I live in Georgia, home of the gun-toting, self-proclaimed Trump conservative governor. My wife has taken to calling our state’s reckless COVID response as the disgusted insult, “liberal,” since the conservative response would surely be more measured than what we’ve seen here.
At first I thought her comment was fodder for the wives thread (if not for the CR issue), but the more I think about it:
1. it’s correct — the conservative approach would be to protect life rather than radically experimenting with the public health
2. it must annoy Trump conservatives that use “liberal” as an insult have it pointed against them.
Part of what makes the term conservatism so tough to nail down is all of the hacks using the term to give credence to their incoherent worldview. In the modern use of the term by its adherents, conservatism is nothing more than a post-hoc justification for whatever is most self-serving and expedient.