It’s my claim that there is a through-line from pre-Revolutionary aristocratic ideals, to Modern Conservatism and Fascism. Both are essentially Patriarchal and Anti-Liberal. Both are rooted first and foremost in force; they involve not the “rule of law” but rule BY law, i.e. using the forms of law to legitimate power for its own sake. As they are rooted first and foremost in force, martial values are at the core of the ideology. It is a very “molon labe” worldview. It is also very aristocratic (as I alluded) because it involves a strong espirit de corps amongst the group that asserts privilege for itself. For the post-Revolutionary era of mass-politics, this privileged class is democratized, broadened out to include an ethnicity or a national grouping instead of a tiny elite at the top. It is quite literally a Spartan-worldview.
The Conservative worldview, again, is rooted in Patriarchal values. And those values persist into our own time, because in many ways they are highly practical - Patriarchy after all was the only game in town for the political economy of pre-Industrial society; civilization was centered mostly on zero-sum competition over land. Order, not freedom or equality, was the cardinal value. Naturally, order maintains its pre-eminent importance; and in the name of order, Patriarchal values still resonate.
I agree that the greatest value of Conservatism today consists in the tradition as a source of individual, moral direction. The great majority of the moral values we hold today, have their roots in the Great Traditions of Patriarchal society. But the attempt to translate these values into a formally political program, is where things go wrong for us. Jordan Peterson is a great personal mentor; but give that man real political power, and he will become a Grand Inquisitor, and right quick.
You’re operating with the standard North American taxonomy of “conservative”; but my whole point with this post is that that taxonomy has been confused, from the very start. It does not explain the existence of populism as an Anti-Liberal force. Fascism is taken to be some weird aberration of Liberal-Nationalism, when instead it has to be understood as a feature, not a bug, of politics in post-Revolutionary (both French and Industrial) mass-society. From your description of your views I would say it’s obvious that you are a Right-Liberal, not a Conservative or Fascist.
Unfortunately, Right-liberals do tend to enter into coalition with Conservatives, just because they can find common cause against Left-liberals and their egalitarian values. This is not the end of the world, so long as the Right-liberals always take the lead in that coalition. When the Fascists get the upper hand, Liberal democracy is in trouble.
I have neglected, I admit, Left-wing Authoritarianism. By my analysis, it is really the pre-Modern, Patriarchal impulse to dominate, just under another guise. Again, you have the aristocratic ethos at work, the insistence on the fundamental equality of the relevant members of society. And in the name of an absolute equality, a clique emerges to lead that society (really as a matter of practical necessity) and then transforms itself into a ruling class. This class, aggrandizing for themselves the role of custodian of the egalitarian ethos (by which “no one is oppressed any longer”), then proceeds to viciously oppress any who resist THEM. This ethos is intensely Anti-Liberal, and can become Totalitarian just as the Fascists can. But historical experience suggests that societies that are already Liberal democracies, are much more susceptible of succumbing to Fascism than they are to Leftwing Authoritarianism. It is poor countries that are attempting to modernize, that are more likely to go the route of Communism.
So, while I agree that we in the West have our own fundamentalist egalitarians (the Church of the Woke), their influence is much more likely to be cultural than political. American Fascism, in contrast, has already attained political power at the highest levels (complete with a cult of personality).