Foxy, I will go through,
specifically how you are misrepresenting conservatism.
This is really a ‘conservative’ question. Never change. Tradition is always right. People and societies don’t change course, don’t ever alter. It is the ultimate in conservatism. Stick your head in the sand and hope that ‘tradition’ will rule the day
You have said or implied similar things in other posts in this thread as well. While it is certainly true that conservatism, of any stripe, is not as radical when it comes to change as those of a more liberal persuasion, that hardly means that conservatives oppose change.
Edmund Burke is generally thought of as the father of conservatism. He is to conservatism what John Locke is to classical liberalism. Burke NEVER suggested that all change was bad or that change should, in general be opposed. He wrote the following:
We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation. This mode will, on the one hand, prevent the unfixing old interests at once: a thing which is apt to breed a black and sullen discontent in those who are at once dispossessed of all their influence and consideration. This gradual course, on the other hand, will prevent men, long under depression, from being intoxicated with a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious insolence.
From Burke on, conservatism has never been generally opposed to change. It
is opposed to
radical change, but not to change generally. Conservatism is concerned not only with
what is being changed, but
how that change is implemented. However, as Burke showed, conservatism views change as necessary and something to be embraced.
The truth is that conservatism embraces change as necessary but views it best to generally approach change slowly and incrementally. Also, in the debate for
political change, the precautionary principle generally applies. That is to say that the burden of proof is on those proposing change because tradition has been empirically shown to work in the real world while abstract notions have not. Therefore, replacing tradition with untried abstract ideas is something to be approached with caution.
Most leftist dogma about conservatism ignores the nuances of the conservative viewpoint; instead painting with a broad brush and claiming that conservatism is
opposed to all change in favor of tradition. This inherently misrepresents conservatism and sets up a straw man.
You also say this, Foxy:
How odd that it took the ultimate in classic liberalism to give us that Bill of Rights. The conservatives were on the side of the Brits Foss... Left to the conservatives we would still be feeding the coffers of the Queen.
Just as the 'conservatives' of the later part of the 18th century would have been for keeping the states as a colony of Britain, they wanted to conserve the current state of affairs...
Conservative - to hold onto traditional values, which in the 1760s were Britain's values. The conservatives wanted to remain tied to Britain - it was those upstart, radical, liberals that bucked the system, that started a revolution.
In tying conservatism to British sympathizers, you miss some very relevant facts.
Edmund Burke lived from 1729 to 1797. He served in the British Parliament from 1765 to 1780. Burke was in fact an early supporter of the American colonies and their grievances, saying in a speech on April 19th, 1774:
Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it.... Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it.... Do not burthen them with taxes.... But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question.... If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body of men will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side...tell me, what one character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their property and industry by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without the least share in granting them. When they bear the burthens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the burthens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery; that it is legal slavery, will be no compensation either to his feelings or to his understandings.
When America declared it’s independence, Burke was sympathetic to America, if a little torn. Writing, “I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity”.
Another fact to consider is that conservatism is unique to each country it is in. A conservative in Russia is not a conservative in America is not a conservative in Germany. Conservatism, generally, recognizes that policy should take into account and reflect the peculiarities of a society as embodied in it’s traditions, and culture. This is why it takes a while for any political conservatism to be realized in a country.
The fact that political conservatism, generally, was still in it’s infancy during the time of the Revolution, that the father of conservatism was sympathetic to and supportive of the American cause and that America, as a unique nation was, essentially a newborn at that time means that there is no way there could have been a
conservative position
against the Revolution.
Conservative ideas
did later play a part in the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well. When the Framers were drafting those documents, they specifically
rejected the Lockean view of human nature upon which Locke’s entire prescription for a political system rested. Instead they adopted a view of human nature more in line with Burke, Hobbes and Protestantism.
Subsequently, the Framers looked to ground and control that human nature throughout society
not through government, but through traditional social institutions; specifically the Church. This was a uniquely
conservative position in the Burkean sense.
Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other
-John Adams
This is a Christian nation. Ninety-nine hundredths, if not a larger proportion, of our whole population, believe in the general doctrines of the Christian religion. Our Government depends … on that virtue that has its foundation in the morality of the Christian religion.
-NY State Legislature Declaration in 1838
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness
-George Washington in his Farewell Address
You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.
-Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Thomas Paine
