What are the main features of British conservatism Essay

What are the main features of British conservatism - Essay ExampleBritish conservatism takes its root in philosophical ideas and concepts of Edmund hit. British conservatism has a great impart on other beingness countries and their economic, political and cultural life. The British conservatism reflects the interests of rural land owning class and protects the Monarchy. The main values of British conservatives are the Angelical Church, family and property. Thus, during 1980s there has been a great shift to fightds free-market and liberal economic policies.Edmund Burke is trans counterfeited from a Whig into the crowning embodiment of everything that is valuable in conservative thought. Nineteenth-century conservatives, discouraged by the raw Burkes support of causes such as Catholic emancipation, looked elsewhere for their ideological antecedents. There were, moreover, other writers (John Reeves, for instance) who elaborated a genuine Tory response to the ideas associated with the French Revolution. Burke has become the principal occupant of the Tory (Viereck, 2005). Conservatives squander long believed that the subroutine of this second nature serves to protect a minority from many of the frailties which commonly afflict people (Viereck, 2005). The argument, which took root in the relatively fixed hierarchy of a predominantly agrarian society, is that those born into a elite can, in an odd degree, acquire knowledge and wisdom, cultivate taste and virtue, and engage in civilized conversation, as well as being imbued from an early age with the responsibilities of public service. They are therefore less likely to be adulterate by power than those untrained in its exercise (Viereck, 2005).British conservatives espouse certain virtues or characteristics prudence, justice, wisdom, moderation, self-discipline, frugality, industry, piety, honesty, faithfulness to and respect for authority, duty. Two other important aspects of conservatism are its anti-specula tive, anti-theoretical stance and its espousal of some form of aristocracy. Political and social theory is even a sign of an ill-conducted state (Viereck, 2005). The conservative, then, tends to mistrust theoretical answers to problems, preferring the rill of time and history. The conservative tends also to mistrust intellectuals, especially liberal and radical ones.Conservatism is a pot of political, economic, religious, educational, and other social beliefs characterized by emphasis on the status quo and social stability, religion and morality, liberty and freedom, the inborn inequality of men, the uncertainty of progress, and the weakness of human reason (Viereck 2005, p. 76). For British conservatives, more important is the conservatives position on liberty and equality. Liberty is insisted upon equality, however, does not exist nor can it exist. As Burke (1955) said, with his customary eloquence, levelers, acting for equality, shift and pervert the natural order of things I n this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature (Burke 1955, p. 56 cited Stanlis 2000, p. 82). This is perhaps the single most significant difference between the conservative and the modern-day liberal and the socialist. Modern conservatives strongly and positively prize freedom, as do liberals, and they acquiesce to policies and programs of equality because it is essential or politically expedient to do so. if they bow at all, to what they see as a the right way contemporary force. It may even be said that modern liberals actively espouse equality, whereas modern conservatives actively espouse freedom and liberty and leave equality to liberals (Gamble, 1995). Less remarkable are the ideas of the modern right, for they have long been the stock-in-trade of free-market Conservatives. Those who now favour an enterprise culture share with earlier individualists a fear of creeping socialism, a conviction that the poor benefit from the wealth created by the rich, a belief that welfare coddling erodes self-assertion and places unfair burdens on the more competent members of