Despite the anti-socialist rhetoric from the modern conservative movement, I have realized that the modern conservative is the socialist’s best friend. Where the Conservative is adverse to change, they have accepted the 20th century version of America that includes socialist lite policies (Social Security, Medicare, FDA, SEC, FCC, Government Schools, etc.). Therefore, the modern conservative is fighting to preserve a lower bound for socialism, while the progressives (modern liberals) seek to expand it.

Scale of Socialized Goods and Services According to Political Philosophy

As time moves on, the modern conservative will simply change what they are willing to preserve. In the past 100 years, government has grown and so has its involvement in our economy and personal lives. Much of this involvement has become accepted by the modern conservative and has become the new lower bound for socialism. Where the Conservative of the early/mid 1900′s was against government entitlements and federal control of our economy, the modern conservative now accepts some of these programs as worthy endeavors and could not imagine life without them.

It will only be a matter of time before Universal Healthcare will be the new lower bound, in part or in whole if it is not repealed before the “benefits” begin and become accepted as the new norm. The modern conservative, then, is the equivalent of a climber’s anchor on the progressives’ assent to their goal of total socialism. If a part of the public manages to loosen the grip of the climber to cause them to fall, we will not fall lower than the common accepted lower bound of big government, socialism and tyranny that has been accepted by the ‘other side’, the modern conservative.

The only thing that will change this, is when enough of the population changes their view outside of the left/right, liberal/conservative, democrat/republican paradigm, where they then have the power en masse to dislodge the anchor and the climber, and set a new course for Liberty.

“Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments.”
– FA Hayek, Why I’m Not a Conservative (1960)

Also see: New Individualist Review, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2, SUMMER 1962