I'm going to be honest, I have pretty much completely lost intellectual respect for conservativism. I have three main reasons; tagging @arcenciel-par-une-larme and @thathopeyetlives for their thoughts on this.
Yesterday's Radicalism in Today's Politics
Satirist Ambrose Bierce quipped that "radicalism [is] tomorrow's conservativism in today's politics" and, well, I think the inverse is true as well: conservativism is yesterday's radicalism in today's politics. Which leads to some awkwardness and inconsistency.
For example, I remember Arcenciel being shocked when I said that a guy opposed to anti-ICE protestors would have supported segregation in the 50s and 60s. But that shouldn't be a shocking claim! In 1958, only 4% of Americans approved of interracial marriage, and it only gained majority approval from White Americans in 1997; the vast majority of White conservatives in MLK's era, were, in fact, in favour of segregation. The FBI famously spied on King because they suspected him of being a Communist, and that wasn't a baseless claim - he said stuff like "I imagine you already know I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic". But, since the views King promoted have now become social consensus, modern conservatives have to claim that they totally would have supported what were, in the time they were live issues, very radical beliefs.
Or what about American conservatives who are out-and-out racists? Well, if they believe in democracy and freedom for different denominations of Christianity, they'd have been radicals in the 18th century, when France and Spain, Europe's greatest powers, were absolute monarchies that persecuted anyone who wasn't Catholic, and Britain wasn't much better. If they believe in Christianity at all, they'd have been radicals in the Roman Empire, which believed Christianity was a dangerous new sect undermining traditional patriotism and offending the gods.
This is why, in my opinion, the most intellectually respectable (note: this is not the same as "most likeable" or "best for society") right-wingers are Integralist Catholics, Theonomists, Hindutva advocates, White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis and other people who have an ideology and try to implement it rather than insisting on a fundamental dissimilarity between their beliefs and the beliefs of people with basically the same worldview and motives but advocating things they find repugnant.
Rules for Thee But Not for Me
American and American-influenced conservatives, frankly, have a hypocritical attitude to freedom. It's my God-given right to defy the government when they insist I get vaccinated, but people who break immigration law deserve no sympathy. The government's tyrannical when it tries to take my guns, but belligerent protestors brought it on themselves when they got shot. As the most famous living right-winger said, "many such cases".
And that leads me to the belief that, while I'm sure they don't consciously hold it, their actual belief is there (to use a famous quote on the topic) "that there should be an in-group who the law protects but does not bind and an out-group who the law binds but does not protect". Which is, again, why I think that nationalists, monarchists and theocrats are the most consistent right-wingers.
The Minor, Momentary Terror
To quote from another famous American satirist, Mark Twain: "There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves."
And I see this tendency in conservatives a lot. For example, they got shocked at Brian Thompson getting shot, but not at the fact United Healthcare under his tenure had a rate of insurance claim denial twice that of most insurance companies. Or being shocked at Hamas' massacres of Israeli civilians, and not at Gaza and the West Bank being Israel's imperial possessions (they're not part of Israel, but they're run under its martial law) with everything that entails. Frankly, it's similar to the right-wing concept of toxic empathy (conservatives are more upset about violent lashing-out against unjust systems than the systems themselves) and makes nationalists and ethnic supremacists seem, again, like the most internally consistent right-wingers.
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