If I Could Turn Back Time

It is deeply uncomfortable to admit, but there is truth in the old claim that one becomes more conservative with age. This isn’t a ‘bit’, burnishing my credentials for an application to become Director of one of the new Centres for Western Civilization that seem to be popping up all over the United States in the name of viewpoint diversity; it is genuine reflection on the stuff I was reading over the last year for a forthcoming chapter on ‘Conservatism and the Classical’, and on the present state of the world. Obviously this ‘conservatism’ has nothing whatsoever to do with most of what that label gets attached to today. It’s not about rampant individualism or the destruction of society in the name of the free market or tax cuts for the wealthiest and the devastation of any sort of safety net for those who need it or the elevation of greed and selfishness as virtues or white nationalism and xenophobia or the protection of bigotry in the name of ‘free speech’. In the UK, it’s possible…