No.1428977
>Far from compromising the vision of excellence set out above—in which the prerogatives of rule are supposed to bring an element of grandeur to an otherwise drab and desultory world— the activist imperative only strengthens it. “Light and perfection,” Matthew Arnold wrote, “consist, not in resting and being, but in growing and becoming, in a perpetual advance in beauty and wisdom.”98 To the conservative, power in repose is power in decline. The “mere husbanding of already existing resources,” wrote Joseph Schumpeter, “no matter how painstaking, is always characteristic of a declining position.”
<If power is to achieve the distinction the conservative associates with it, it must be exercised, and there is no better way to exercise power than to defend it against an enemy from below. Counterrevolution, in other words, is one of the ways in which the conservative makes feudalism fresh and medievalism modern.
No.1428979
>>1428879Not sure if I buy the premise. Even if looking objectively the big trend of history they have been losing forever, but in their subjective view they just shift the goalpost of what they are fighting against and what will bring about the total destruction of their way of life. Sure deep down reactionaries and conservatives are still in the same fight of maintaining or recreating the aristocracy that they lost in the French revolution, but the policies and who are the aristocracy and who are the plebs have been constantly changing.
No.1428983
>Why is it that reactionaries don't seem to give up despite the benefits of relinquishing their hate, and continue to exist?
Porky knows how to create populations that keep them in power. In the early 70s one of Nixon's advisors said that the biggest threat to the governing regime is the population getting educated. The education system stopped educating. Another advisor admitted that the Drug War was a creation to target blacks and hippies. Like Rove said, they created reality, and the blue dogs assisted.
No.1467698
>>1428879They run on instinct don't even try to rationalize it.