By: Andrej Sekulović
The central thinker of the broad movement that became known as the German Conservative Revolution, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, wrote just over a hundred years ago that conservatives have apparently forgotten that the purpose of conservatism is to create values worth preserving.
Just over a century later, his words aptly describe many European parties that are conservative only in name and differ from their left-wing rivals merely in adopting milder versions of decadent progressive ideas.
In other words, they embrace progressive ideas with a delay, once those ideas appear moderate compared to the latest and most radical inventions of the left. The left is constantly escalating its positions, while the right is supposed to have a firm anchor in certain values and assumptions on which a good society is to be built. These include the traditional concept of family and national belonging: the family consists of a father, a mother, and children; and an ethno-cultural community is held together not only by citizenship or language but also by shared history and blood.
Yet today, some conservatives accept same-sex couples as well as migrants from other continents, as long as they cross the border legally. In doing so, they are steering their homeland down the same path the left wants to take it, just in second gear instead of fifth. Van den Bruck said that a conservative is someone who understands that our existence has meaning, one that cannot be fulfilled in a single lifetime.
That is why we must continue what others began and pass it on to our descendants. Entire generations shape the history of a nation. People come and go, but values and traditions remain, even if in slightly altered forms. If we lose those, we must ask ourselves: what exactly is left for conservatives to “conserve”?