Ideology 102: Conservatism

Conservatism is just as broad of a belief structure as liberalism, a good place to start however would be the philosophy of Edmund Burke, considered to be the father of the modern version. Whereas liberalism is concerned with individuals and loosely with the equality of humankind, Burkian conservatism is primarily interested in inequality and the organic nature of society in its many groups. The basis of this form is the division of property, the 'men of best quality' inevitably accrue the largest share of property and workers tend to squander any material gains they happen to gain. Strong leaders are neccessary to maintain order in society but the 'little platoons', as he called these groups, strive for their place within the organism. Hence, reform occurs in an orderly way but utopian visions of trancending inequality are rejected by Burkian conservatives.

In other forms, conservatism is concerned with maintaining the status quo but this also grows out of a belief that wholesale changes are inherently disruptive to order in society. Hence, the term "radical conservative" sometimes used in American media is a contradiction and the radicalism of the American right is mislabeled. True conservatives in the United States therefore, resist changes in both social policy and economics. Historically, working class Americans have often been conservatives, unwilling to take a chance at a better deal for themselves in their jobs for fear of losing what they have. In the same vein, efforts to advance equal rights for African-Americans, Hispanics, GLBT Americans and so on are resisted because more freedom or money for these other groups are percieved as being taken from working class whites. The 1960's saw a "backlash" against efforts to make American society more equal and concurrently gave politicians a platform of "law and order" to harness these attitudes.

It should be mentioned then that New Deal Democrats are essentially conservative in contemporary America because they defend the status quo of programs such as social security, labor laws and business regulation which have been institutionalized in the U.S. Republican conservatives seeking to roll these back claim to be restoring the traditional status quo of laissez faire that existed prior to the Great Depression. However, during that era our society was far less orderly or just, there was mass labor violence, snake-oil salesmen style fraud and frequent economic depressions or "panics". New Deal Liberals therefore created a society of little platoon interest groups and the capacity for orderly, gradual reform that Edmund Burke would have approved of.