Post-Post-Modern Conservatism

A flattering post over at The Politics Of Scrabble:

While Sullivan reaches into the past of conservative thought to remind the listener of the roots of the tradition, he also takes the ideas of those founding thinkers and brushes them up against the complexities of a post-modern world. Sullivan updates the thoughts of this ideology to acknowledge that life is infinitely more complex than any of our models and conceptions will ever been capable of capturing, a truly post-modern notion. And yet, Sullivan suggests that there is a way forward that avoids both paralysis and disregarding or over-simplifying these complexities, which he takes to reside in a modernization of classic conservative principles.

Such a conservatism would be nuanced, dangerously sharp, overwhelmingly thoughtful, and potentially very powerful. This is the ideological rebirth upon which I have been musing of late. The question that remains is whether Sullivan’s is a lone voice in the wilderness, or the prescient clarion call of a coming titanic shift.

I'm fine with the wilderness. But I do believe that conservatism has to come to terms with modernity more comprehensively than it seems to have in the US right now. In fact, there are many powerful elements within it that seem rooted in a terror and loathing of modernity. My attempt to explain my thesis at Cato is in two Youtubes here and here.