Why Conservatism?

The contemporary political drug of choice

In 1949 Albert Einstein published an article entitled Why Socialism? In which he outlined the problems of capitalism, growing inequality and predatory economics. Like many other political commentaries by historical figures, this essay is often left out of discussion about one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. Very similar to the way right wing political commentators/pundits today love to point to George Orwell’s 1984 as an indication as to why the left is wrong and bad and authoritarian, completely ignoring the fact Orwell was so staunchly a left wing socialist he wrote an entire book on the subject in 1937 called The Road to Wigan Pier. Rather than talk about the mental gymnastics required to ignore the personal, political and social beliefs of historical figures while talking about their work, it is more interesting to look at the less obvious problem of why the political right needs to either ignore or recode left wing writing/thinking to accommodate their views.

The Ubiquitous Conservative

Conservatism has been the dominant political faction of the world for the last 100 years. In every country across the world a conservative party is either in charge, in coalition with the leading party, or presents itself as ‘centrist’ but is — in fact — conservative…