The word “conservative” does not belong among the happiest formulations. It conceals a character related to the temporal and fastens the will to the restoration of unsustainable forms and conditions. Today, he is the weaker who would retain something.
It would do us good, therefore, if we endeavor to separate the word from Tradition. Rather, what is important is to find or even rediscover that which always was the foundation of a healthy order and which will be so again. This, however, is outside of time and neither progress nor regress leads to it. Movements therefore circle around it. Only the means and the names change. In this sense we have to agree with the definition of Albrecht Erich Günther, who didn’t understand conservatism as “an attachment to that which was yesterday, but a life out of that which is always valid.” But only that which is removed from time can be valid always. That asserts itself, and, in fact, disastrously so, when it isn’t respected.
Ernst Jünger, Rivarol, at 47 (Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1989) (my translation)
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