Free Speech, Public Opinion and Conservatism.

Many political movements are surging and gaining attention, advocating against what they call the corruption of the western values such as Christianity, Patriarchy, Family values, as well as classic and modern thinking and artistic traditions. They call for the right of free speech for feeling they have their voices and opinion repressed by the mainstream politics, academic institutions and media, which they accusing of being dominated with the left wing influence, what they interpret as the imposition of the socialist values in society, which they often call as the “Postmodernism Marxism”. For them, it is all part of the new strategy of the left to conquer the western society, by destroying it.

They declare to be rationalists for using facts, logic and science against the passions and irrational left wing desires and alienation, which they believe to be against freedom. They are the Think Tank, performing research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture with strong ideologically-oriented. Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations, but some are semi-autonomous agencies within government or are associated with particular political parties, especially millionaires and billionaires, or businesses.

Because they have a strong opposition to the mainstream and center political institutions and parties, academic institutions and social policies they attract a lot of people who have a strong wish to fight against the status quo, for feeling psychologically and sometimes socially excluded from it.

While they claim to advocate for empiricism and scientific knowledge, according to their discourses,  they contradict themselves by being racionalists in practice. They claim to search and support knowledge when in fact they are conservatives advocating for absolutist certainty. Their strongest campaign is for speech freedom, for the freedom of opinion, when in fact they are extremely radical about eliminating their opponents opinions.

When people have the freedom of opinion, and to express it, they inevitably form different opinions. Only when people have common passion their opinions, if we could call it an opinion, will be the same [1]. The truth of the matter is that no opinion is possible to be formed when all opinions become the same; The so-called public opinion. No one is capable of forming their own opinion without the benefit of the multitude of opinions held by others. The public opinion endangers the individual opinion. On the other hand, the multitude of opinions is the only thing that breaks tyrants and tyrannies. This is why the American found fathers equate public opinion with tyranny, and democracy was to them a new flanged form of nepotism, so they established a Republic instead. It was against democracy that the senators were originally established in classic republics, their goal was to protect society against the confusion of multitude. While public interest, in politics, belongs to the interest of a group, opinions, on the contrary, never belong to a group but exclusively to individuals. Multitude never will never be able to form an opinion [2].

Opinion rises whenever people communicate coolly and freely with one another and have the safety to make their views public. But “the reason of man, like the man himself, is timid and cautious when left alone, and acquire firmness and confidence when proportion to the number with which it is associated” [3]. Since opinions are formed and testify during the exchange against others’ opinion, their differences can be mediated only through a body of men chosen by this purpose; They are originally the senators, the medium which all public opinion must pass. Without such mediation, to pass them through, they crystallized into a variety of conflicting mass sentiments under the pressure of emergency, waiting for a “strong man” to mold them into a unanimous “public opinion”, then killing all opinions. Contrary to human reason and opinions, the human power is not only cautious and timid when left alone but completely nonexistent, unless it can rely on others; No King and Tyrants have power without people obeying them. Every support in politics is obedience to a public opinion; and so Revolutions.

Demagogues are always talking about freedom, free opinion and free speech against what they accuse to be the tyranny that blocks individual freedom, but their fight demands human power, the support of a multitude that carries a public opinion and never opinions. While they claim to fight for freedom they are mostly likely to be fighting for a tyranny of a strong man or institutions, which will guarantee the absolute and imposing permanence of their values, against the threat of free opinions. They claim to support free debate and opinions when they fight against it with eristic dialectics, as an attempt to confuse and tire their opponents and end any real debate and dialogue, and so cancelling the political arena.

Their strong absolutist conservatism reflects an internal anxious search and establishment of a safe harbor, that they feel missing in them. What they claim to fight against, the socialism, the postmodernist-marxism, the equality ideology, etc, seems to be a projection of their internal agony against changes in society, for feeling aside, not belonging, left behind, looking for something that represents permanence and eternity, which they rationalize to be the later classic and modernist social traditions of patriarchy, republic, capitalist business with their boss culture and so-called democracy.

It is interesting to notice that a huge part of their members are people who feel emotionally isolated, specially men, blaming women and women movements for being against them, associating women to social chaos against patriarchal tradition [4], Conservative Think Tank thinkers rationalize and misinterpret classic works from the matriarchal Greek era and the bible, which, contrary to their rationalist interpretations, denounces the attempting of men to control nature as the source of chaos. Changes are a natural phenomenon for nature and life symbiosis and the attempt to stop it for something permanent is what creates chaos. This is why Jefferson was against a permanent and absolutist constitution and eternal republic. He thought revolutions to be necessary and important for freedom. The permanent and unchangeable constitution was, for him, a tyrannical power as prohibiting the future generation to have the freedom of opinion and recreate a foundation according to changes they experience in society, just as the found fathers generation did [5].

The absolutist and eternal establishment of a social order, against what they condemn to create chaos in society, reflects an emotional emptiness which they want to fulfill. Many of these men complain they didn’t grow up with a father figure, believing it to be the cause of their emotional insecurity towards life, rationalizing the problem as the lack of a patriarchal social order that rips families apart, according to them. It seems that they never learned that most children, from modernity on, grew up without a father figure, even, and specially, during the most conservative patriarchal and family tradition times, because the father had to spend all day outside home in order to work and provide to their families, which was more than just eight working hours and included the weekends. What gave children emotional confidence, instead, was the constant presence and love of the mother at home. Such constant expression of love during daily affairs and care towards the family and intimate relationship -  which doesn’t matter if it comes from the mother, from the father or foster parents - creates in the child an emotional safe harbor of self confidence, for the unconditional love they received and perceived, which they will carry for the rest of their lives [6]. Without having such safe harbor in themselves, which the person can always return to when they feel uncertain about themselves, the individual becomes insecure for not believing in such unconditional love for themselves. They will feel emotionally indigent, trying to find such safe harbor in others, through their romantic, fraternal and even political relationship, such as in the leader who promise the absolutist social order, of a traditional family and patriarchal traditions, with the hope it will guarantee or give them a better opportunity to find such harbor where they can hold on and feel safe from the uncertainty of ever changing reality.

Relations are utilitarian but healthy relations are relations with symbiosis, where one works and acts in life for trusting that wherever they sail to they will have a safe harbor in themselves; Because every action is a risk taking about the unpredictability in life. Such confidence and dedication in their attitude and work in life generate experiences and skills that firm a stronger confidence in their individual acting power, which reflected in their work and attitude through life as a reliability provider, shaping their personality and identity as attractive harbor to others. Without such trust in the self what is left is anxiety and frustration, for not being able to develop an attractive harbor through that individual action, which forms their self narrative where identity comes from. In order to protect the self from self-hate the individual will tend to project it to the external world, as the evil cause of their internal chaos, to be fought and destroyed as symbolism of their internal conflicts’ destruction. Many people, on the other hand, look for professional help but not in really looking for understanding and knowledge about themselves but certitude. What they want is to fit in and the most popular help they will find is focused on that, not in really improving themselves through understanding but through pretending. Many of the self-help books and gurus are highly ideologically driven, presenting people with mythology about patriarchy, postmodernist Marxism and all sorts of political excuses to incite hate projection and so public opinion in support of their ideological agenda.

This is why the family is important, community is important, institutions are important, they are all safe harbor to us, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they should never change. They must change to keep up with reality symbiosis that is in constant motion. We are always looking for a safe harbor. When we can’t find in ourselves, in our own world, will will try to find in the external world and so attempt to force something that will artificially represents such harbor, believing that in introducing a supposed absolutism and permanence we will overcome the insecurity in us, of acting in life, for believing to have overcame our action unpredictability in life. But such absolutist permanence can only be established through the tyrannical support of a public opinion, molded by the power of a strong man; A hero or the father figure, who crystallizes the conflicting mass sentiments under the pressure of emergency, and which the classic Greek hero narratives alert us about [7].

Without realizing it, these conservatives are, before anything else, strongly romanticists.


[1] J. E. Cooker. The Federalist (1787). New York: Wesleyan University Press (1983)
[2] ARENDT, H. On Revolution.  London: Faber & Faber, 2016.
[3] Ibd. no 49
[4] PETERSON. J. Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Routledge: first edition (1999)
[5] T. JEFFERSON; S. K.l. PADOVER. The Completly Jefferson, New York: Distributed by Duell, Sloan & Pearce, Inc. (1943)
[6] WINNICOTT, D.W. The Child, The Family, and The Outside World.  Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 1964
[7] RANK, O. Psychology and The Soul. Mansfield Center, CT : Martino Publishing, 2011.