I’ve been reading a lot about the historical roots of conservatism (modern and not), and thinking about how far it can be distilled to its base message; that is, what people hear or think they hear when a conservative thought is released into the human cognitive sphere.

The best I could come up with is that conservatism delivers this message: “You are special.”

And liberalism delivers this message: “You are not special.”

From that you can see why liberalism has an innate messaging problem built into the very fibers of its being, even if it is more correct.

Conservatism and religion are natural allies, even when what is called conservatism is not really conservative and is in fact radically reactionary, because the message of religion is also along the lines of, “You are special.” Thus even revolutionary and historically divergent conservatism is a natural ally of religion and vice versa in ways that liberalism can really never be.

Meanwhile, liberalism and leftism often (and often unnecessarily) tell people that there is nothing special about them, that their birth is an accident, that their privilege taints them, that they didn’t get where they are on merit, and there may be even things “wrong” with them: they are straight white males, or soccer moms, or own an SUV, etc. This list is nearly endless.

Yes, I am aware that this liberal accounting of things is more true, and more in line with the actual real world. I am not making value judgments on either conservatism or liberalism, though. I am merely observing the de facto message each ideology projects into the world, whether it means to or not.

Therefore liberalism has a huge messaging problem right from the start due to its built-in starting point of, “You are not special” while conservatism with its antipodal promise of innate specialness is much more palatable since every human already feels to be at the center of his or her universe.