Conservatism

12 Key excerpts on "Conservatism"

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  Conservatism

  An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present

  • Jerry Z. Muller(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  INTRODUCTION • WHAT IS CONSERVATIVE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT? An intuitive procedure for defining Conservatism is to begin by listing the institutions which conservatives have sought to conserve. That will not get us very far. For conservatives have, at one time and place or an-other, defended royal power, constitutional monarchy, aristocratic pre-rogative, representative democracy, and presidential dictatorship; high tariffs and free trade; nationalism and internationalism; centralism and federalism; a society of inherited estates, a capitalist, market society, and one or another version of the welfare state. They have defended religion in general, established churches, and the need for government to defend itself against the claims of religious enthusiasts. There are, no doubt, self-described conservatives today who cannot imagine that conserva-tives could defend institutions and practices other than those they hold dear. Yet they might find, to their surprise, that conservatives in their own national past have defended institutions which contemporary con-servatives abhor. And were they to look beyond their own national bor-ders, they might find that some of the institutions and practices they seek to conserve are regarded as implausible or risible by their conserva-tive counterparts in other nations. In one of the most perceptive scholarly analyses of the subject, Samuel Huntington argued that Conservatism is best understood not as an inherent theory in defense of particular institutions, but as a positional ideology. When the foundations of society are threatened, the conser-vative ideology reminds men of the necessity of some institutions and the desirability of the existing ones, Huntington suggested. 1 Rather than representing the self-satisfied and complacent acceptance of the in-stitutional status quo, ideological Conservatism arises from the anxiety that valuable institutions are endangered by contemporary develop-ments or by proposed reforms.

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  Conservatism in Crisis?

  Anglo-American Conservative Ideology After the Cold War

  • B. Pilbeam(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  A further way to define Conservatism is as a set of substantive shared beliefs, ones that are adhered to by all conservatives in whatever time or place. Typical suggestions for eternal conservative verities are: the importance of order and authority; respect for history and tradition; and belief in a divine order. A modern exemplar of this approach is Russell Kirk, who identifies 6 essential ‘canons’ of conservative thought (Kirk, 1953, pp. 7–8). A major difficulty, though, is that little agreement exists even as to how many principles should be enumerated. Although Kirk believes it should be 6 Dunn and Woodard suggest 10 (Dunn and Woodard, 1996, p. 48) and Clinton Rossiter no less than 21 (Rossiter, 1962, pp. 64–6). Yet however many tenets are chosen, the most serious problem is that no single set of unchanging beliefs encompasses the concerns of conservatives in every time and place. Whatever list is drawn up, examples of conservatives who do not hold to any number of its items can always be found. As W. H. Greenleaf concludes from his examination, Conservatism’s history has contained a wide range of dif- fering ideas and commitments, from individualist to collectivist and from libertarian to authoritarian (Greenleaf, 1973, pp. 177–9). Ultimately, the most profitable approaches to understanding conser- vatism are those that emphasize the reactive side of conservative ideol- ogy. There is much truth, therefore, in Karl Mannheim’s description of Conservatism as essentially a ‘counter-movement’ (Mannheim, 1986, p. 84), with its doctrines having developed largely in reaction to those of its ideological adversaries. One means of conceiving Conservatism in this way is suggested by Lincoln Allison, who describes Conservatism’s basic orientation as anti-humanism, opposing the ‘overweening’ pretensions of humanist ideologies (Allison, 1984, p. 19).

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  Conservative Internationalism

  Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan

  • Henry R. Nau(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  I intended to argue against this common view, to contend that many conservatives are also internationalists, that is, they, like liberal internationalists, believe that the world can be changed and freedom spread. However, they also believe that this can be achieved only through the realist’s commitment to the use of force and the nationalist’s commitment to respect and preserve national sovereignty. Conservatives, therefore, are more inclined to expect the use of force in international affairs and less sanguine about the role of centralized institutions, foreseeing a world in which nations remain armed even as they become democratic. I had identified the basic tenets of an overlooked tradition of conservative internationalism and backed up my argument with historical examples from the foreign policies of four American presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Polk, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan. I entered the room brimming with confidence and gave my lecture.

  Little did I expect that my principal challenge would come from a fellow conservative, not the more numerous liberal colleagues who have always dominated my intellectual surroundings.1 As the question period opened, a skeptical conservative friend intoned: “Henry, what is so conservative about spreading freedom? Conservatives do not support such revolutionary aims; they value stability.” Suddenly I realized I was as unhappy with the conventional definition of conservative as I was with the liberal definition of internationalism.

  So let me begin with some definitions. They never satisfy anyone, not least because they pin labels on people and we all prefer to be considered as objective. But we can make no distinctions without definitions.2 Definitions are not categorical; they are comparative and identify relative not absolute differences. With that caveat, what do I mean by liberal and conservative? What are the different strands of Conservatism? And, finally, what do I mean by nationalist/realist and internationalist?

  Liberal versus Conservative

  Louis Hartz got it right when he said that all Americans are liberals.3 He meant, pure and simple, we are all children of the Declaration of Independence, of the revolutionary idea that “all men are created equal.”4 This idea is liberal in the sense that it challenges both the traditional authorities of ancient times and the rationalist utopias of modern times. Traditional authority, rooted in religion and monarchy, restrained freedom from Roman times on and was often identified as conservative. Rationalist dogma, an outgrowth of modern times, shackled freedom to the dictates of reason and was often identified as radical. At the extreme, traditional authority led to fascism and the exaltation of myth, culture, and race; rationalist dogma led to socialism and communism and the exaltation of the intelligentsia, expertise, and the state. But the American Revolution yielded neither fascism nor socialism let alone communism. Unique among modern Western countries, the United States experienced no fascist (except fleetingly perhaps in the Old South) or socialist extremes. There was no monarchy or state church to destroy and hence no fascist or socialist utopias to build. “By and large,” as Russell Kirk aptly puts it, “the American Revolution was not an innovating upheaval, but a conservative restoration of colonial prerogatives.”5

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  The Modern State

  Theories and Ideologies

  • Erika Cudworth, Timothy Hall, John McGovern(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • EUP

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER EIGHT Conservatism: Authority in the Modern State John McGovern Its more thoughtful adherents have always recognised and, indeed, lauded the ideological paucity of Conservatism. For Roger Scruton, ‘Conservatism is a stance that may be defined without identifying it with the policies of any party’. Rather than aiming to remake political arrangements in the light of fixed principles, he has insisted, ‘the conservative attitude seeks above all for gov-ernment’. In characterising Conservatism in this way, Scruton’s implicit claim is that neither socialists nor a fortiori liberals seek to govern in the sense of ruling. Despite the indisputable fact that, historically, conservative political practice and liberal ideals have converged, Scruton considers liberalism ‘the principal enemy of Conservatism’. The reason he gives for this is that ‘for the conser-vative, the value of individual liberty is not absolute, but stands subject to another and higher value, the authority of established government’. Regarding ‘no citizen as possessed of a natural right that transcends his obligation to be ruled’, the essential feature of conservative politics, on Scruton’s account, is ‘an ideal of author-ity’ (Scruton 1980: 15–16, 19). Context Although there were more European monarchies in 1914 than a century earlier, during the nineteenth century their supremacy 188 was steadily undermined by the forces of liberalism, nationalism and socialism. In the words of Norman Davies, they survived only ‘by profoundly modifying the nature of the bond between rulers and ruled’ (Davies 1997: 802). Political liberalism, with its urgent emphasis upon government by consent, the rule of law, constitu-tional procedure, religious toleration, universal human rights and individual liberty opposed hereditary prerogative in Church and State.

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  Ideology and Politics

  • John Schwarzmantel, Author(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Ideologies of both Right and Left were historically mirror images of each other: they developed as rival critics of the society of modernity, each with their own proposed alternative to the existing society. Each broad family of ideas of Right and Left is in a situation of crisis in the conditions of contemporary politics, since both sets of ideas have had to confront new social realities which pose severe challenges to the critique and the remedies proposed by each side in the traditional ideological conflict. The analysis then starts by looking at conservative ideologies in the widest context, initially that of Europe and North America where these ideologies originated, then more globally.

  The question to be probed here is of what Conservatism stands for in the present state of world politics. Has it been undermined by the development of a more fragmented society which has rendered irrelevant the core ideas of community and hierarchy on which conservative ideas in their classic form rested? Traditionally conservative ideas did indeed operate with a holistic concept of society, seeing society as an organic unity whose cohesion it was the task of political actors to preserve and enhance. Conservative theorists sought to counter the onward rush of modernity by fostering those institutions and structures that brought people together, not in an egalitarian association of citizens but through an ordered association of society in which each individual would know his or her place.

  Traditionally conservative theorists, while downplaying and devaluing the role of theories and abstract ideas, presented (somewhat paradoxically) a theory of a desirable society. This was one which would remedy the defects of modernity by strengthening the bonds of social cohesion and unity, not in an authoritarian way but by solidifying the increasingly individualistic society of the liberal world with which they were confronted. Yet the ongoing problem of conservative or right-wing movements has been that this solution, if it can be called that, to the ills or the insecurity of modernity has become more difficult to maintain with the advances of modern mass democracy and the emancipation of market relations from any restrictions. A critical turning point has been reached more recently with the coming of a more ‘liquid’ and post-modern society, in which the divisive tendencies of market relations have become more intense. Some forms of conservative thought and movement seek accommodation with such neo-liberalism in an uneasy attempt to combine traditionalism with neo-liberal modernity. Others again, like American neo-conservatives, accept and adapt to modern mass democracy, seeking in some cases to use foreign policy as a supplement to internal cohesion in order to make renewed attempts to infuse society with a shared moral purpose, difficult though this is.

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  Radical Conservatism and the Future of Politics

  • Goran Dahl(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  The criteria for other political parties and regimes are if they show similar ideas as radical Conservatism, sometimes even having identical ideas, such as nationalism, anti-reflexivity and anti-capitalism. Another is the ambition to be 'beyond left and right', a classical slogan we recognize from both fascism and the conservative revolution. Such criteria may be criticized for being too loose and non-exclusive. However, it is not my primary concern to show how good I am at find ing radical Conservatism everywhere. Rather, I want to clarify new, emerging patterns and con-stellations in politics today and to attempt to broaden the perspective, including countries outside Europe, thus understanding the global political situation of today. Geopolitics has returned both in social science and in politics. In politics, radical Conservatism considers it extremely important. I will look at how 96 RADICAL Conservatism AND THE FUTU RE OF POLITICS radical Conservatism uses 'geopolitics ', and will seek out some real geo-political scenarios to see how radical Conservatism is connected to these. Since radical Conservatism views politics as the heart of society and emphasizes the need for enemies, foreign politics becomes the most important forum. 'Geopolit ics' is a favourite concept, a radical-conservative reply to the dangers of globalization and the situation after the breakdown of Eastern European social ism. In order to construct a new ident ity, Joachim Weber ( 1 992) argues that Germany must decide its place in the world. He crit icizes mainstream politicians for caring only about economic matters, and consequently neglecting the fact that welfare is dependent upon national strength. He writes: 'In the beginning there was geography' (1992: 31). Polit ical categories like ideology, freedom and democracy are only derivations of this basic fact. Here we notice the strong constructivist aspect of geopolitics.

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  Conservative Ideology in the Making

  • Ivan Zoltan Denes, Judit Pokoly(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Central European University Press

    (Publisher)

  Conservatism Its Definition and Types In colloquial usage, the connotations of the term “conservative” and its collocate, “radical,” imply an opposition, an antithesis. The most frequent concepts associated with Conservatism, suggesting social and political equilibrium and identifying it with the aristocratic social order, are author-ity, tradition, traditional values, order, history, social and political hierar-chy, aristocracy, status quo, custom, and organic social development. By contrast, the somewhat constructed series of concepts associated with radicalism include “the people,” the search for a utopia of social justice (achieved possibly even through violence), and the goal and challenge of radical renewal. Radicalism lays stress on the universalism of natural law, equal civil rights, and collective self-government contra order by divine grace and feudal social organization, which spiritualizes the military and ecclesiastical functions and regulates personal rule based on merit and dignity. The conservative preserving attitude is tied to traditional frames, historical forms, and the hierarchically conceived frameworks of the aris-tocratic societal organization. This is further developed into the “nation” in terms of relativity as well as a sense of reality, whereas the demand for radical transformation is linked with universal validity and the ideal state of society. The Conservatism vs. radicalism antithesis is not merely used conversa-tionally, it is a historical outcome of the specificities of the dual self-definition of the conservatives’ and radicals’ rationales reproduced ever since the French Revolution. Conservatives have always accused their ad-versaries of overt or covert radicalism, the subversion of the social order, the destruction of a social organization ensuring the balance of quality ele-ments, the promotion of an attitude determined by sheer quantities, and the greed for power of a selfish and unrestricted minority.

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  Political and Civic Leadership

  A Reference Handbook

  • Richard A. Couto(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  For instance, Aristotle’s study of political regimes persuaded him that the presence of a strong middle class and an effective civic education were two key ingredients promoting stability. Those regimes that succeed in provid-ing political stability over time merit respect, given the fre-quency and ease with which political regimes collapse. This last observation offers a natural launching point for consideration of the conservative political tradition. Conservatism The conservative political tradition is associated with three recurrent themes. The first is the claim that substantial inequalities of power and other goods (including wealth, income, and social esteem) are morally justified and, indeed, are the hallmark of a decent society. The second is a posture of skepticism toward innovation, particularly rad-ical innovation, and respect for existing institutions. The third is a distrust of the masses and the belief that popular influence over political decision making should be at least partially offset by authority invested in a small elite or in individual statesmen. To be sure, not all conservative thinkers voice all these themes—as we shall shortly see, Plato’s Republic assumes the possibility of radical political and social reconstruction even as it goes on to defend thor-oughly hierarchical social arrangements. Moreover, actual conservative politics are often complemented by other themes, such as a concern with traditional social values and religion, nationalism and military strength, and (especially in recent times) celebration of free market economics. But 90 – • – II. PHILOSOPHY AND THEORIES OF POLITICAL AND CIVIC LEADERSHIP the three themes identified here are the most salient in understanding the conservative view of political leadership. Conservative thought regards hierarchy, inequality, and the investment of authority in particular leaders as both natural and just, reflecting actual inequalities of ability and virtue between leaders and followers.

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  Ideals and Ideologies

  A Reader

  • Terence Ball, Richard Dagger, Daniel I. O'Neill, Richard Dagger, Daniel I. O'Neill(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the past two centuries. After some introductory remarks on this general theme, I will proceed to list ten such conservative principles.

  A witty presidential candidate of recent times, Mr. Eugene McCarthy, remarked publicly in 1985 that nowadays he employs the word “liberal” as an adjective merely. That renunciation of “liberal” as a noun of politics, a partisan or ideological tag, is some measure of the triumph of the conservative mentality during the 1980s—including the triumph of the conservative side of Mr. McCarthy’s own mind and character.

  Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and Conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

  The attitude we call Conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.2

  In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night.3 (Yet conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy “change is the means of our preservation.”) A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers. But of course there is more to the conservative persuasion than this general attitude.

  It is not possible to draw up a neat catalogue of conservatives’ convictions; nevertheless, I offer you, summarily, ten general principles; it seems safe to say that most conservatives would subscribe to most of these maxims. In various editions of my book The Conservative Mind I have listed certain canons of conservative thought—the list differing somewhat from edition to edition; in my anthology The Portable Conservative Reader

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  The Politics of Nationhood

  Sovereignty, Britishness and Conservative Politics

  • P. Lynch(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The conservative nation is a limited one, shunning ideological nationalism and universalist end-state prescriptions in favour of empiricism, parochialism (including nostalgia and myths) and philo- sophical scepticism. It is shaped by core conservative values, by historical circumstance and by opposition to the politics of its rivals. Rather than a static account, the conservative idea of the nation has developed over time, adapting or reacting to change, but gradually absorbing some of the themes espoused by its rivals. The Burkean nation is one of the clearest expositions of conservative thought, but a number of different strands of thought have existed within British Conservatism emphasizing various elements of the political or cultural accounts of the nation. 26 The Right has often embraced activist politics, espousing an ideological nationalism or racial ac- count of politics. More recently, as will be covered in Chapter 3, the neo-liberal and cultural conservative branches of New Right have fractured the Burkean account of the nation. Conservatism and the Politics of Nationhood 9 THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND THE POLITICS OF NATIONHOOD Burke’s account of the nation was a significant early stage in the gradual appropriation of patriotic discourse. But his was not a state- sponsored official nationalism, the Tory Party, split by the repeal of the Corn Laws, not achieving predominance in the politics of nationhood until the late nineteenth century. Political ideas are important to Conservative politics, but are not its defining feature. British Conservatism is essentially a tradition of political practice, a concern with statecraft or government rather than ideological principle. Conservative ideas form an important backcloth, a sup- port mechanism for Conservative Party statecraft, rather than the guiding principles of a purposive ideology.

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  Conservatism

  A Contribution to the Sociology of Knowledge

  • Karl Mannheim(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  With the appearance of an integrated conservative politics, or perhaps even somewhat earlier, a corresponding world-view and way of thinking emerge, which may be similarly classified as conservative. In our terminology and in relation to the first half of the nineteenth century, then, ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ refer to quite specific affinities to distinctive philosophies and to an associated distinctiveness in the manner of thinking, and not only to distinctive political aspirations. A distinctive overall structure of the world may thus be said to be implicit in the term ‘conservative’. The sociological definition of the term, inevitably more comprehensive than the historical-political one, must necessarily also refer to that historical structural situation in which this term could arise to designate a new fact]. 65 In our view, the socio-historical precondition for the emergence of Conservatism is, in brief, a conjunction of the following factors: (1) The historical social whole (Sozialkomplex) must have become explicitly dynamic (processive). Individual happenings within the totality of events must to an increasing extent be in every sphere oriented to the same set of basic questions about the growth of the social whole. This orientation to the central issues of the overall movement happens unintentionally at first; but later it will become conscious and intentional, whereupon the significance of each element for the development of the whole will become increasingly clear. There will be accordingly a steady decline in the number of the discrete, self-contained social units which had previously predominated

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  Understanding Dogmas and Dreams

  A Text

  • Nancy S. Love(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  * * * Conservatism will likely remain a force in American politics, regardless of the legacy of the George W. Bush presidency. In times of national (re)definition, con-servatives have attended to the moral and spiritual principles at the core of American public life, providing a source of hope with their emphasis on com-munity, history, ritual, and tradition. Real hope, they once argued, could not be found in an ideology—even though democratic politics might seem to require one. In the words of Russell Kirk: Having lost the spirit of consecration, the modern masses are without expec-tation of anything better than a bigger slice of what they possess already. Dante tells us that damnation is a terribly simple state: the deprivation of hope . . . . How to restore a living faith to the routine of existence among the lonely crowd, how to remind men that life has ends—this conundrum the thinking conservative has to face. 102 Traditional conservatives responded to this conundrum by articulating a “pro-found respect for limits.” They placed such limits on “ambitions,” “budgets,” 74 Conservatism “controls,” “governments,” “plans and projects,” and “values.” 103 The War on Terror—an undeclared war against an unknown enemy—challenges all these limits of the past. With today’s neoconservatives, an odd reversal has occurred. Anne Norton describes it well: Appeals to history and memory, the fear of losing old virtues, of failing to keep faith with the principles of an honored ancestry, came to seem curious and antiquated. In their place were the very appeals to universal, abstract principles, the very utopian projects that conservatives once disdained. Con-servatives had once called for limits and restraint; now there were calls to dar-ing and adventurism. Conservatives had once stood steadfastly for the Con-stitution and community, for loyalties born of experience and strengthened in a common life.

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