Conservative
From Skinny Moose Data Center
A Conservative is one who believes in conservatism. Conservatism is a political and social term from the Latin verb conservare meaning to save or preserve. As the name suggests it usually indicates support for tradition and traditional values though the meaning has changed in different countries and time periods. The modern political term conservative was used by French politician Chateaubriand in 1819. In Western politics, the term conservatism often refers to the school of thought started by Edmund Burke and similar thinkers.
History of Western Conservatism
From the beginning, some political thought could be labelled "conservative" but it was not until the Age of Enlightenment, and the reaction to events surrounding the French Revolution of 1789, that conservatism rose as a distinct political attitude or train of thought. Many point to the rise of a conservative disposition in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, specifically to the works of influential Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker, emphasizing moderation in the political balancing of interests towards the goals of social harmony and common good. Edmund Burke’s polemic Reflections on the Revolution in France helped conservatism gain prominence.
Edmund Burke supported the American Revolution, but opposed the French Revolution, which he saw as violent and chaotic. He pressed for parliamentary control of royal patronage and expenditure.
His classical conservative position insisted that conservatism has no ideology, in the sense of a utopian program, with some form of master plan. Burke developed his ideas in response to the enlightened idea of a society guided by abstract reason. He anticipated the critique of modernism, a term used at the end of the 19th century by the Dutch religious conservative Abraham Kuyper. Burke did not seek "to give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction".
Burke said some people had less reason than others, and thus some people will make better governments than others if they rely upon reason. The proper formulation of government came not from abstractions such as reason, but from time-honoured development of the state, piecemeal progress through experience and the continuation of other important societal institutions such as the family and the Church. He argued that tradition draws on the wisdom of many generations and the tests of time, while reason may be a mask for the preferences of one man, and at best represents only the untested wisdom of one generation. However, Burke wrote, "A state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation." Burke insisted further change be organic rather than revolutionary. An attempt to modify the complex web of human interactions that form human society, for the sake of some doctrine or theory, runs the risk of running afoul of the iron law of unintended consequences.
Western Conservatism has also been influenced by the Counter-Enlightenment works of Joseph de Maistre. Maistre argued for the restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as a divinely sanctioned institution, and for the indirect authority of the Pope over temporal matters. He also defended the principle of hierarchical authority, which the Revolution sought to destroy. Maistre published in 1819 his masterpiece Du Pape ("On the Pope"). The work is divided into four parts. In the first he argues that, in the Church, the pope is sovereign, and that it is an essential characteristic of all sovereign power that its decisions should be subject to no appeal. Consequently, the pope is infallible in his teaching, since it is by his teaching that he exercises his sovereignty. In the remaining divisions the author examines the relations of the pope and the temporal powers, civilization and the welfare of nations, and the schismatic Churches. He argues that nations require protection against abuses of power by a sovereignty superior to all others, and that this sovereignty should be that of the papacy, the historical saviour and maker of European civilization.
Conservatives strongly support the right of property, and Carl B. Cone, in Burke and the Nature of Politics, pointed out that this view, expressed as philosophy, also served the interests of the people involved. Conservatives are usually economic liberals, diverging from classical liberalism in the tradition of Adam Smith. Some conservatives look to a modified free market order, such as the American System, ordoliberalism, or Friedrich List's National System. The latter view differs from strict laissez-faire, in that the state's role is to promote competition while maintaining the national interest, community and identity.
Most conservatives strongly support the sovereign nation (although that was not so in the 19th century), and patriotically identify with their own nation. Nationalist separatist movements may be both radical and conservative.