The left has left liberalism behind, and in a way, I don’t blame them. Looking now at liberalism, I see that it plainly contained the seeds of its own demise.

What progressives have, though, is the moral value that liberalism used to command over all of American thought. 1/

Liberalism’s drive towards a perfectable future was always at odds with conservatism’s attachment to the tried-and-true past.

But now, a love of the past, or even present, isnt considered quaint or even backwards.

It’s considered evil.

To love the present is to at least

Respect the past. Because the present would not exist without the past to get us here.

But progressives despise the present. Hence, they despise the past that has led us here.

It is a truly godless ideology. Devoid of any gratitude. Or understanding.

I drove with Younger Kid into town today. At Costco, she bought flowers to put on the memorial of some kids from her high school who died tragically a year ago.

It’s not an official memorial. It’s the spot on the side of the road where they crashed.

That a a tradition here.

That is love, and community. That is a respect for the past that is bought through to the present.

That is conservativism.

Progressives, OTOH, would blame the road. They’d blame the truck they were driving, the sellers of alcohol, the society that made boys reckless.

Their ideology is nothing but rage.

And you cannot build a society on rage.

But to circle back, at least the liberalism of my youth taught that everything society had been through had gotten us to this place...and that this place was getting better all the time.

Progressivism shares none of that optimism.

It’s my belief that humans cannot know what is “real.” We can only have mental constructs, and those are “tools” that are either helpful or unhelpful.

Progressivism, with its drive to break all our mental contructs, as well as institutions that arise from them, is not useful.

As for my daughter’s love & respect for the dead... There is comfort & kindness in ceremonies& traditions that allow us to know teenage boys are reckless...and love them anyway.

To mourn that they died senselessly, and yet not try to change the world, or human nature.

Our present moment is all about trying to outrun death. Outrun pain and sickness and suffering.

But at what cost?

Should we lock up all teenage boys, give them hormone blockers, so as to make them as sedate as Hindu cows?

Our should we embrace the world as it is?

Warts and all?

There is beauty and joy to be found in conservativism. A sense of belonging in a world that is bigger than we are.

Anyway...yeah.