The Mischaracterisation of Conservatism

W.B. Yeats in his poem the Second Coming writes “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.  While written in 1919, soon after the death and disillusionment of the First World War and the Easter Uprising in Dublin, Yeats’ lines also describe the world of today: a time of radical change where established institutions and long-held beliefs are misrepresented as conservative, elitist and characterised by inequality and injustice.  A time where the most grievous crimes one can commit are to question the need for radical change while arguing there is much in the past worth celebrating.

Instead of being seen as beneficial or worthwhile societies, like Australia they are condemned as inherently racist, sexist, heteronormative and guilty of oppressing and marginalising ‘the other’.  Western civilisation, instead of being valued even as its faults are acknowledged, is attacked as ‘Eurocentric’ and riven with ‘white supremacism’. At…