[canuck_conservative]

Recently several threads have appeared on FR, pondering exactly what is a "real conservative" - this article, though a reprint, is posted as contribution to the ongoing debate.

Lot of good essays on this site.

[GSWarrior]

Bumped for later.

[4Liberty]

Individualism entails Courage - courage to ACCEPT the slings & arrows of Life and economic circumstances, without using coercive power of govt to take ('access') other person's resources "as needed" through taxes and wealth transfers. THIS is one principle Dems "don' get" about individual liberty. They are cowards basically. They are completely unable to comprehend self responsibility and autonomous management of one's life, the good & the bad, HONORABLY.

If they DO get it, but push on with big gov anyway, I guess we can just chalk them up to being evil & gutless. What else CAN one conclude?

[El Sordo]

Writing this spot down.

[CyberCowboy777]

SIX CANNONS OF CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT
Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind, From Burke to Eliot, Seventh Revised Edition, Regnery Publishing, Inc. Washington, D.C., p. 8.

(1) Belief in a Transcendent Order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs. “Every Tory is a realist,” says Keith Feiling: “he knows that there are great forces in heaven and earth that man’s philosophy cannot plumb or fathom.” True politics is the art of apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.

(2) Affection for the Proliferating Variety and Mystery of Human Existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity and egalitarianism aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls “Logicalism” in society. This prejudice has been called “the conservatism of enjoyment” –a sense that life is worth living, according to Walter Bagehot “the proper source of an animated Conservatism.”

(3) Conviction that Civilized Society Requires Orders and Classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.” With reason, conservatives often have been called “the party of order.” If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.

(4) Persuasion that Freedom and Property are Closely Linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic leveling, they maintain, is not economic progress.

(5) Faith in Prescription and Distrust of “sophisters, calculators, and economists” who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks both upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.

(6) Recognition that Change May not be Salutary Reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress.

[martin_fierro]

This article is too complicated for most Liberals I know.

[RoughDobermann]

How interesting that the word "feel" is only mentioned once. If this were How to Explain Liberalism... there would be dozens...

[MJY1288]

I always enjoy reading PJ's Articles

Thanks for posting it

[StriperSniper]

Good post, bump for later.
(It's PJ, it has to be good ;-)

[visualops]

Thanks, that was fairly succinct, and the analogies are illustrative.
My 2 teenagers will be reading this :)

[Tatze]

Great article! I'll have to check the site for more.

[The Hon. Galahad Threepwood]

Conservatism is the preference for tradition over innovation, and for experience over theory.

Personally, I reject the identification of conservatism with individualism (though I recognize that there is a definite strain of individualism within American conservatism), as well as the implication that the only alternative to individualism is statism or collectivism. In fact, the community consists of many, many institutions, including state, individual, family, friends, church, neighborhood, workplace, each of which has its own place in the grand scheme of things. The function of these mediating institutions is largely to control--yes, control--individuals without recourse to the awesome and dangerous powers of the state, which should be invoked only in extreme cases.

Our current problems stem largely from the fact that we now see things as being either a fit subject for state regulation, or not a fit subject for regulation at all. We have abandoned the traditional methods of social regulation largely through mediating institutions.

Now we're left with letting individuals run wild, or calling upon the state to regulate their behavior. As a conservative, I'm frankly not sure which is worse, which is why I am pessimistic about at least the middle-term future of America and the world.

[verity]

Why would anyone have squishy liberals for friends?

[P.O.E.]

Exactly.

You never hear "Yankee ingenuity" extolled. Or Washington & Lincoln's honesty. Or "make do". Or "from scratch". Or "by the bootstraps".

Is the language being cleansed so that these ideas get forgotten?

[supercat]

One explanation I tried on someone with apparent good effect: suppose a robber steals $100 from someone, gives $50 to a homeless guy, and pockets $50 for himself, is the robber a noble person for having given $50 to the homeless guy?

[IronJack]

Must read later.

[Fiddlstix]

Virtue is famously lonely. Also vice, as anyone can testify who ever told his mother, "All the other guys were doing it."..........

Great Article! Many Good Points!

In reference to the piece I enclosed in italics
My Parents and My Grandparents would have said, "There is a still, small voice within you. Listen to it. Usually it will be right".

[rickmichaels]

...and Allah does not welcome believers into Paradise saying, "You weren't much good yourself, but you were standing near some good people..."

"...when you pushed the button on your suicide belt and murdered all those innocent Jews."

[jla]

FYI (PJ O'Rourke)

[TheRedSoxWinThePennant]

Why would I have a liberal friend? I hear enough bitching and moaning all day at work.

[Fraulein]

You cannot have an intelligent conversation with a liberal.