This perfectly describes several progressives with whom I am acquainted. “More moral according to Biblical tradition” is perhaps more correct?

Okay, that’s obviously true. But we have plenty of evidence just in the comments section on this blog that this doesn’t translate as “Republicans, and only Republicans, are hung up on the definition of ‘conservative.’” Yet it’s almost a given that “conservatives vote Republican” (in the US where there is nothing called a “Conservative Party,” unlike in Canada and the UK): everyone who says “conservatism is always true” is automatically taken to be saying, “voting Republican makes more sense.”

Then you get people who say, “I have no real politics, and generally support the liberal status quo, and I’m a conservative, and I’m a conservative because I believe cultural conservatism is the true meaning of ‘conservative,’ both as regards art and literature, and also as regards ways of life (which does imply religion, if you’re religious, but not necessarily for those who are not).” But if they went out past the circles where this makes sense, they would have to choose, I think.

And—as I think was shown during the Scialabba/New Criterion discussion a little while ago—there really are very few “culturally conservative” media outlets that are not also politically conservative to the point of partisanship. Roger Kimball supports the conservative movement and Republican candidates and National Review. To argue that people can have progressive politics and be “conservative” is—in a sense—to push them towards those partisan publications.

It sounds like you’re saying people who don’t want to be mistaken for “conservative” should go to solidly left-wing places where they can debate the true, ideally rational meaning of “the Left.” But you’re also showering contempt on this kind of discussion, so I’m not sure what you mean.

On the left, the comparison is more to the old “what counts as Marxist/socialist/communist” parsing, but less coherent.

Considering the number of ex-Trotskyites on the right, maybe the similarity isn’t surprising!

My observation is that conservatives are hung up on the definition of “conservative”, and have been for many years (see: Goldwater, Wm.F. Buckley). I observe a lot more discussion among conservatives about “what counts as” than there is among liberals (or progressives), and this is true regardless of whether they’re in or out of power. On the left, the comparison is more to the old “what counts as Marxist/socialist/communist” parsing, but less coherent.

It’s like there is only one practical matter that people can take action on: who should be President? And there is only one question that people can discuss: what is the proper, ideally rational definition of “conservative” (or “liberal,” “secular,” etc.)? Past that no one seems able to conceptualize anything beyond “purge.” And that’s silly and uncivil.

I suspect we’re saying the same thing (maybe), which is that all of these attitudes are conservative.

The great dilemna faced by anyone who’s trying to be conservative—in any of these senses—is that it’s no longer possible to think you can conserve everything. It’s not that “conservatism has been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism and technology”, it’s that we’re all riding the capitalism and technology trains whether we like it or not. Conserving “ways of life that have developed over hundreds of years”—what does that even mean, when we’re talking on the Internet? You have to pick and choose what you’re trying to conserve, or else turn into super-Amish—and even that doesn’t work, because there are other people in the world and they will be changing without you, which means your world will change will or nil.

My beef is with people like e.g. Andrew Sullivan, who goes on and on about what a Real True Conservative is, with no reference to actual human beings and their behavior. Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative is distilled essence of defining conservatives by assertion: “a conservative believes X, a conservative does Y”—without dealing with pesky details of fact.

Yes, it is one of the inherent features of conservatism to pass off the existing power structures as something natural and just as opposed to arbitrary and unjust, both to keep those who don’t benefit from it from getting too uppity and to assuage a nagging conscience.

But this is not the only thing people want to “conserve”: there is a desire to conserve the environment, our cultural heritage and ways of life that have developed over hundreds of years. Ironically most of contemporary conservatism has been thoroughly corrupted by capitalism and technology, which both lead people to embrace radical and often brutal change, rather than organic growth. And it is often those on the liberal side of the political spectrum who advocate a cautious and, one might say “conservative”, approach to change.

I much take offense at your characterisation.

Poppy Bush is the perfect illustration. And as an Anglican, I must say I am quite disappointed by how my prejudice toward the American Church was confirmed by Souter, an Episcopalian, who exemplified the uncertain, unknown, and somewhat confusing fundamental liberalism of even the most conservative Episcopalians. And so it was with Poppy also.

And also, even if the South were to have the requisite conservatism, its impact on American political philosophy is limited. A regional thing is very likely to be limited in impact; that is its nature. Much like Welsh Liberals had only a brief period of impact on the United Kingdom, so does the South only have a very short time in the sun.

The emergence of a High Catholic conservatism, additionally, is bound to be more strict and less liable to wavering. Alito or Roberts, for example, will not waver simply to feeling; their reliance on non-temporal sources of authority prevents them from acting in an overly empowering manner.

(Of course, the word has other meanings, and I can refer to “a conservative estimate” without praising or denigrating my own estimate with reference to my actual political beliefs and my feelings about the existing order of things (whatever that might be), no problem. :)

If, as a couple commenters have implied, Posner is basically a Burkean liberal who’s willing to move (forward), slowly, when it’s time—if he doesn’t see the way he was raised or the way he lives now, with the institutions that have underwritten that, as essential for good things’ happening, and threatened by even those gradual changes—I don’t know why he prefers to align himself with conservatives.