In April 2025, Tucker Carlson invited Matt Walsh onto his podcast. The conversation covered everything from same-sex adoption and surrogacy to foreign policy isolationism. It is well worth listening to. But beyond the substance of the conversation, there was simply something powerful about a discussion between two men with such influence on the American Right—each man has an audience of several million subscribers on YouTube alone. In the age of digital media, each man far surpasses the reach of any legacy-news media personality. Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson could be fairly described as two of the most influential men in conservative media.

Yet, in one of the most striking parts of the conversation, both of these “conservative influencers” questioned whether the term “conservative” has value any longer. Both seem to think it does not: 

Walsh: The definition of conservatism…it has no definition, I think. We talk about the words that don’t mean anything anymore, words that used to be useful and maybe used to mean something and they just don’t anymore because of how they’ve been used and abused and overused. And I just think conservatism is one of those words. When you tell me now that someone is conservative, that doesn’t tell me a lot about them. I don’t know what you mean. 

Carlson: It generally means I’m not going to like them. They’re going to be some kind of fraud on the internet…that’s my gut reaction, so discredited has that word become.

For decades, the American Right embraced conservatism—from William F. Buckley to Russell Kirk, the Right was decidedly “conservative.” Sure, there were always dissenters, those who were part of the “big tent” Republican Party but identified as liberal Republicans or libertarians or something that was decidedly not conservative. But Tucker Carlson and especially Matt Walsh are not non-conservative Republicans; both men are social conservatives on most/all issues. These are men we would expect to embrace the “conservative” label. Yet they both seem to dismiss the word as virtually meaningless in today’s political culture. What happened?

While dictionary definitions can make for boring essays, it is hard to diagnose why the label “conservative” seems to be losing favor without figuring out what the term actually means. 

The root of conservatism must be in the concept of conserving something. But what, precisely, a conservative is trying to conserve is not always clear. We see this in the clear division between two types of people on the Right who each claim the title of conservative. One group argues that what modern conservatism is meant to conserve is classical liberalism—the liberalism of the Enlightenment, of Locke and Montesquieu—which primarily exists to uphold the liberty of the individual person against the state. It sounds convincing; many on the Right still hold to this. But it is not conservatism.

Yoram Hazoni argues vigorously against this notion of classical liberalism as conservatism, articulating a conservatism that is adamantly opposed to the classical liberal tradition:

In the political arena, conservatism refers to a standpoint that regards the recovery, restoration, elaboration, and repair of national and religious traditions as the key to maintaining a nation and strengthening it through time…This is a tradition already powerfully described by John Fortescue in the fifteenth century, by Richard Hooker in the sixteenth century…by statesmen such as Edmund Burke in Britain and by the Federalist Party of George Washington, John Jay, John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, and Alexander Hamilton in America.

Hazony is adamant that this tradition of conservatism is distinct from, even antagonistic to, classical liberalism. The modern right suffers from 

an extraordinary confusion over what distinguishes Anglo-American conservatism from Enlightenment liberalism…the liberty of the individual is a fine thing, both good in itself and worthwhile for its beneficial effects, when taken in the right proportion…But under the present conditions of permanent revolution and cultural devastation, the most important thing to remember about individual liberties is that, in and of themselves, they have no power to make anything stable or permanent.

What is conservatism conserving? Individual liberties and the Enlightenment tradition? Stability and order? Tradition? Religious faith? This confusion, if it is not solved, justifies the frustration and dismissiveness of men on the Right like Carlson and Walsh: Why use the word “conservative” to define a political movement if we can’t agree fundamentally on what we are trying to conserve? Is it liberty for its own sake? Is it tradition and religion and the natural order? These are not the same thing. If conservatism cannot clarify what it is, there is indeed nothing to be gained from using the word.If conservatism cannot clarify what it is, there is indeed nothing to be gained from using the word.Tweet This

So, can conservatism be clarified and used in a useful way or has the term outlived its usefulness? On one hand, it may be politically and culturally expedient to discard the term altogether. The rise of President Trump has brought together a coalition of conservatives, center-left liberals alienated by the radically progressive Democratic Party, and normal people who simply want law and order, a country with physical borders, or schools where kids learn reading and math rather than a litany of sexual expressions and gender pronouns. So, it makes sense that those interested in solidifying the realigned coalition that is today’s Republican Party may simply wish to shy away from the term “conservative” altogether. Why not move on from the tired conservative-liberal paradigm and bring the party into the postmodern world?

On the other hand, simply being “a Republican” or “right-wing” doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. One can be pro-Israel or anti-Israel, in favor of robust government spending for the common good or of cutting government spending down to the bone, an isolationist or Bush-era neoconservative, traditionally Catholic or totally secular, and still validly claim to be a Republican or “on the Right.” It seems worthwhile to actually have useful terms to describe the political principles that animate policy positions.

So, what is a conservative? For that term to have meaning—and to convince men like Carlson and Walsh that “conservative” is not a dirty and useless word—it needs to be properly and boldly defined. And it can indeed be salvaged, but only if one is willing to be honest and a bit bold. As Russell Kirk noted, social conservatism (and really there is no other kind) is “preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity. Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors…They think society is a spiritual reality…” While a simple definition of conservatism is difficult, this passage points out the two necessary features of a coherent understanding of the word: it involves a stable continuation of tradition, and it acknowledges the spiritual reality of society. For American conservatism, this moral tradition, this spiritual reality, means Christianity.

Most of the Founding Fathers professed Christianity; the Bible was quoted in 18th-century American political writing far more than any other book. More broadly, Anglo-American social conservatism—and its emphases on stable marriages, families, and communities, and on human rights as rooted in the truth that all people are created in the image and likeness of God—is incomprehensible apart from Christian faith and doctrine. People like to talk about conservatism as a preservation of the “Western tradition,” and rightly so. But the reality is that the “Western tradition” is essentially the Christian tradition. Christian faith and prayer, Christian devotion and values, are the source of the principles of social conservatism. 

There is simply no way to recover a meaningful definition of conservatism without acknowledging that Christianity is that which conservatives seek to conserve. Without Christianity, the only alternative is indeed to admit that the word “conservative” has no real value and that the modern Right should search for a new term to articulate its principles. But the very things that the wider conservative movement seeks to preserve—faith and family, stability and order, God and tradition, rights and customs—are Christian values. 

Rather than discard the term, the Right should recover a bold, explicit respect for and defense of Christianity. Yes, we conservatives are trying to conserve something. But it is not classical liberalism; it is not the values of the Lockean Enlightenment; it is not liberty as an end in itself. Conservatives should shed their timidity and proclaim that what we seek to conserve is indeed the central role of Christianity in society.

https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/has-conservatism-outlived-its-usefulness