If anybody had any doubts about whether or not conservatism had lost its way, this should convince them. Too often, conservatism has proven to just be slow progressivism. Without Christianity at its heart, that’s always what it ends up being. And what I’ve seen online from people in the past couple of years has shown me that it has fueled the rise of nationalism on the right. I’m seeing, even among scholars, a lot of right wing rejection of the label and concept of conservatism, in favor of nationalism. And it is bringing with it elements of white supremacism and antisemitism. It all comes down to the question: what is the foundation of your beliefs about right and wrong? More specifically, what is the truth, and where does it come from? Conservatism, even as framed by Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, is insufficient. Even Russell Kirk was such a naturalist that he left room for the idea that conservatism can function in an anti-Christian society, where another religion such as Hinduism lay at the heart. But Hinduism, like all false religions, merely leads to death, no matter whether or not you put a veneer of conservatism over top of it. Merely natural revelation, without the Bible, is insufficient to govern a people and form a culture rightly. All that is true, good, and beautiful, is rooted in the character of God, and is expressed in his Creation derived from Him. Post-Fall, it impossible to sufficiently attain the true, good, and beautiful apart from His written Word. And so any society and culture that rejects the Bible, attempting to govern itself some other way, is always destined to eventually fail.
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