On conservatism (in the conservative sense)

Oh, wandering around the blogosphere. What a wonderful thing.

Ralph Luker linked to Becky of The Valkyrie of Discarded Thought, whose leaving grad school. One of the commenters on her latest post, "Mobius Strip", had this to say:

[...] being conservative isn't about being an a**hole. Conservatives are not against trying to accomodate people. Conservatives, rather, are against using the force of the state to force other people to be accomodating.

Now, I'm not a conservative, so I'm not in a position to make any strong claims about what it means to be conservative. But to my ears, "Mobius Strip" seems to be outlining the libertarian position. There are certainly brands of conservatism that concern themselves with limiting state power, but when it comes to reluctance to "accomodating" people who don't fit existing norms, it seems that we're dealing with social/cultural conservatism.

Conservatives, if we take the word literally, are hesitant to embrace change. Now, I might be mistaken in adopting such a literal reading, but point out a conservative and most likely we're looking at someone who pines away for the good old days or, at the very least, thinks things are pretty good as they stand now and shouldn't be changed.

Much of this sentiment is built on a Burkean trust that our predecessors have, largely, gotten it right. As I've written before, I'm sympathetic to those who would tend to believe what others have had to say. But trusting older judgments works only when they fit with our impressions; when they don't seem quite right, we re-examine the validity older analyses. I have no major problems with conservatism that relies on "conventional wisdom" provided that wisdom still appears to hold today. But this doesn't seem to be the conservatism that "Mobius Strip" is describing.

It's possible that I'm simply privileging Burkean conservatism here because it allows me to dismiss "Mobius Strip"'s version of conservatism as nothing more than dress-ed up libertarianism. But defining conservatism as opposition to "using the force of the state to force other people to be accomodating" begs a whole load of questions. What does "accomodating" mean here: Paying taxes? Recognizing the hardships of others? Do conservatives simply believe that the state shouldn't expect anything from its citizens; if so, conservatism is nothing more than libertarianism. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's be up front about our terminology.

On a less serious note, I've had a fair amount of mulled wine tonight, so it's possible that none of this makes sense. God bless college-subsidized Christmas dinners...