🤔⤴ What's so conservative about conservative futurism?

It's not a nonsensical oxymoron!

Quote of the Issue

“It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.” - H. G. Wells, The Discovery of the Future

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The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised

“With groundbreaking ideas and sharp analysis, Pethokoukis provides a detailed roadmap to a fantastic future filled with incredible progress and prosperity that is both optimistic and realistic.”

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The Essay

🤔⤴ What's so conservative about conservative futurism?

Legit question: How is the pro-progress, future-optimist, techno-solutionist, Up Wing vision of my book, The Conservative Futurist, “conservative,” exactly? It’s probably the most common criticism from folks on the right, particularly — if not entirely — by those disappointed that it doesn’t address what they define as the big “conservative” issues of the day. And to a great extent, their version of conservatism functions as a critique of the Reagan-Bush-Romney era, one developed mostly to make modern conservatism sync with the politics of Donald Trump and the working-class voters he attracts.

Ok, then, what’s so conservative about conservative futurism? What exactly am I trying to conserve? This from the book:

The “conservative” part of my conservative futurism informs and shapes the Up Wing futurism part. To be clear: I’m an American-style conservative, and the dual mission of this variant of conservatism is, first, to be a “custodian of the classical liberal tradition,” in the words of columnist George F. Will. That tradition champions the freedom to choose one’s pursuit of happiness whatever the wishes of the state. … A conservative futurist also, you know, cares about the future! Edmund Burke posited in 1790 that society is a multigenerational partnership that extends back into the past and forward into the future, “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

My variant of conservatism embraces two core missions: upholding classical liberal values that champion individual freedom and economic liberty and enabling social mobility so citizens can improve their economic standing. My variant of conservatism trusts free markets and limited government as the best institutions that humanity has yet devised to empower creativity, innovation, and opportunity. My variant of conservatism rejects central planning or detailed government blueprints for society. (That, considering the fluid, complex nature of economies with information is decentralized and scattered.) Instead, my variant of conservatism focuses on establishing conditions where citizens can freely pursue their vision of happiness.

Now, what I keep describing as “my variant of conservatism” would have been utterly uncontroversial in the four decades preceding Trump. But now there are people calling themselves conservatives who broadly reject Up Wing conservatism as I have described it. Too dynamic and disruptive with too little benefit, they say. Tech progress? You mean AI-generated porn? Bring back the America we had before smartphones, before the internet, before Rising China, before Japan Inc., before the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.