Între 3 și 5 noiembrie a.c., a avut la București conferința internațională „Conservatism – The Right Alternative. Towards Security, Prosperity and Peace of European Nations”, organizată de European Conservatives and Reformists (grup din Parlamentul UEuropean). Cu această ocazie, am prezentat o comunicare în limba engleză intitulată „The Case for coherence: Conservatism between consensus and confusion”.
În continuare redau câteva fragmente:
In the past years I’ve took my stand against the malversations of our time, especially regarding the marketplace of ideas. I think most of us agree that ideas have consequences and false ideas are less troubling than treacherous ones. While the former are easier to repel with stiff foresight and page after page of classic readings, the latter appeal to our worst side, to the diabolic imagination „which delights in the perverse and subhuman”, as Russell Kirk would describe it.
[…] It is true that modern men, especially in Europe or America, tend to yearn for straightforward ideas, for effortless narratives, for wheedling palliatives. We cannot oppose the trend, but we can become part of the trend. How? For sure not mingling prophetic declamations with alarmist stories about a secret apocalypse that is delivered to us by some sort of unrevealed fellowship.
My point is that we need to stick to our shared virtues and core values that erected the conservative tradition. Otherwise, the expression of the message becomes the message. We need to be coherent with our great human literature and with our conservative predecessors which knew that nihil sub sole novum, there is nothing new under the sun. Again, as Russell Kirk had apprised us, „men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light”.
[…] One of the dangers regarding our core vision of society is to equate nationalism and conservatism, or even including the former under the umbrella of the latter. Let’s be clear on something: nationalism was a product of the French revolution, while consevatism is an answer to the revolutionary excesses. It was Sieyès that used the word „nation” as synonim for the state in a way that made indivisible the unity and togetherness of the political body.
[…] In other words, we are confronted with the first collectivistic paradigm in history. Yes, and I insist, nationalism is just another herd ideology where the enthusiastic „nostrism” is no more or less than an enemy of personal liberty. Identity politics, either we talk about race, class or lgbt-ism has a collectivistic nature. Identity politics simply doesn’t admit competing or alternative views.
(Remus Tanasă, 4th of November 2022, Bucharest)