Portal:Conservatism
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Introduction
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in which it appears. In Western culture, depending on the particular nation, conservatives seek to promote and preserve a range of institutions, such as the nuclear family, organized religion, the military, the nation-state, property rights, rule of law, aristocracy, and monarchy. Conservatives tend to favor institutions and practices that enhance social order and historical continuity.
The 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, who opposed the French Revolution but supported the American Revolution, is credited as one of the forefathers of conservative thought in the 1790s along with Savoyard statesman Joseph de Maistre. The first established use of the term in a political context originated in 1818 with François-René de Chateaubriand during the period of Bourbon Restoration that sought to roll back the policies of the French Revolution and establish social order.
Conservatism has varied considerably as it has adapted itself to existing traditions and national cultures. Thus, conservatives from different parts of the world, each upholding their respective traditions, may disagree on a wide range of issues. One of the three major ideologies along with liberalism and socialism, conservatism is the dominant ideology in many nations across the world, including Hungary, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, Singapore, and South Korea. Historically associated with right-wing politics, the term has been used to describe a wide range of views. Conservatism may be either libertarian or authoritarian, populist or elitist, progressive or reactionary, moderate or extreme. (Full article...)
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Therefore I trace the peculiar unity of the everyday political philosophy of the nineteenth century to the success with which it harmonised diversified and warring schools and united all good things to a single end. Hume and Paley, Burke and Rousseau, Godwin and Malthus, Cobbett and Huskisson, Bentham and Coleridge, Darwin and the Bishop of Oxford, were all, it was discovered, preaching practically the same thing - individualism and laissez-faire. This was the Church of England and those her apostles, whilst the company of the economists were there to prove that the least deviation into impiety involved financial ruin.
These reasons and this atmosphere are the explanations, we know it or not - and most of us in these degenerate days are largely ignorant in the matter - why we feel such a strong bias in favour of laissez-faire, and why state action to regulate the value of money, or the course of investment, or the population, provokes such passionate suspicions in many upright breasts. We have not read these authors; we should consider their arguments preposterous if they were to fall into our hands. Nevertheless we should not, I fancy, think as we do, if Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Paley, Adam Smith, Bentham, and Miss Martineau had not thought and written as they did. A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
— John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926)
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Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the (then-infant) French Revolution. In the twentieth century, it much influenced conservative and classical liberal intellectuals, who recast Burke's Whig arguments as a critique of Communism and Socialist revolutionary programmes.
Edmund Burke served in the British House of Commons, representing the Whig party, in close alliance with liberal politician Lord Rockingham. In Burke's political career, he vigorously defended constitutional limitation of the Crown's authority, denounced the religious persecution of Catholics in his native Ireland, voiced the grievances of Britain's American colonies, supported the American Revolution, and vigorously pursued impeachment of Warren Hastings, the governor-general of Bengal, for corruption and abuse of power.
In 1789, soon after the fall of the Bastille, the French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont asked his impressions of the Revolution; Burke replied with two letters. The longer, second letter became Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790.
Credit: Awadewit
Did you know...
- ... that the film Ronald Reagan called "the worst picture I ever made" inspired Jerry Parr to join the Secret Service, and that Parr saved President Reagan's life during the 1981 assassination attempt?
- ...that in the United States, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its Republican counterpart promote the election of members of their respective parties to the United States Congress?
- ... that Helen Grant became the first black female candidate to be elected as a Conservative member of Parliament?
Selected anniversaries in February
- Ronald Reagan Day in California.
- 1911 – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States, is born.
- 1973 – The Heritage Foundation, which took a leading role in the conservative movement in the United States during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, is founded with Paul Weyrich (pictured) as its first president.
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