Reflecting on these various lists, it’s clear that there is more dispute over how to define conservatism, vs. the other ideologies that Conor lists. 1/ https://twitter.com/conor64/status/1284624736928935936

If your political frame is defined by liberalism, then classical liberals like Jonah Goldberg and (the older) George Will are “conservative.” 2/

They are committed to a view of fixed human nature, essentially that of early-modern liberalism: self-interested, individual bearers of natural rights.They are not “progressives,” who believe human nature to be malleable. Thus, they are comparatively more “conservative.” 3/

Yet, they embrace the economic order, flowing from their view of human nature, that does not “conserve,” but disrupts, upends, liquifies stability and security. This is an acceptable price for economic advance, and thus allies them with a progressive society. 4/

By contrast, the thinkers I have listed approach political questions from _outside_ the liberal frame, and are willing to challenge both dimensions of liberalism, economic and social. 5/

To these thinkers (including me), a liberal society is necessarily and inescapably incapable of being genuinely conservative. Either in its economic and/or social dimensions, it is definitionally progressive and hostile to tradition, stability, and generational continuity. 6/

In an ironic sense, “conservative liberals” *are* “conservative”, inasmuch as they want to defend the status quo. However, that status quoted makes actual conservatism impossible. /7

Whereas the conservatives I list are “revolutionary,” (maybe “reactionary,” though few seek a restoration so much as a kind of advance out of liberalism), seeking to alter the current order, with the aim of making a genuine conservatism possible. 8/

Conor touched on a deep division and debate taking place mainly _within_ the conservative world; and thus, his effort to define one side AS conservative -mainly “liberal conservatives”- set off a rather strong objection from those engaged in this debate from the other side. /fin