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d507ea2
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In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.
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anxiety
conservatism
delusion
psychology
uncertainty
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Alan Moore |
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5782906
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-You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!
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authority
conservatism
conservatives
military
right-wingers
war
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Joseph Heller |
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ad0547a
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There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.
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conservatism
economics
intellectuals
keynesianism
law
politics
politics-of-the-united-states
united-states
violence
welfare-states
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Noam Chomsky |
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1d9d8ff
|
"When Republicans recently charged the President with promoting 'class warfare,' he answered it was 'just math.' But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality.
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class-warfare
conservatism
economics
liberalism
mathematics
morality
politics
republican-party-united-states
society
united-states
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Robert B. Reich |
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276b81e
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How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?
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conservatism
radicalism
united-states
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Christopher Hitchens |
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9184fc3
|
The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First'--the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has--from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.
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charles-lindbergh
collectivism
conservatism
contradiction
edmund-burke
free-thought
french-revolution
gore-vidal
humanism
india
individualism
influence
ireland
israel
israel-shahak
partisanship
politics
radicalism
revolution
spinozism
thomas-paine
united-states
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Christopher Hitchens |
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4dc4a38
|
Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so.
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cable-television
cable-television-in-the-us
conservatism
conservatism-in-the-us
gore-vidal
guilt
illusion
literature
perception
sex
television
united-states
william-f-buckley
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Christopher Hitchens |
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b46538c
|
Decades of the seniority rule had conferred influence in the Senate not on men who broke new ground but on men who were careful not to.
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conservatism
status-quo
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Robert A. Caro |
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279ceb2
|
There is a sort of aesthetic poverty about conservatism
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conservatism
politics
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Alan Hollinghurst |
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0f65943
|
Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means singlehandedly to obtain it. In respect of such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion. Their position is true but boring, that of their opponents exciting but false.
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conservatism
falsehood
politics
protecting
tradition
truth
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Roger Scruton |
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56314e6
|
"Then he said the funny thing was the old man himself had left home when he was a kid, after a fight with his own father. The father lit into him for using the wheelbarrow. "It was this way. They always carried the feed to the horses, pail by pail. In the winter, when the horses were in the stalls. So my father took the notion to carry it to them in the wheelbarrow. Naturally it was a lot quicker. But he got beat. For laziness. That was the way they were, you know. Any change of any kind was a bad thing. Efficiency was just laziness, to them. That's the peasant thinking for you."
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conservatism
parochialism
poverty
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Alice Munro |
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cb57395
|
The American liberal is certainly not averse to the power of the state, provided it is exerted by liberals, and exerted against conservatives.
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conservatism
liberal
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Roger Scruton |