On the Stupidity of Conservatism

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Conservatism as a philosophical stance is inherently stupid because it entails willful resistance to change, which might have made sense in the Medieval period when the (western) world seemed changeless over centuries, but at least since the Renaissance and the Reformation, humans have become increasingly and acutely aware that the only constant, as the old cliche goes, is change.

So it was that, in launching his journal of conservative opinion, America’s favorite conservative pseudo-intellectual, William F. Buckley, portrayed his new publication as standing “athwart history, yelling Stop”, thereby illustrating one of the most reliably amusing aspects of conservatism in the United States, at least, risible self-aggrandizement by its (mostly male) advocates. Male supremacist conservatism is distinctly unfunny in other parts of the world, where it sometimes manifests, inter alia, as acid attacks on girls who dare to go to school.
One can easily see from this one example how stupid conservatism is, because it provides no obvious platform from which to condemn such violence against girls and women.
This is not to say that all change is good. This is to make no value judgment about change at all. It is simply to observe a fact that even conservatives at least implicitly acknowledge with their increasingly histrionic denunciations of specific changes: the only constant is change.
Then, as I have long argued, it is at best difficult, perhaps impossible, to be both a good conservative and a good American at the same time. The United States, after all, founded itself expressly on the decidedly liberal — unconservtive — act of repudiating a monarch. And insofar as modernity is the steam wafting off of a particularly potent brew of political liberalism combined with epistemological empiricism, perhaps no nation has so fully embraced modernity as the United States. Even that recent movement of putative conservatism recrudescent in the United States, the Tea Party, in fact acts in a decidedly liberal manner, as no good conservative would even consider traveling to the imperial capital to protest in the streets against the head of state, as the tea partiers have done numerous times.
This page will serve as the gateway to specific explorations of instances of gross conservative stupidity in the United States, and around the world. It will be difficult to keep up, so please feel free to help with suggestions in the comments, and we’ll try our best, to wit:
Arizona’s special brand of citizenship.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord… New Hampshire?
HAR! Now supposedly the Presidency is BENEATH Sarah Palin.
Constitution? Big yawn.
Troops? What troops?
If you can’t beat ‘em, steal from ‘em
Good old Biblical Hatred
As Widely Predicted
They Just Never Give Up
Keep on Shootin’ There, Antonin
No Fly Zone, No No Fly Zone
Jesus Will Love You Even More in the White House
Health Care Reform Lies
Zoning Issue?!!?
Birther = The Apotheosis of Conservative Stupidity
Fun in Hell
Klassy Tea Baggers Jeering at Grief
How thinly can you slice human rights?
If you can’t beat ‘em, lie about ‘em
It’s pronounced “coke,” NOT “cock.”
Newt, the chum slinger
The Georgia “fetal homicide” bill
Senate? What Senate?
Parts is Parts
Where’s Libya again?
You Think You’re Depressed Now…
Any Christian is better than…
Hey, Go Dig a Ditch
Trolling new depths of conservative stupidity
Unlike Mommy, Bristol Palin is a real, live ho
Get Out, You Old Bag
Racists? In Mississippi?
Those good, small government Republicans nit-picking foster children