Centrist or Conservative?

Originally, this blog was titled ‘New Zealand Centrist’. I chose that title because I wanted to distinguish my blog from those written by economic libertarians and centre-left liberals. At the time, I was also focusing mainly on economic and environmental issues. In this context, I took issue with mainstream left and right wing pundits that fail to acknowledge limits to such things as population levels, resource consumption and government bureaucracy.

As I have started to focus more on issues like culture, immigration and foreign policy though, the ‘centrist label’ has become a liability. Mainstream dialogue on issues like immigration is almost totally dominated by liberal views of one form or another. Hence, someone who describes him or herself as ‘being in the centre’ is effectively defining themselves as a liberal. As someone who is critical of the core values of liberalism, it would therefore be misleading for me to describe myself as ‘centrist’.

Perhaps the key features of modern liberalism are a failure to acknowledge limits, an aversion to discrimination and a denial of tradition. In moderation, these may be good qualities, but taken too far they can do considerable damage.

In is interesting that few so called ‘right-wing’ bloggers identify themselves as ‘conservatives’. Looking around New Zealand sites, I can’t find any serious bloggers that describe themselves as conservative. Most describe themselves as ‘libertarians’ or ‘defenders of liberty’- clearly such bloggers are still trapped inside a liberal world-view.

Political commentators who define themselves as ‘traditional conservatives’, ‘paleo-conservatives’ or ‘evolutionary conservatives’, are effectively outside mainstream political opinion, even though, in their own minds, they may think of themselves as moderates. However, with liberalism now completing dominating mainstream debate, those who are critical of liberal values needs to have the courage to adopt unpopular, old-fashioned labels like ‘populist’ and ‘conservative’.

In the new blog title I have chose the words ‘alternative’ and ‘conservative’ to differentiate myself from right-wing liberals (aka, ‘libertarians’ and ‘neo-conservatives’) and because my thinking has elements of several non-liberal streams of political thought: ‘traditional conservatism’, ‘evolutionary conservatism’ and elements of progressive populism.