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