Noun

Singular conservative

Plural conservatives

conservative (plural conservatives)

1. A person who favors maintenance of the status quo or reversion to some earlier status.
2. (US, economics) A fiscal conservative
3. (US, politics) A political conservative
4. (US, social sciences) A social conservative.

Conservatism (Latin: conservare, "to preserve") is a political attitude that advocates institutions and traditional practices that have developed organically, thus emphasizing stability and continuity. The first established use of the term in a political context was by François-René de Chateaubriand in 1819, following the French Revolution. The term has since been used to describe a variety of politicians with a wide range of views.

In Western politics, the term conservatism often refers to the school of thought based on British politician Edmund Burke's criticism of the French Revolution. Though his legacy as a conservative is disputed, he wrote against the excesses of mob rule.

R. J. White wrote: "To put conservatism in a bottle with a label is like trying to liquify the atmosphere ... The difficulty arises from the nature of the thing. For conservatism is less a political doctrine than a habit of mind, a mode of feeling, a way of living." Russell Kirk considered conservatism "the negation of ideology."

Conservative political parties have diverse views; the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, the Republican Party in the United States, the Conservative Party in Britain, the Bharatiya Janata Party in India, the Conservative Party in Canada and the Liberal Party of Australia are all considered major conservative parties with varying positions.

Conservatism is a philosophy defined by Edmund Burke as "a disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve". The term derives from conserve; from Latin conservare, to keep, guard, observe. Classical conservatism does not readily avail itself to the ideology of objectives. It is a philosophy primarily concerned with means over ends. To a conservative, the goal of change is less important than the insistence that change be effected with a respect for the rule of law and traditions of society.

For

• "I am a conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few."
  • Benjamin Disraeli

• The conservative hates all action against the order, the constitution, the laws, the moral, the liberty, the equality, the tolerance, the property, the security and the civilization.
  • Jose Eusebio Caro

• A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation
  • Edmund Burke Reflection on the revolution of France

• [I]t is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition or by descent or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied...[T]he public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large.
  • Edmund Burke on fiscal conservatism, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (London: Penguin Classics, 1986), pp. 207-8.

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Fri Feb 19 18:59:05 2010