>>One reason for Kipling's power as a good bad poet I have already suggested — his sense of responsibility, which made it possible for him to have a world-view, even though it happened to be a false one. Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists. He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition.>>-George Orwell: review of Rudyard KiplingWhat are some true conservative works that truly align with the institutions and powers that rule our world, instead of crazy reactionaries who hate the world and want it to RETVRN to a meme reality that never existed?
>>24774500well, because the ruling powers aren't conservative in any meaningful sense. they want to chase progress no matter the cost and not actually conserve anything at all.
>>24774500Also 'conservatism' implies institutional stasis. The only principle in which they operate tends more towards Heraclitus than Parmenedies. There is no ground of 'being'. Everything is in flux. Conservatism implies a resistance to change and there is no stability.
>>24774515But who are the writers who back their plans for progress?
>>24774522nothing of literary value unless you feel like wading through a bunch of pick-me DEI slop.
>>24774500Hard to answer a question when you wrap it around with a bunch of dogmatic statements, some true, some half-true, and some silly. (Orwell was thuggish, blinkered and self-righteous. He wasn't entirely wrong about everything but he wasn't right about everything, by a long way.)Your main division (Conservatives who align with present power structures, vs. Crazy Reactionaries who want to go back to a mythical golden age) is kinda weird. Firstly, many self-styled conservatives are religious, so they side with God over "earthly powers". (Would you call Carlyle a conservative?) This is why Kings tried to claim "divine right to rule", so as to fit themselves into this hierarchy, of course.Secondly, insofar as there is a single struggle between conservatives and radicals, it's the latter, not the former, who want to move further away from the past. The most obvious "Conservatives vs. Radicals" fault-line is that conservatives want to acknowledge that not everyone who lived before today was a fool, and radicals think they were and we should throw all their opinions overboard so as to hasten the Brave New World that's just around the corner. (Chesterton vs. G. B. Shaw; Henry James vs. H. G. Wells, etc.)Anyway, that said, here are a few writers I would call "conservative", in that they don't instinctively align against existing institutions:—— Jane Austen— Samuel Johnson— G. K. Chesterton (as mentioned above, a good example of the religious type of conservative. He tends to respect the wisdom of tradition, which partly overlaps existing earthly institutions, but only partly).Many religious writers who might appear quite subversive aren't really. (Evelyn Waugh for example is really an arch-traditionalist.)Children's books are often deeply conservative. The Wind In The Willows is the obvious example. "Golden age" detective fiction (Dorothy L. Sayers) was pretty socially conservative. Arthur Conan Doyle too, for all his liberal personal inclinations.Truly conservative poets are a rare breed (which is why Kipling stands out). Tennyson? He took it upon himself to be the spokesman of Victorian England, but he's less instinctively conservative than people think. He was mostly interested in vowel-sounds and melancholy; he wasn't really political at all (which is why Auden thought he was the stupidest major poet. Auden, being a leftist like Orwell, saw everything through a political lens, as Orwell did.)Pope & Dryden might count. Milton might, again with the "conservative-religious" thing. Wallace Stevens was conservative personally but not really in his work at all.
>>24774608I guess you might add T. S. Eliot to the "conservative-religious poets" list.
>>24774608>Your main division (Conservatives who align with present power structures, vs. Crazy Reactionaries who want to go back to a mythical golden age) is kinda weird. Firstly, many self-styled conservatives are religious, so they side with God over "earthly powers". (Would you call Carlyle a conservative?) This is why Kings tried to claim "divine right to rule", so as to fit themselves into this hierarchy, of course.Except here you are pretending that there are no radicals except left wing radicals, and there isn't a significant and powerful movement of right wingers that want to go back to a mythical past before multiculturalism, LGBT rights, or even feminism.They want to roll the world back to the 19th century that never existed except in their fantasies. What is even conservative about that?>>Anyway, that said, here are a few writers I would call "conservative", in that they don't instinctively align against existing institutions:—Any moderns?
>>24774640The point is the situation is more complicated than just two sides and if you do want to reduce it to just two sides it's misleading at best to suggest that "conservative" aligns with, e.g., third-wave feminism. That's not what most people think of when you say "conservative".It's also misleading at best to talk about people who want to e.g. roll back LGBT stuff wanting to return to a "mythical" past.There are two possible meanings for "mythical" here. You might argue that *the world they have in mind* is mythical. (Nordic blondes in wheat fields.) It's not as mythical as you think. Read some accounts of English rural life before, say, 1950. It was better than modern life in many ways.Secondly you seem sometimes to be suggesting that the presence of such a world at all is a myth. This obviously isn't true. A huge proportion of present-day bien-pensant attitudes only gained traction extremely recently. I personally am old enough to remember when they were regarded as the lunacy they are.>Any modernsDepends what you mean by "moderns". Several writers I mentioned were 20th-century, which is "modern" by my standards. If you mean, from the past two years, Cormac McCarthy was the last living author I bothered with. (He's a funny mixture of conservative and not, actually.)A name I did miss out which should be added:— J. R. R. Tolkien. He's very much in the "religious-traditionalist" camp. (You would probably claim that his picture of the Shire is a typical example of "the golden age that never existed". Of course it's somewhat idealized, but it's not as far from the truth as you seem to think. Read e.g. Uttley's Country Child, or Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford, etc.)
>>24774666>There are two possible meanings for "mythical" here. You might argue that *the world they have in mind* is mythical. (Nordic blondes in wheat fields.) It's not as mythical as you think. Read some accounts of English rural life before, say, 1950. It was better than modern life in many ways.What I mean is that they are urban, internet addicted young idiots that want to go back to the 1950s because they think every man had the Advertisement type white picket fence and "tradwife" back then.
>>24774682They're misslead by their desire to find a political home.Where are they supposed to go otherwise? Liberalism in the classical sense is a lost case now, leftwingers mostly see white heterosexual men just as opressor and most other ways are either meaningless or retarded.I would wish some kind of Anarchism would come back and save this young man.Whatever. Let go backt o your question about Conservative writer of fiction.I would suggest Arno Schmidt.
