Conservatism (Latin: conservare, "to preserve") is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and opposes rapid change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to "the way things were." The first established use of the term in a political context was by François-René de Chateaubriand in 1819, following the French Revolution. The term has since been used to describe a wide range of views. According to Hailsham, a former chairman of the British Conservative Party, "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".

Robert Eccleshall states, "It is the persistent image of society as a command structure in which the responsibilities of leadership can be exercised within the framework of a strong state manifested in divine-right royalism ... that distinguishes English conservatism from rival ideologies."

Political science often credits British politician Edmund Burke with many of the ideas now called conservative.

Conservative political parties include the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, the Republican Party in the United States, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, the Liberal Party of Australia, the Kuomintang of the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Conservative Party of Canada, Pakistan Muslim League in Pakistan, and the Bharatiya Janata Party in India.

Conservatism is a philosophy defined by Edmund Burke as "a disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve". The term derives from conserve; from Latin conservare, to keep, guard, observe. Classical conservatism does not readily avail itself to the ideology of objectives. It is a philosophy primarily concerned with means over ends. To a conservative, the goal of change is less important than the insistence that change be effected with a respect for the rule of law and traditions of society.

For

• "I am a conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few."
  • Benjamin Disraeli

• The conservative hates all action against the order, the constitution, the laws, the moral, the liberty, the equality, the tolerance, the property, the security and the civilization.
  • Jose Eusebio Caro

• A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation
  • Edmund Burke Reflection on the revolution of France

• [I]t is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition or by descent or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied...[T]he public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large.
  • Edmund Burke on fiscal conservatism, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (London: Penguin Classics, 1986), pp. 207-8.

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Fri Jul 2 09:10:09 2010