Conservatism: Origins, Traditions and Thinkers Lecture 1 May 16, 2006.
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Transcript of Conservatism: Origins, Traditions and Thinkers Lecture 1 May 16, 2006.
Conservatism: Origins, Traditions and
Thinkers
Lecture 1
May 16, 2006
Important Concepts:
Right and LeftPolitical Spectrum
Radical and Reactionary
Classical Liberalism
Montesquieu (1748)John Locke (1670s)Adams Smith (1776)Thomas Jefferson (1776)John Stuart Mill (1859)
Modern Liberalism
John Rawls (1971)John M. Keynes (1919)Isaiah Berlin (1969)
The French Revolution
Joseph de Maistre
Edmund Burke
A new concern?
NO T. Hobbes in Leviathan (1651)
Life without government is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”
The AmericanRevolution-1776
"a disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve".
Loyalists
vs. Revolutionaries
Declaration of Independence
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light
and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they are accustomed.”
Back to Burke’s definition:
The American Dilemma…
What to preserve?
Louis Hartz The Liberal Tradition in America
Two Orientations:
Communityand
Individuals
Two Orientations:
CommunityTraditionalist-Reformist
“Organicists”
• Russell Kirk
- more concerned with reversing
- negative view of society
“Reformists”
• Peter Viereck
-concerned with adaptation
-positivist of society
Paleoconservatives
1) Nativists
2) Isolationists
3) Protectionists
4) State Right’s
5) Anti-Welfare State
Neoconservatives
1) Opportunity
2) Interventionism
3) Free Trade
4) National Government
5) Conservative Welfare State
The Problem of Organicists
Goes back to Burke…
What to Preserve?
Is conservatism ahistorical?
Is there a starting point?