D I don’t want to claim that lazy and unclean thinking is the biggest problem of this time. But maybe that’s the case after all. Especially from us too. Maybe even from me. You can’t solve problems if you don’t understand the causes. And you can’t “shape the future” if you don’t know or don’t want to know what present you’re living in.
This is especially what comes to mind when green politicians or even normal people routinely describe themselves as “progressive” or even talk about “progressive majorities”. Some people think that their people want to hear that, and others think that they just have to say that to their tribe, especially in these bad times. So nobody actually thinks. Ah, yes – the vast majority thinks: Just stay away from me with your understanding of “progressive”. The future is closed anyway.
But I would argue that it is our job to prevent progressive majorities. Because the only progressive party is the right-wing populist to right-wing extremist AfD. As I understand it, it wants to sweep away what exists: liberal democracy, the pluralistic and diverse society, the legal system that protects this liberality, serious science and the media. I, on the other hand, want us to keep these things, to keep our open society. This is clearly a conservative need.
The AfD is not the problem that needs to be solved
To update the word: Heino, Jens Spahn and others are not conservative fetish-like sausage eating. Conservative is a contemporary culture that combines the preservation of our social and planetary foundations with the willingness to commit to the necessary repairs within its system – from the railways to the parties to us in the media.
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Conservatism at the height of the times
There will be no left-progressive modernity because there is no world for it. But a restorative modernity is possible. You can win a majority for this, but only if you gain a new interpretive sovereignty over the word “conservative”.
Another thesis: We don’t have a “shift to the right” here. Most people don’t have a need for hatred and “misanthropy”, but rather for support, security, a home, for their everyday life to function and for them to feel like they are part of something good or at least decent. Armin Nassehi would say they have “conservative reference problems“You have to solve them. This applies to almost every individual idea of identity.
That is why a liberal democratic majority can only be preserved through proper conservative politics. By the way, you can read all of this from the classic of the new conservatism, Winfried Kretschmann’s “What we want to rely on”. And no, dear short-thinkers: the Green Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg could no more be “with the CDU” than his potential successor Cem Özdemir. Exactly not because the CDU does not want to or cannot bring conservatism up to speed with the times and their planetary plight.
To wrap it up: The AfD is not the problem that needs to be solved, but rather the needs of the time. I would therefore suggest leaving the progressive chatter aside, adopting conservatism and updating it in such a way that the needs of the time can be met. That doesn’t mean we have to give up on progressive needs. We just need to make them conservative needs. That sounds succinct, but it has been the only way that has worked since 1968.