Trump is not a conservative

Are “conservatives” really conservative?  About the only thing “conservatives” want to “conserve” is their power.

They are definitely not like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, or Dwight Eisenhower.  They certainly don’t take Eisenhower’s advice about the “military-industrial complex.”

And they are definitely not like the “First Conservative”, Edmund Burke.  See “Edmund Burke: the first conservative” by Jesse Norman or “Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left” by Yuval Levin.

They are more like the French Revolution, tearing down everything that went before than Burke’s Whigs who made small changes to an existing order as needed.

This was intended for “Why I’m Still a Never Trumper”. Bret Stephens, New York Times, 2017-12-29, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/opinion/why-im-still-a-nevertrumper.html.  Unfortunately, comments were cut off before I could get it sent. 

Quote of the day – Moderation in politics

So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper No. 1