https://twitter.com/DrGW0/status/1350347226170712066

Spoiler: Yes, partly because the GOP isn't
conservative.

I think this is an interesting question. (Time to get philosophical )

The place to start, I think is how political psychologists define conservatism.

1/

2/ True conservatives, according to prof.  @Jonhaidt, form a kind of yin-yang balance with liberals
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives?language=en
Liberals embrace forward-looking change.

Conservatives value order.
From Haidt: the conservative insight is that order is hard to achieve and easy to lose.

3/ Reactionaries, on the other hand seek rapid change—backwards to a bygone era.

Other political psychologists (see @karen_stenner) describe conservatives as embracing a desire to maintain the status quo.

4/ If reactionaries want to go back to the past, and conservatives want to maintain the status quo, it seems to me that the nation’s history and politics change the nature of conservatism and reactionism.

5/ America, in the past—say, before the 20th century—was ruled entirely by white Christian men.

America still has racial inequality.

So a desire to keep things the same and a desire to go backwards both end up with racist objectives.

6/ Reactionary politics as embraced in the United States is extremely destructive because to get back to a bygone era when white men could do as they pleased, you have to dismantle almost the entire federal government, which will cause widespread suffering.

7/ Look what happened with Covid under the leadership of a party that doesn’t want a functioning federal government.

When people say “conservatives” they often mean reactionaries because the current GOP is not conservative. It’s reactionary.

8/ So yes, it’s destructive. https://twitter.com/DrGW0/status/1350347226170712066