Very good summation. A lot of people are not congizant of the narrower spectrum of our politics compared with the rest of the world. American Conservatives would fit more in the category with either the revolutionaries of 1848 or Gladstone Liberals, in the European context. American conservativism might easily argue that it stands at the center of the spectrum of world ideologies.
Thank you. I understand why liberals like to lump conservatives around the world together. It allows them to group the Taliban with the Tea Party. Both of which groups really are conservative, it’s just that they’re trying to conserve very different things.
I don’t understand why conservatives buy into this myth. What a given conservative group is trying to conserve is the most important thing about it.
The Taliban is trying to conserve “pure” Islam.
19th century German rightists wanted to conserve the old ways of crown and church, blood and soil. Hitler took a great deal of this into the Nazi Party, arguably making it considerably more central than his theoretically socialist economic programs.
American conservatives want to conserve the principles of the Declaration of Independence, IMO the most radical revolution in world history.
We have NOTHING in common with traditional European rightists, except a common opposition to leftists. In fact, our Revolution was fought more or less against principle of the European Right.