foundation itself is flimsy bordering on tenuous.

<< It’s a misconception that every published paper must be true.

Bold, but I will attempt to respond with a straight face. Sure, but the referenced crisis does not affect one or even two papers. The problem starts when it hits sufficient number to make people question how much of those papers are just academia level reach arounds.

<< Testing and invalidating results is a part of the process.

Yes, absolutely. After all, exception tests the rule. The problem starts when the exception becomes the norm.

<< Talking about leftist ideology in science hints that you want to reject the consensus because it disagrees with your dearly held beliefs.

I would encourage you to read what I wrote and consider hesitating on trying to decode language as it is not your forte. I am not rejecting consensus. I am rejecting your premise.

edit: removed otherwise antagonizing language

> Sure, but it does undermine it.

Not really. Take something like vaccines. There’s a ton of verified evidence that they work, and the view that they cause harm is not well supported at all.

The fact that someone published papers about idk some obscure alkaloid causing mice to live longer and it’s the only paper ever written on this subject and it can’t be replicated, doesn’t say anything about the efficacy of vaccines.

There’s stuff that becomes a part of the consensus doesn’t do so based of a single paper.

The scientific knowledge is solid. And scientists know not to trust single unverified results.

<< Take something like vaccines.

If I may suggest something. If you are actually trying to convince someone, I would go with something a little less 'part of the culture wars in US'. That said, even for a coffeeless me it is laughably easy to dismantle this argument, but it will not take us anywhere useful.

Go with gravity man, it is genuinely harder to deny gravity.

I think you get the point that I’m making though. You could substitute vaccines by plate tectonics or evolution by natural selection or that smoking causes cancer.

I do hear you. What I am arguing that knowing your audience and meeting them where they are will likely yield better results. Otoh, I argue to argue, so there is that..

> The issue is, you will never ever see me as being correct because in your brain you are incapable of realizing that you are wrong.

The insanity and narcissism in this statement must be satire right? The idea that you're right and anyone who doesn't see that is clearly just incapable of recognizing they are wrong seems hypocritical at best and the same line of thinking that has lead to some lovely historical movements at worst.

> The actual cornerstone of conservatism is an instinctual preference for stability, order, and the familiar.

... which inevitably breaks down when fundamental assumptions become disproven. And that's the point. Many "moderate" Conservatives still believe in the "trickle down" economy theory or that government debt is inherently bad and a government's budget needs to be balanced.

Both have been proven time and time again to be not just wrong, but outright disastrous in their consequences, and yet Germany voted that ideology into chancellorship, not to mention what is currently going on in the US.

I can't even tell what the current ideology of the US is. The current thought seems to be that debt doesn't matter but social programs are waste. So we must run up deficits while reducing spending.

The US seems to be combining the worst of both ideologies. I can't imagine what happens next.

Not much room to cut taxes for the rich without increasing the deficit which they've said must go down, so their great solution is to cut welfare programs to give a tax cut for the rich.

That is not my confusion. My confusion is that they are labeled conservative.

The current usage of the term "conservative" is just a fig leaf to hide the less-palatable aims of a radical fundamentalist agenda aimed at attacking most modern aspects of our society. Go find any definition of conservatism written by traditional conservative intellectuals, and you will find Trumpists are directly opposed to most of it.

Basically, conservatives got increasingly angry (because things inevitably do change), so they decided to give up on conservatism and flip the table instead. One intellectual upstream of Trumpism is the writings of Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin), who laid out how mere conservatism wasn't enough because "Cthulhu swims left" still, and coined his philosophy "reactionary". This also ties into one of the commonly-described dynamics of fascism - invoking an idea of some imagined idyllic past, as a reason that the current society needs to be attacked and destroyed.

I had never voted for a major party candidate in a national election until Biden 2020 and Harris 2024. I consider those solidly actually-conservative votes, and partially attribute them due to my getting older and more actually-conservative.

Thank you for the history of the shift. The past 3 presidential elections had candidates with real fundamental differences. Obama was the first time I voted for a major candidate.

At least for my lifetime, the reactionary hatemongering has always existed on talk radio. It was used by the larger Republican party to get people all riled up against the system, and our society as a whole, but then calm them down enough to get them into the voting booth to vote for the "less bad" status quo Republicans.

I grew up [second hand] listening to a lot of this, and as I came of age I could never understood why there was so much cynical condemnation of the system but yet the cognitive dissonance to keep voting for more of the system. But I guess farming this dissonant frustration was just the whole point. Another way of looking at it is that Trumpism is this populist monster escaping, devouring the Party traditionalists, and leaving Republicans with nothing but Trump.

In some sense I think that is large part of what's fueling the fascist energy is the fact that Trump is not a [traditional] Republican, a conservative, a moral person, a competent businessman, etc. So throwing your support behind him is already buying into a Big Lie where up is down, there are no values or morals, just purely allegiance to what Dear Leader has declared is true. That none of Trump's policy positions make sense is a feature for keeping that support in line - independent thinkers who would point out the contradictions are ostracized and othered. Essentially the worst social dynamics of "woke" most everyone was wary of, but we had/have forgotten how much worse they can be when power is wielded autocratically rather than bureaucratically.

It's the two Santa's since Reagan. Whenever Dems have power it's always about being fiscally responsible and not raising taxes. When they are they just ignore what they say and spend like a drunken Santa while cutting taxes for the rich.

> government debt is inherently bad and a government's budget needs to be balanced

We're going to find out if that is true or not.

For heavens sake WE ALREADY HAVE FOUND THAT OUT.

Look at Germany: 16 years of austerity policy have left our infrastructure so thoroughly compromised it literally falls apart - we were damn lucky that that bridge collapse in Dresden end of last year didn't kill anyone!

And even in the US you see it with every presidential change: Democrat governments cut services and expenditures because the last Republican cut taxes for the wealthy, the frustration leads to people vote for Republicans who introduce yet another round of billionaire tax cuts and blow up the government debt by untold billions of dollars, rinse and repeat.