>>7275435I think both the mainstream GOP and British Conservative Party are totally unprincipled materialists who are more concerned with things like economic growth and prosperity rather than culture and way-of-life, and in the age of globalisation they have radically opted for the first at the active expense of the second through uncontrolled mass immigration (which will ultimately destroy their political futures too).
But I don't think conservatism ought to be inherently anti-business. Burke had an instinctive dislike for the middle class because he resented his father who was a petite-bourgeois lawyer. Schmitt also seemed to hate the complacency of the middle class for personal reasons, coming from a relatively poor background. But on an intellectual level most conservatives since 1688 have really belonged to something like the "Court" ideology of post-revolutionary British politics, which combined a respect for crown authority and related institutions and a comfort with trade, commerce, credit, and the new "monied interests". Until the spread of actively radical or progressive politics, conservatism was really a passively progressive force that was comfortable with time doing its work, as opposed to a more reactionary, neo-Harringtonian "Country" ideology that yearned for an agrarian society that looked for the satisfation of abstract concepts like civic virtue, participation, and personal pursuit of the common good through things like equality in land ownership.
Smith, Burke, Tocqueville, Oakeshott, Schmitt, Hayek, and Powell are all quite comfortable with business. Hitchens is too, although he seems to make exceptions for the BBC and nationalised rail (he's actually quite critical of the NHS for example). The reason Hayek is so important is that he gives an exposition of free market belief that is based on the dimension of time working with choice to operate as a knowledge-gathering mechanism - much like time creates institutions, customs, and tradition in the culture.
I simply think that globalisation has led many materialist worms who care nothing of culture to label themselves conservative because they hate the radical economic program of the left while being totally blind to the social questions that are part-and-parcel with conservatism (and go with economic liberalism as saddle goes with horse, really).
