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The Ideology of Conservatism
Peace Arrangements
- a. Peace arrangements of 1815= beginning of conservative reaction determined to contain the liberal and nationalist forces unleashed by the French Revolution
- i. Metternich and his kind were reps of the ideology known as conservatism.
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The Ideology of Conservatism
Conservatism
- 1. As modern political philosophy, conservatism dates from 1790 when Edmund Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France in reaction to French Revolution, especially radical republican and democratic ideas
- a. Burke said that society was a contract, but state was nothing better than a partnership agreement
- i. State was a partnership, but one between those living, dead, and to be born
- 1. No one generation has right to destroy partnership; each generation has duty to preserve and transmit it to the next
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The Ideology of Conservatism
Burke advised?
- a. Burke advised against the violent overthrow of a government by revolution, but he didn’t reject all change
- i. Sudden change=unacceptable, but didn’t mean that there should never be gradual or evolutionary improvements
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The Ideology of Conservatism
Maistre
- 1. Aside from Burke, was Frenchman Joseph de Maistre
- a. Influential spokesman for counterrevolutionary and authoritarian conservatism
- b. Espoused restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as divinely sanctioned institution
- i. Only absolute monarchy could guarantee order and avoid chaos from French Revolution
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The Ideology of Conservatism
General Beliefs
- a. Favored obedience to political authority
- b. Believed organized religion crucial to social order
- c. Hated revolutionary upheavals
- d. Unwilling to accept either the liberal demands for civil liberties and representative governments or the nationalistic aspirations generated by French revolutionary era
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The Ideology of Conservatism
Community
After 1815
- 1. Community took precedence over individual rights; society must be organized and ordered, and tradition was best guide for order
- ii. After 1815, the political philosophy of conservatism was supported by hereditary monarchs, government bureaucracies, landowning aristocracies, and revived churches, whether Protestant or Catholic
- 1. Conservative forces appeared dominant after 1815, both internationally and domestically
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