Portal:Conservatism

Main pageShowcaseProject

Introduction

Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology, which seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilisation in which it appears. In Western culture, depending on the particular nation, conservatives seek to promote and preserve a range of institutions, such as the nuclear family, organised religion, the military, the nation-state, property rights, rule of law, aristocracy, and monarchy. Conservatives tend to favour institutions and practices that enhance social order and historical continuity.

Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman who opposed the French Revolution but supported the American Revolution, is credited as one of the forefathers of conservative thought in the 1790s along with Savoyard statesman Joseph de Maistre. The first established use of the term in a political context originated in 1818 with François-René de Chateaubriand during the period of Bourbon Restoration that sought to roll back the policies of the French Revolution and establish social order.

Conservatism has varied considerably as it has adapted itself to existing traditions and national cultures. Thus, conservatives from different parts of the world, each upholding their respective traditions, may disagree on a wide range of issues. One of the three major ideologies along with liberalism and socialism, conservatism is the dominant ideology in many nations across the world, including Hungary, Iran, Israel, Japan, Poland, Russia, and South Korea. Historically associated with right-wing politics, the term has been used to describe a wide range of views. Conservatism may be either libertarian or authoritarian, populist or elitist, progressive or reactionary, moderate or extreme. (Full article...)

Selected article

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts politics, eventually becoming that state's governor. His actions during the Boston police strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th vice president of the United States in 1920 and succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative and a man who said very little.

Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor's administration and left office with considerable popularity. As a Coolidge biographer put it, "He embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions. That he did represent the genius of the average is the most convincing proof of his strength."

Selected quote

This outrage on all the rights of property was at first covered with what, on the system of their conduct, was the most astonishing of all pretexts-a regard to national faith. The enemies to property at first pretended a most tender, delicate, and scrupulous anxiety for keeping the king's engagements with the public creditor. These professors of the right of men are to busy in teaching others, that they not leisure to learn any thing themselves; otherwise they would have known that it is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition, or by descent, or in virtue of participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed, or implied. They never so much as entered into his head when he made his bargain. He well knew that the public, whether represented by a monarch, or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate, expect in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large. This was engaged, and nothing else could be engaged to the public creditor. No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Selected image

thumbtime={{{thumbtime}}}

La Gaceta was established on August 4, 1912, by Alberto García Hamilton, an Uruguayan publisher who left for neighboring Argentina following a political dispute. La Gaceta earned a reputation for conservatism, and was opposed to populist leader Hipólito Yrigoyen during the 1920s, as well as to the pro-development administration of Arturo Frondizi, who had the paper censored in 1960.

Credit: Jlazarte

Did you know...

Selected anniversaries in July

27th
31st

Topics

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:


© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search