Conservatism On One Page - Vasos Panagiotopoulos - vjp2@biostrategist.com

   Conservatism is a philosophy initated by Aristotle in responce to
the ancient rule of sophistry and, in its modern form, by Edmunde
Burke in England in responce to the horrors of the French Revolution.
Conservatives believe in understanding the limitations of human nature
and not allowing change to be like the thread whose removal
disintegrates a garment.  Tradition is the collective memory of
society.  Only under constraint of individual liberty may a democracy
counter self-destructiveness.  Conservatives hold that unbridled
idealism leads to unbriddled tyranny, because ultimately ideolatry
treats human ideas as more important than the divinely created
individuals they impact.  Conservatives believe in individual
responsibility, rather than indecisive muddled disctinctions that
result from the fear of being held accountable for choices.  Socialism
attempts to restore a codependantly paranoid jealous indifferent lazy
coercive prehistoric human condition; True to form, the less
homogenious a population, the less likely they are to tolerate
socalism or collectivism.  Conservatives believe in strictly adhering
to the letter of the law because they fear excessive and unsupported
inference will only lead to arbitrary sophistry; this is because the
law is better at apophatically preventing injustice rather than
catapahtically imposing justice.  Markets are designed to allocate
scarcity to those who can most productively use them.  Socialism
replaces markets with bureaucracy where unpredictable political
intrigue replaces objective economics resulting in restraint of trade
by the strongest and largest group which begins to disdain the endless
rigorous discipline imposed by markets, thinking they are somehow
entitled to the luxury of being protected at the expence of others.
Instead of competing to produce, the socialist citisenry is reduced to
competing as to who will freeload more at the expence of others.  As
such, socialism is no different from feudalism because in both cases
freedom is surrenderd to demagogues who promise to protect from want
or fear, but in the end only seek to control.  The right confides in
governing with the power of incentives but the left in the power of
admonition and the consternation of elites.  Elitists foster feudalism
and socialism because they feel, like the ancient Plato, their
supposedly superior wisdom entitles them to rule over you and be
coddled by you, but similarly, the ruled-over feel they are entitled
to be coddled by the rulers, and in the end, less work gets done.
Hence the liberal is awed by the powers of government, while the
conservative fears and wishes to restrain them. The left likes big
government, big labor and big business because it believes the
concentrated power can legislate downwards and muddle responsibility,
but the right wishes to keep them all small and subject to individual
choice.  Conservatives hold that individuals spend their own money
more wisely than the government, because, having earned it, they feel
more attached to it.  A tenant or borrower never tends to a property
like an owner.  Taxes should be as close as possible to the cost or
use they are raised for, because an amorphous pool will be spent
irresponsibly.  If people are allowed to keep more of what they earn,
they will be incentived to earn even more. If the government faces
constraints, including debt, the government will spend less.  The
conservative feels that every additional human mind, no matter how
feeble, enrichens us all, contrary to those who see them as rabble who
infringe on the elitist entitlement to enjoy leisure, culture, nature,
lust, spirituality or other lazy selfishness; yet it is this very
superiority of human resoures to natural ones which persistently
overcomes scarcity as price over wage versus time is always a
descending hyperbola.  Pacificism is yet another incontinent idealism
which unleases tyrannical forces by ignoring the natural peacemaking
constraints created by the fear of war; personal weaponry is the
analogous domestic incentive against collective tyrany or individual
terrorism and hence protects individualism.  Only after satisfying
their basic necessities do individuals seek out more fair governance
(Maslow's hierarchy of needs, $300GDP/person) therefore, the best way
to promote peace and democracy is free trade.  It was never in our
interests to coddle third world demagogues who played off superpower
conflict to tyrannise their subjects but we must now take advantage of
the previously unavailable freedom to restrain or remove them, lest
they again play us off against any future superpower. 

Conservatism as an Ideology Huntington Am Pol Sci Rvu 51#2 1957 

p456 Burke's theory.. Man is basically a religious
animal.. institutions embody the wisdom of previous generations.. Man
is a creature of instinct and emotion as well as reason.. experience,
and habit are better guides than reason, logic, abstractions and
metaphysics. Truth exists not in universal proportions but in concrete
experiences.. community is superior to the individual.. Evil is rooted
in human nature, not in any particular social institutions..
hierarchy, and leadership are the inevitable characteristics of any
civil society.. Efforts to remedy existing evils usually result in
even greater ones

p458 attitude towards institutions rather than a belief in any
particular ideals. Conservatism and radicalism derive from orientaions
towrd the process of change rather than toward the purpose and
direction of change