A typology of conservatisms

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I suppose I'll share this here because I don't know that I'll ever "use it."
I have this typology of conservatism I've started thinking about. I often think about how we've got words that cause confusion and sloppy thinking due to being asked to wear too many hats. Racism is one such; it refers, as people use it, to about, like, five different concepts that are not inherently connected. Same with love.

With conservatism, I think there are essentially three things we call conservatism and bringing their differences into the spotlight helps to understand why conservatism fails so badly and is such ideological mush. So lets all put our Greek tunics on and whip those cocks out for autistic typology.

#1: TEMPERAMENTAL CONSERVATISM
Conservatism as personality
Your first big kind of conservatism is what I call the temperamental kind. This refers to a preference for keeping things the same that may very well have conscious arguments for on the part of the conservative, but is really, at heart, a knee jerk preference for keeping things the same. I happen to distrust change, perhaps with very good reason (see #2 below), but I haven't really intellectualized why. Everything I support is just kind of a grab bag of different ideas with no coherence. I shill for rich men because rich men are rich, and my society would not allow an injustice to happen like a rich man being rich badly. I shill for war because we go to war. I shill for fag bashing unless we decide fags are okay now and then I shill for Botswana buttsex (thank you Charlie Kirk RIP).

The temperamental conservative is common as people age, is common in the countryside where the pace of life changes slower (not all rural conservatism is economically/sociologically motivated; rural folk frequently vote against their own interests). The problem with it is that while it draws its rhetoric from actual ideologies, the motive force behind it is essentially risk-aversion and conflict-aversion, and that's the same thing that guts it as a political force. It cannot get violent, cannot hold ground, if you displace it it never tries to claw its territory back. Men who voted Wallace will then pretend to have always been integrationists and by the end of their life vote for Harris.

Your boomer parents that watch FOX all day (I know it ain't just me) and vote straight Republican on every ticket are this kind.

#2: PHILOSOPHICAL CONSERVATISM
Conservatism as epistemology
This leads us to our second conservatism, the philosophical kind. At my most charitable, I'd say that the temperamental kind is what happens when people operating off instinct grasp at the philosophical kind, but I honestly don't really believe that in most cases. The philosophical kind of conservatism is the sort where a person has a consistent, reasoned preference for gradual change/resistance to change as an epistemological/sociological stance. Historically, we associate this with men like Burke and Chesterton. There is an understanding that culture encodes generations of wisdom into traditions and dogmas that we sometimes can't recognize the value of even though it is real. There is an understanding that radical change often destabilizes societies in ways that are more destructive than the change, even if good, can ever counteract in good done. The philosophical conservative can come from lots of ideological backgrounds, but what's shared across ideologies/cultures is a belief that you do not dynamite the system if you can at all help it. In this sense even some traditionally Left ideologies like Fabianism have a little bit of philosophically conservative DNA (relative to revolutionary Leftists).

The philosophical conservative resembles the temperamental conservative in taste and, as noted, at his best the temperamental conservative is a philosophical conservative that hasn't thought things through in those terms. But you often see the two diverge wildly. A philosophical conservative wouldn't try to, for example, foist their system of government on the Iraqis, or sucker the Soviets into implementing "economic shock therapy," because the conservative impulse here is universal; Chesterton's fence is valid whether you are a liberal democracy, Islamic authoritarian state or a Communist society.

#3: CIVILIZATIONAL CONSERVATISM
Conservatism as program
Lastly, we have conservatism as shorthand for whatever ideology a society thinks of as being foundational to its identity, even when its current ruling ideology is hostile to that identity. In America this is classical liberalism and the closest equivalent today is paleoconservatism, but it varies from place to place. In Afghanistan it would be radical Islamism. In China on the verge of Mao it would be Confucianism. In the Cherokee under Washington it would have been stateless societies with a unique partitioning of authority into male and female spheres. Even what a society considers conservative is subject to change over time.

DOES TEMPERAMENTAL CONSERVATISM DESTROY THE OTHER TWO?
I think so.

The problem politically is that movements usually want to maximize membership so they can win elections. If I can't win elections, I can't get my preferred policies implemented. Because of this, I try to fish for as many people as possible.

Usually, these three camps are going to be in alignment, although not always. (You'll frequently see the temperamental type, especially, diverge wildly from the ideology it claims to support; the temperamental kind is driven by tribal signaling.) The civilizational conservative's position is Old Shit so the philosophical conservative supports it not necessarily because they agree in an ideological way but because it's dangerous to meddle in Old Shit. The temperamental conservative supports it because of the same, just with less developed reasoning. But the weak link in the coalition is the temperamental conservative. Because they don't have a solid foundation to their views, they're more easily unsettled. Because they're numerous, they get to drive the agenda of the movement. This means they break easily, break first, and the conservative movement can constantly be maneuvered into more and more radical positions. It is set up, by nature, to cede ground, not take it.

And so: you don't get what you want in the end anyways.

I don't know how you fix this. It'd take a political genius, the kind that people know by name hundreds of years in the future, to fix it. But I think the key, for civilizational conservatives, is to stop thinking of themselves as conservative at all. You are not conserving shit. You're trying to build a specific future, always. And how do you build a future? Through the same techniques radicals do. You have to build mass movements. Hoffer, Alinsky, Gramsci, these guys are the model for how you seize control of a culture and direct it to your aims.

The goal of a civilizational conservative should be to flush the temperamental conservatives out and win over radicals. Nobody has ever convinced masses of anything through facts and logic no matter how many Ben Shapiro montages you've watched. No salvation is coming where conservatism suddenly demonstrates itself as so correct everyone goes back to it. Your competition - branding-wise - is Communists, Islamists, democratic socialists, environmentalists, all of these other radical assholes.

I've run out of juice and don't know how to tie this off. Hopefully this giant ramble had any value at all and wasn't a complete mess. Goodnight.

 

[Gandhi's Left Hook]

This reads like verbal masturbation. I'm not sure why you are trying to give advice to conservatives when you have high disdain for them. Maybe narcissism? Anyways. No one is listening.

 

[Lach]

The reality of this is a system sort of loses luster and it naturally deteriorates over time anyways, where the installed inputs of a society's direction stagnates into a quagmire where the inevitable response for change is violence, whoever wins the exchange of violence either topples the old system and restructures it (this applies also to the supposed defenders of the status quo) or separates entirely to form their own. It all works nicely for a while until it reaches back to the same initial issue.

I believe it's a fundamental human problem that can't be solved from the most based ideology or having a set of rules so concretely succinct that it's immunized to systemic corruption and generational entropy, people suffer from malleable and ultimately incompatible views of reality, the winning side just merely incapacitates and forcefully pacifies the incompatible to submit to their preferred direction and one man's paradise is another man's hell yadayada and normalfags don't care because everything stabilizes so they can go back to grilling and having families(at varied capacities under the new system). Why this relates to your typology crap is that it's all a gigantic spook, that you're as indoctrinated as your hypothetical boomer cletus polishing a shotgun while wearing his miga hat, people get swept up in these mass hysteria events of shit that actually doesn't matter that relates to the increasing internal divide on their views of reality and use it as an excuse to form political camps to sharpen their axes at. The Cold war(Gommies versus Liberals), Thirty Years War(Prots vs Catholics), Spain's several civil wars are all just casus bellis for people with different views wanting the vestige of power to redefine the world to their preferences with the well-adjusted people caught in the middle of the crossfire.

 

[Male Idiot]

Hm, the local Hungarian elections had two neoconservatives fight.

Side A: We love Israel, India, USA, Russia.
Side B: We love Eu, Ukraine, LGBT. You are corrupt and Indians stink.

Both: We love Jesus, sports, small indie businesses, Hungary, the others are traitors, no illegals!

Not a single left party got into the parlaiment.

Full cuckservative domination, team B won. It was basically:
-You are rude and not a real patriot!
-No u, you are the real rude and unpstriotic!
-imagine this going on for circles and ages like 2 jeets arguing who is bloody benchod.

It was like a virtue signalling parade but for how Jesus and Trad they are.

 

[Skitarii]

I'm a stochastic conservative

 

[AMHOLIO]

I think the problem with conservatism is that it is a set of beliefs made by humans so it always has humans in it doing human things. It's why liberalism has problems too: you can propose some neat ideas that benefit everyone only to fuck it up because you have a taste for luxury and embezzled money for a higher case than your politics - yourself. Or Becky and Dave get into a political movement, one cheats on the other, and then they tear each other down by joining opposing parties and hate each other based on shared history rather than politics. Or you're just gullible and unfortunately duped yourself into being lax on some bad behavior of others you shouldn't have. It's just kind of human to be flawed.


I say the main flaw inherent to "conservativism" is being too scared/unsure to break or modify tradition when it could benefit you. Like, conservative muslims take Ls every day for being Muslims, but a smaller example would be cucking yourself out of pork because the triginosis risk is gone in most western countries, but you still keep doing it because that's how it has always been done. Liberals have the opposite problem of trying to do all retarded things at once and forcing themselves out of working systems. Ideally, both schools of thought should be incorporated into humanity without tearing each other's hair out as a way to keep us healthy and balanced, but you know, we're humans.

 

[Powerhouse of the Cell]

Most of "Conservatism" consists of timeless universals that have existed throughout the vast majority of human history across different places, such as attitudes on homosexuality, gender differences and nationalistic attitudes.
These are basically the default instinctual way humans live by.
Conservatism doesn't change because it is basically the default state of humanity.

A large portion of liberalism goes against these kind of timeless universals.
And it takes it being a hegemonic belief system that takes a stranglehold on society for people to even adopt it.

Conservatism isn't a thing like liberalism is.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

three things we call conservatism

I think that this distinction is simultaneously useful while also showing why "conservatism" is too unstable of a category to do much philosophical work

Like, the first one is plainly a temperament, the third is not really conservatism at all, but allegiance to some substantive social order that happens to be regarded as historically foundational. That slot can as well be occupied by classical liberalism, Confucianism, Islamism, communism, or anything else. To call all of them "civilizational conservatism" does not tell us whether the idea is true or worth defending, at best it only tells us where it sits historically.
In my opinion, the real problem is in the second one.

There is an understanding that culture encodes generations of wisdom into traditions and dogmas that we sometimes can't recognize the value of even though it is real.

I agree a tradition can preserve knowledge. However, a tradition can also preserve error, superstition, predation, and obsolete adaptations. The fact that a tradition has persisted is evidence only that some causal process preserved it (possibly usefulness, belief, habit, institutional inertia, or force). It is not evidence that the function was good, is still necessary, or was justified in the first place. Chesterton's fence does not grant the fence authority over the investigator, it only warrants investigation before demolition.

I reject the notion outright that "philosophical conservatism" is an epistemology. At most, it is a cautionary heuristic, such that complex systems can contain causal relationships that one has not yet identified, therefore reckless intervention can result in consequences one failed to anticipate. But the epistemic standard remains reality and evidence, from which valid principles must be derived. Otherwise, if persistence and inheritance by themselves create a presumption of epistemic authority, the same reasoning would protect slavery, caste systems, state churches, communism, or any sufficiently old machinery of domination.

That kind of strategic conclusion then recreates the same kind of person you blame for conservative failure, i.e. someone who follows slogans, leaders, and social cues rather than understanding the ideas for themselves.

The goal of a civilizational conservative should be to flush the temperamental conservatives out and win over radicals. Nobody has ever convinced masses of anything through facts and logic

You have to build mass movements. Hoffer, Alinsky, Gramsci, these guys are the model for how you seize control of a culture and direct it to your aims.

But a movement built through branding, emotional mobilization, and cultural capture just creates more temperamental followers. You get people attached to symbols, leaders, enemies, and social signals without understanding the principles that are supposedly beneath them. They may be more aggressive than FOX-watching boomers, but they are no less intellectually dependent on the surrounding incentive structure. That is, change the prestige hierarchy and those people will change with it.

I don't see how that is a solution to conservatism's lack of foundations. At best, it's a proposal to use better propaganda to compensate for that absence of foundations.

The way I see it, the durable alternative is to stop treating "the culture" as if it were an object to be seized and directed. Instead, identify which principles are actually true and defend them because they are true. Like, if classical liberalism or property rights are valid, then it's incidental that they were once foundational to America. If they are invalid, then no amount of ancestral association rescues them.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The main issue is that Conservatism is like running against a treadmill, you can run all you want, eventually you'll tire yourself and get shifted the other way. Conservatism has no ideology and with that no anchor point to a goal, aiming for ideals from 10 years ago doesn't work when people forget what those ideals were 10 years later and aim for a later date.

The notion of conservatism should be removed and replaced with an actual defined ideology. MAGA could theoretically have been such a case, but it will die the moment Trump gets out of office, the establishment does not want any deviation from their status quo uniparty.

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

Most of "Conservatism" consists of timeless universals that have existed throughout the vast majority of human history across different places, such as attitudes on homosexuality, gender differences and nationalistic attitudes.
These are basically the default instinctual way humans live by.

Did nationalism exist before the 18th century?

 

[Powerhouse of the Cell]

Did nationalism exist before the 18th century?

Nations existed long before the 18th century, so generally yes.

It just didn't have a name.

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

Nations existed long before the 18th century, so generally yes.

It just didn't have a name.

Not in your modern understanding of nation nor in what you mean by modern nationalistic attitudes. That's the problem of conservatism. It does not understand that what it perceives as "default instinctual way humans live by" is a result of progress. Nationalism was a progressive movement at one point.

 

[draggs]

Did nationalism exist before the 18th century?

yes, in some places. okay mostly just rome. they had a different idea of what the roman nation was than modern nationalism thinks the nation is though

also france and england in the 12th-13th centuries, the iberian peninsula in the 12th-13th centuries, holland in the 16th-17th centuries

anyway, good lord, pedants are tiresome

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

yes, in some places. okay mostly just rome. they had a different idea of what the roman nation was than modern nationalism thinks the nation is though. also most places in western europe by the early middle ages

anyway, good lord, pedants are tiresome

It's not pedantic. It's basic language like recognizing what a woman is and why MTFs aren't women. Claiming that Rome was a nation is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the word that you are using. Similarly, I have no fucking clue how you're seeing early middle ages as an example of nationalistic thought.

If you want an example of nationalism before the 18th century, the Dutch revolt is a serviceable example but even then, you cannot separate the concept of a nation cleanly from religion. You're still missing the core point of my posts which is that conservatives genuinely cannot wrap their minds around the direction in which time flows. Humans were not created with the notion of nationalism already in their heads, we had to progress towards it.

 

[Powerhouse of the Cell]

It's not pedantic. It's basic language like recognizing what a woman is and why MTFs aren't women. Claiming that Rome was a nation is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the word that you are using. Similarly, I have no fucking clue how you're seeing early middle ages as an example of nationalistic thought.

If you want an example of nationalism before the 18th century, the Dutch revolt is a serviceable example but even then, you cannot separate the concept of a nation cleanly from religion. You're still missing the core point of my posts which is that conservatives genuinely cannot wrap their minds around the direction in which time flows. Humans were not created with the notion of nationalism already in their heads, we had to progress towards it.

Ok, then maybe nationalism is the wrong word.

Maybe Kinship is more suited? Generally speaking, I feel like nationalism is just an extension of kinship.

The problem is that Liberalism is more of a "thing" than conservatism is, and because it's more of a thing.
It needs more social reinforcement for it to exist and that comes in the form of causey people.
Causey people lean towards hegemonic belief systems, which right now is wokism. And so it is inherently more oppressive and socially reinforced than conservatism.

It's basically people who are in the hegemonic belief systems vs people that don't believe in that hegemonic belief system for varying reason that are vaguely classed as "conservatives" when in reality they are most of the time, non-causey people that didn't fall for the hegemonic belief system at the time.

Trying to make not being a hegemonic belief system believer into some kind of "thing" like an "ideology" kinda just straight up doesn't work.

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

Trying to make not being a hegemonic belief system believer into some kind of "thing" like an "ideology" kinda just straight up doesn't work.

Which connects cleanly onto OP's description of the temperamental conservative (edit: in my assessment, he might disagree). It has no ideology. To have an ideology, you must progress towards something. The temperamental conversative doesn't because he perpetually lives in the now. Time is flat for him which is why nationalism appears as a universal human truth rather than something that was progressed towards.

also france and england in the 12th-13th centuries, the iberian peninsula in the 12th-13th centuries, holland in the 16th-17th centuries

Was the Iberian defined by his belonging to the "Iberian nation" or rather his religion or adherence to a specific kingdom and its monarch? Similarly, when did the peasant in Poitiers become an Englishman? Did the Burgundian belong to the English, French, or some other nation?

To respond to my own example of the Dutch revolt, that's probably the best example of proto-nationalism, but only if you ignore its underlying religious conflict. The revolt did not start to establish an independent Dutch nation nor did it include the Flemish and Brabantians who (as Catholics) remained loyal to the Catholic Habsburgs. The revolt did not create a Dutch nation, but rather a confederation of provinces which opposed Philipp II's infringement of their rights, privileges, and liberties.

 

[Taser Confetti]

• God, Jesus and the Bear told me to support Israel and vote Red no matter who
• The smug faggot European on Reddit made me so butthurt I’m still seething about it
• I’m upper middle management in an HVAC company in rural Oklahoma and have utter contempt for anyone who wants a living wage

The cancer killing the American Right.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Did nationalism exist before the 18th century?

yes, in some places. okay mostly just rome. they had a different idea of what the roman nation was than modern nationalism thinks the nation is though

Ok, then maybe nationalism is the wrong word.

Weighing in on the nationalism thing, I think of this as being a lot like communism in that while we don't have literal big-N "Nationalism," there's a difference between the (metaphorical) "small-n" nationalism and the "big-n" nationalism.
Communism, you all get and agree, right, that we often use the word communism to describe collectivist/egalitarian societies, it predates Marx, but when you say Communism often that refers to a very specific ideology that Marx first developed into something coherent.

With nationalism, there has ALWAYS been a preference on the part of normal people for being ruled by their own kind and self-identification with the nation. The nation itself is an ancient idea, like, you even see this in how Americans referred to Indian tribes as "the Nations."

But where that's different from "big-n" nationalism is that big-n nationalism involved a lot more. It also held this idea that nations are the natural or only legitimate unit of political organization, that the legitimacy of states comes from being expressions of the national identity (which in turn gives them claims of authority over people's lives), it's married to a program of state-building that even in liberal 19th Century Europe still meant tearing down regional identities and power bases to build up a central identity and bureaucracy. And you see this in how they talk about it, too, because "patriot" was a more common word before the French Revolution (or, in America, the War of 1812) to describe "kicking the foreigners out" (small-n nationalism) versus "nationalism," running roughshod over different powerbases to unify society.

So I swear to God, this isn't pedantry, "nationalism" in the sense historians mean really is a modern thing.

I mean, how does this not exist earlier? Well you see shades of it way earlier, like you could say Rome for example is basically a nationalist society, but in feudal Europe you barely have "a state" at all. Even though realms are usually centered on a particular ethnic group and yeah, often the ruler is fromt hat ethnic group, the legitimacy and self-concept of the government isn't derived from the ethnic group, it's derived from your personal relationship to that ruler. I owe loyalty to the King of Scotland, this is a status both my heirs and his heirs will inherit, but I don't owe loyalty to Scotland, I owe it to... the King of Scotland. This ain't just splitting hairs. Medieval people don't process this the way we do where everything is institutional. The person matters. And their society was way more decentralized - radically so, they like to call this "polycentrism" in the poli sci type writing.

What changes is absolutism basically digs its own grave. Between printing presses (useful for bureaucracy, cuts out the Church to a large extent, Protestantism mortally wounds the Catholic dominance even in Southern Europe because how Catholicism works changes) and gunpowder (kills the military technologies that let the knights-and-castles decentralized world be a thing) let the bourgeoisie and royalty cut a deal with each other more or less to curtail the aristocracy, smash up their independent powerbases, smash up the Church's independent powerbase, centralize everything on a govt that's friendlier to normal people but also has way more power. But then this has smashed up the relationships that defined your whole world and substituted it for standing armies, administrations, the state itself, basically. So people start to identify with the state more than they do the dude in charge. Boom, you've got the seeds of nationalism, and when you fuse this with Enlightenment ideas of consent of the governed/social contracts/general will, boom, it blows up in France where you have the right mixture of vast state power, inequality and grueling poverty.

That's the problem of conservatism. It does not understand that what it perceives as "default instinctual way humans live by" is a result of progress. Nationalism was a progressive movement at one point.

Yeah, and this is kind of what I was trying to say. I cranked that OP out late last night and could have written it up better, but what I was trying to get at is that you have these ideologies that are only conservative in their own context - we all get, right, that Chinese conservatism is totally different than say Swedish conservatism - but the triple coincidence the these three kinds of people all want the same thing for different reasons means that they naturally form a coalition. And the problem is that things had to BECOME conservative by winning, which is a totally different pathway than... conserving yourself.

So the natural instinct is to cast a wide net, get as big a coalition as possible, coalitions always share ideas (see how even non-Evangelicals tend to support Israel in the Republican Party until recently: they have none of the ideological reason to back it, but it's a thing they're socialized into by their media ecosystem), we end up talking the same, but they talk like a fag and their shit's all retarded. Winning, becoming the status quo, meant being yesterday's radicals. Being the status quo, they wind up sharing power with these dipshits that force them to start politicking as conservatives, and it's a losing battle.

So how do I win a rigged game? I stop playing it and start playing a better one. Organizing and marketing my movement as a revolutionary/progressive one.

 

[draggs]

It's not pedantic. It's basic language like recognizing what a woman is and why MTFs aren't women. Claiming that Rome was a nation is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the word that you are using. Similarly, I have no fucking clue how you're seeing early middle ages as an example of nationalistic thought.

If you want an example of nationalism before the 18th century, the Dutch revolt is a serviceable example but even then, you cannot separate the concept of a nation cleanly from religion. You're still missing the core point of my posts which is that conservatives genuinely cannot wrap their minds around the direction in which time flows. Humans were not created with the notion of nationalism already in their heads, we had to progress towards it.

didnt mean you were being pedantic. that's what the "anyway" signified. others are. we know who they are

the nation of england, the nation of the englishmen, certainly existed as a concept in the early middle ages, as a reaction to angevin rule. there was a fundamental difference in how the english perceived the kingdom of england and the angevins' possessions in france. as usually happens in a stronger nation's views towards its weaker neighbors, the english believed wales and scotland and ireland were also rightfully part of the english nation, and the welsh and scots and irish could like it or lump it. their existence on those lands was a matter of inconvenience to the english, not a condition making those lands fundamentally apart from england. the english view of aquitaine, normandy, anjou etc. was different. and the kings of england being vassals to the king of france did not mean the french king thought he ruled england. england was not a fief of the french king, england was not invested in the kings of england by the king of france like the angevins' french fiefdoms were

the nation of france certainly existed as a belief by the late 13th century. the tension between that belief and the kings of england owning half of france caused the hundred years' war. and then england trying to conquer france in that war only strengthened the concept of the french nation

you say there being a religious component somehow makes it different from modern nationalism is plain wrong. dutch nationalism was, the dutch should rule themselves, the dutch are protestant, so the dutch should rule themselves in a sovereign and independent protestant nation. spain denies them their protestantism (along with imposing crushing taxation and general denial of local political autonomy), so spain must go. whether the reasons for wanting a nation are religious or secular they're still nationalist. we see the religious component exerting strong influence in places like greece and other balkan nations rising against the ottomans in the 19th century. italian nationalism had a strong religious component. as did german

"conservatives genuinely cannot wrap their minds around the direction in which time flows" sounds like lazy leddit thinking. no, sorry, it is lazy leddit thinking. if we're going to be lazy and argue about whether conservatism means a belief that all customs and traditions from an arbitrary point X thousand years in the past should operate unchanged indefinitely, let's not waste our time. conservatism is more complex than that. a similarly crude, self-serving, negative caricature of what "progressivism" is would also be wrong

you have these ideologies that are only conservative in their own context

X ideology is only X in its own context exists for any and every ideology. marxism-leninism-stalinism would only be called progressive by the handful of cranky tankies today, as its violent totalitarianism in the dominant modern western political context is extremely regressive, and in other ideological contexts (for example, in an islamic context) it is also regressive, but in its own context, it was very progressive. the most progressive, the absolute maximum of progressivism possible

 

[YHWH's Strongest Soldier]

the english view of aquitaine, normandy, anjou etc. was different. and the kings of england being vassals to the king of france did not mean the french king thought he ruled england. england was not a fief of the french king, england was not invested in the kings of england by the king of france like the angevins' french fiefdoms were

I do not understand this portion of your response. The kind of England was a vassal of the French king as the duke of Aquitaine. The refusal of the English king to pay homage to the French king was seen as infringement upon the French king's jurisdiction. As such, the French king sought to confiscate Aquitaine, which was met with the king of England's claim to the French crown to resolve the crisis in his favor. I am likely misunderstanding your point, but I do not see how this conflict can be cleanly mapped onto proto-nationalism. An Aquitanian was not an Englishman nor a Frenchman, he was the subject of the duke of Aquitaine. It's complicated even further by the entire mess that was Burgundy and the subjects of its duke which is why I do not believe that you can justifiably view that conflict through the lens of nationalism.

Similarly, the king of England did not invade Ireland for lebensraum. His justification came initially from the Pope and then through the Lordship of Ireland. It was not part of the nation of England. It was the Lordship of Ireland which belonged to the king England. Wales belonged to him as a title and thus the Welsh were his subjects, although its exact status depends on the year we're talking about and my knowledge of the sheep country is rather limited before the 16th century.

The Dutch revolt was also complicated as initially, it was not a revolt against Philipp II, but rather the Duke of Alba who infringed upon the rights of the Hollanders, the Brabantians, and the Flemish as subjects of the king of Spain. Even upon the declaration of the Republic of the Seven Provinces, it was not a Dutch Protestant state. Arguably, it was not the home of all the Dutch as it excluded the domains held by the Habsburgs nor even all Dutch Protestants. In fact, lordship over that area was at one point offered to a French Catholic duke simply for strategic reasons. The Republic only appears as the nation of the unified Dutch Protestants when you ignore the key differences between the types of Protestant the between the provinces. I am willing to admit though that it eventually led to the formation of Dutch national identity.

My core point is that those conflicts cannot be mapped cleanly onto nationalism because they simply preceded it. They were arguably part of the progression towards nationalism. Developing national identities took time and effort, which is why they are not natural concepts universal to all humans. Kinship could indeed be a more proper term, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone else argued against it for reasons that I am just ignorant of.

"conservatives genuinely cannot wrap their minds around the direction in which time flows" sounds like lazy leddit thinking

Now I will be pedantic. I said that the temperamental conservative doesn't know the direction in which time flows. The philosophical and civilizational conservatives do.