The conservative paradox: Preserving tradition or guarding counterculture?

The belief that conservatives will rescue the world from Marxism, socialism, communism, nihilism, or religious fundamentalism is both naïve and historically ignorant. Conservatism, by its very principle, is not a doctrine of renewal but of preservation. Its task is to conserve what already exists. If the existing order happens to be Marxist, socialist, nihilist, or theocratic, then it is precisely that order which conservatives will defend.

This is the paradox at the heart of conservatism: it claims to protect culture, yet it lacks the intellectual tools and visionary clarity to distinguish between culture and counterculture. Every conservative movement eventually stumbles into the same quarrel—which traditions deserve conservation? The traditions of two millennia past, grounded in religion and ancient custom? The traditions of the last century, rooted in nationalism and industrial modernity? Or the traditions of just a generation ago, born of social liberalism and mass media? A philosophy that lives only to conserve is forever trapped in indecision about what is truly worth saving.

In modern democracies, this weakness is ruthlessly exploited. Conservative leaders, eager to prove their fidelity to “tradition,” are easily manipulated by leftist intellectuals, who redefine the terms of heritage and convince their opponents to defend ideas that are, in fact, corrosive countercultures. Thus, the conservative finds himself paradoxically fighting to preserve what he once opposed, confusing inertia for principle.

This is why, in the long arc of politics, the left tends to prevail. In every duel between leftism and conservatism, the left dictates the cultural horizon, while the conservative merely adopts yesterday’s radicalism as today’s heritage. The defender of tradition, unable to create or discriminate, ends by conserving not culture but its corruption.