Conservatism
[4] In Western culture, depending on the particular nation, conservatives seek to promote and preserve a range of institutions, such as the nuclear family, organized religion, the military, the nation-state, property rights, rule of law, aristocracy, and monarchy.
[20] According to Quintin Hogg, the chairman of the British Conservative Party in 1959: "Conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself.
[22] Thomas Hobbes, the "intellectual godfather of the realist right", argued that the state of nature for humans was "poor, nasty, brutish, and short", requiring centralized authority with royal sovereignty to guarantee law and order.
[23] Edmund Burke, often called the father of modern conservatism, believed that human beings are steeped in original sin and that society therefore needs traditional institutions, such as an established church and a landed aristocracy, in order to function.
[28]In Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022), political philosopher Yoram Hazony argues that, in a traditional conservative community, members have importance and influence to the degree they are honored within the social hierarchy, which includes factors such as age, experience, and wisdom.
[71] The Catholic seminarian António de Oliveira Salazar, who was Portugal's dictator for 40 years, denounced fascism and Nazism as a "pagan Caesarism" that did not recognize legal, religious, or moral limits.
An early example of a powerful reactionary movement was German Romanticism, which centred around concepts of organicism, medievalism, and traditionalism against the forces of rationalism, secularism, and individualism that were unleashed in the French Revolution.
[107] Despite this, the descriptor has been adopted by intellectuals such as Italian esoteric traditionalist Julius Evola,[108] Austrian monarchist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn,[109] Colombian political theologian Nicolás Gómez Dávila, and American historian John Lukacs.
Having a hierarchical view of society, many traditionalist conservatives, including a few notable Americans such as Ralph Adams Cram,[125] William S. Lind,[126] and Charles A. Coulombe,[127] defend the monarchical political structure as the most natural and beneficial social arrangement.
[135][136][137] Wang Huning, widely regarded as the grey eminence and chief ideologue of the CCP, has criticized aspects of Marxism and recommended that China combine its historical and modern values.
Defunct Austrian conservatism originated with Prince Klemens von Metternich, who was the architect behind the monarchist and imperialist Conservative Order that was enacted at the Congress of Vienna in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
Austria's most prominent conservative intellectual, the Catholic aristocrat Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, published several books in which he interpreted Nazism as a leftist, ochlocratic, and demagogic ideology opposed to the traditional rightist ideals of aristocracy, monarchy, and Christianity.
[223] An authoritarian form of conservatism characterized the Vichy regime of 1940–1944 under Marshal Philippe Pétain with heightened antisemitism, opposition to individualism, emphasis on family life, and national direction of the economy.
[241] Alexander Rüstow and Wilhelm Röpke were two prominent exponents of this economic theory, and its implementation is largely credited as a reason behind the German miracle—the rapid reconstruction and development of the war-wrecked economies of West Germany and Austria after World War II.
[242] More recently, the work of conservative Christian Democratic Union leader and Chancellor Helmut Kohl helped bring about German reunification, along with the closer European integration in the form of the Maastricht Treaty.
Forged out of a counter-revolutionary heritage, its governments advocated a "nationalist Christian" policy; they extolled heroism, faith, and unity; they despised the French Revolution, and they spurned the liberal and socialist ideologies of the 19th century.
Fascism originated as a populist, revolutionary, anti-royalist, anti-clerical, anti-capitalist, and anti-conservative ideology,[260] viewed by many socialists as a leftist heresy rather than a rightist opponent, but it transformed and became distinctly right-wing when it made compromises with the conservative establishment in order to consolidate authority and suppress communist movements.
[272] During Kåre Willoch's premiership in the 1980s, much emphasis was laid on liberalizing the credit and housing market and abolishing the NRK TV and radio monopoly, while supporting law and order in criminal justice and traditional norms in education.
[285] More broadly, The New York Times reports in September 2016 how the Church's policy prescriptions support the Kremlin's appeal to social conservatives: A fervent foe of homosexuality and any attempt to put individual rights above those of family, community, or nation, the Russian Orthodox Church helps project Russia as the natural ally of all those who pine for a more secure, illiberal world free from the tradition-crushing rush of globalization, multiculturalism, and women's and gay rights.
Yet, it was a Swedish admiral, the conservative politician Arvid Lindman, who first extended democracy by enacting male suffrage, despite the protests of more traditionalist voices, such as the later prime minister, the arch-conservative and authoritarian statesman Ernst Trygger, who railed at progressive policies such as the abolition of the death penalty.
[302] The Anti-Defamation League, a non-Swiss lobby group based in the United States has accused them of manipulating issues such as immigration, Swiss neutrality, and welfare benefits, awakening antisemitism and racism.
The Quarterly Review promoted a balanced Canningite Toryism, as it was neutral on Catholic emancipation and only mildly critical of Nonconformist dissent; it opposed slavery and supported the current poor laws; and it was "aggressively imperialist".
Anchoring the ultra-Tories, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine stood firmly against Catholic emancipation and favored slavery, cheap money, mercantilism, the Navigation Acts, and the Holy Alliance.
In the 1980s, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, guided by neoliberal economics, reversed many of Labour's social programmes, privatized large parts of the UK economy, and sold state-owned assets.
John A. Macdonald's successful leadership of the movement to confederate the provinces, and his subsequent tenure as prime minister for most of the late 19th century, rested on his ability to bring together the English-speaking Protestant aristocracy and the ultramontane Catholic hierarchy of Quebec and to keep them united in a conservative coalition.
Yoram Hazony, a scholar on the history and ideology of conservatism, identified Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson as the most significant conservative thinker to appear in the English-speaking world in a generation.
[348][349] Other major priorities within American conservatism include support for the nuclear family, law and order, the right to bear arms, Christian values, anti-communism, and a defense of "Western civilization from the challenges of modernist culture and totalitarian governments".
[365] Political scientist James Jupp writes that "[the] decline in English influences on Australian reformism and radicalism, and appropriation of the symbols of Empire by conservatives continued under the Liberal Party leadership of Sir Robert Menzies, which lasted until 1966".
People who are highly sensitive to disgusting images are more likely to align with the political right and value traditional ideals of bodily and spiritual purity, tending to oppose, for example, abortion and gay marriage.
Psychologist Felicia Pratto and her colleagues have found evidence to support the claim that a high SDO is strongly correlated with conservative views and opposition to social engineering to promote equality.
