being a conservative
May 17, 2008 by elberry
Bob Dylan has his own radio show, thanks be. One listener asked why he mainly played old music, as if to do so were to implicitly despise the music of the moment, the latest hit. Bob replied that it was just that there was more good music available from the past few decades than from the past few months.
For much the same reasons i am a conservative. While i’m not in favour of ancestor worship, slavishly repeating the past, i assume that if something has survived and gives some pleasure, it would be foolish to destroy it. Sadly, since the First World War most town planners and architects seem to have taken the opposite view, with the result that virtually every town and city in England is a concrete abomination. i was lucky in my alma mater, that almost very building in the centre of Durham has protected status, and so the earnest socialists couldn’t raze them to the ground to make way for a McDonald’s or a tower block.
Here’s the Wikipedia definition of conservatism:
Conservatism is a term used to describe political philosophies that favor tradition and gradual change, where tradition refers to religious, cultural, or nationally defined beliefs and customs. The term is derived from the Latin, com servare, to preserve; “to protect from loss or harm”.
For me, the gross decline in British culture during the Nu Labour years is proof enough that the only sane politics are conservative. The Tories weren’t conservative enough.
The problem is the Conservative Party hasn’t really been conservative since the 1970’s. Margaret Thatcher was a radical following neoliberal economic policies where everything had a price. Labour and the Conservatives have both kept that philosophy as integral parts of their ethos.
The destruction of traditional British life began long before Blair and his cronies came into power, they’ve just been accelerating it, they’ve done nothing that a Tory government wouldn’t have done too, given the chance.
It annoys me to see Starbucks and other chain stores popping up all over the country but it’s due to globalisation more than anything else. It’s the same reason there’s so many economic migrants in the UK, business leaders want them here because they keep labour prices down or “competitive” as they say…
I think Bryan expressed some interesting thoughts on this some time ago. Didn’t he describe himself as culturally conservative but not necessarily politically conservative? A important distinction.
i have only a hazy knowledge of politics. Culture - not just high art etc., but the everyday culture that makes people ‘a people’ rather than just statistics - is something i understand, however, and furthermore i think is more important.