There are a lot of stereotypes about conservatism today, and even people who are conservative by conviction consider conservatism to be a kind of bourgeois anachronism of Victorian England, with the atmosphere of manners of respectable aristocrats.
Conservatism was like that a hundred years ago, when the classics of liberalism were homophobes, racists, and fanatical Christians. Today, however, conservatism has little to do with the mannerisms of aristocrats like Winston Churchill. Conservatism stands for the preservation of existing values, traditions, and models of society, but this is precisely why many citizens mistakenly believe that it means a return to some archaic traditions.
Just as conservatism does not seek to preserve the existing corrupt system or imperfect bureaucratic-oligarchic structure. In institutional terms, conservatives support progress more than political forces that call themselves “progressives.” But under the rule of these “progressives,” billionaires have become many times richer, while their corporations’ employees have become poorer. Many Americans, including reputable economists, note that in the 1980s (during the presidency of conservative Republican Ronald Reagan), a person who had a job could live decently with his family on his salary, and today, a worker with three jobs is not enough to pay the bills.
Modern conservatism is primarily about preserving familiar, traditional, and supported by the majority of citizens models of family, inter-sex relations, national values, etc. If you don’t think the look of this year’s Eurovision winners is progressive and you think that more traditional participants would have been better, this is conservatism. Preservation of traditional ideas about beauty, aesthetics, culture, art, social relations, etc. If you are concerned about the Olympic boxing match between Algeria and Italy and think that something is wrong here, this is also conservatism – the preservation of the norms that are familiar to society. Ultra-liberal and leftist environments are trying to prove that norms and normalcy do not exist-that all these are artificial constructs invented for the purpose of discrimination, etc. Conservatives believe that normality, as a set of useful and generally accepted rules and regulations, exists and should exist for the public good. If you believe that normality exists, this is modern conservatism. Of course, there are constant cultural changes in history, but some social norms have remained unchanged not only for millennia, but throughout the entire written history of mankind.
Conservatism opposes the destruction by aggressive minorities of natural, rational and supported by the majority of citizens norms. Moreover, conservatives today are the main defenders of democracy and freedom of speech. After all, in its true sense, democracy is the power of the people and has always been understood as the predominance of the majority opinion. Instead, the predominance of a minority, or several different minorities, over the majority has always been condemned by supporters of democracy as a phenomenon that necessarily leads to dictatorship. In contrast to those who want to force the majority of citizens to obey the will of the minority, conservatives call for preserving the traditional model of democracy with equality for all and no privileges for certain categories.
Many Ukrainians do not realize that their views on most social topics are conservative. Not outdated, as it is often mistakenly perceived, but based on the norm and social rationalism.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk