{"id":4926,"date":"2010-10-19T22:53:45","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T22:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4926"},"modified":"2010-10-20T06:54:54","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T06:54:54","slug":"the-skeptical-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-skeptical-conservatives\/","title":{"rendered":"The Skeptical Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7267\" title=\"skeptcon\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/files\/2010\/10\/skeptcon.png\" alt=\"skeptcon\" width=\"118\" height=\"78\" \/>CONSVLTVS of <a href=\"http:\/\/consvltvs.blogspot.com\/\">RESPVBLICA<\/a> has created a nifty little badge for <a href=\"http:\/\/consvltvs.blogspot.com\/p\/skeptical-conservatives.html\">&#8220;Skeptical Conservatives&#8221;<\/a>. The aim is to indicate a <em>very small<\/em> affinity group, bloggers and thinkers who are not religious, conservative, and, not <em>necessarily<\/em> libertarian in their presuppositions. The intersection of these traits is quite small indeed. At least in public. For myself it is rather obvious that direct electoral politics is not an animating passion of my life (you can see the more central passion on display at <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/\">Discover Blogs<\/a>). But by disposition and outlook I have a preference for what can loosely be termed the bourgeois world which arose in the West in the wake of the Enlightenment, and would prefer to conserve it, and at most evolve it from within. I have come to reject excessive axiomatic constructs in political theory and politics, and also believe from an empirical evolutionary perspective that the methodological individualism at the heart of modern liberalism may at root be a quirk of the preferences of the intellectual classes in general.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, we are few. But we exist. And I like to think that what sometimes matters is not the most, but the best. Because of our peculiarities skeptical conservatives in some ways are the heretics of our age, and we take a little bit of pleasure in our role as the smasher of idols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CONSVLTVS of RESPVBLICA has created a nifty little badge for &#8220;Skeptical Conservatives&#8221;. The aim is to indicate a very small affinity group, bloggers and thinkers who are not religious, conservative, and, not necessarily libertarian in their presuppositions. The intersection of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-skeptical-conservatives\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[135],"tags":[355],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4926"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4934,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4926\/revisions\/4934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}