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Edmund Burke
Born
The usual starting point: Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) argued that institutions carry inherited wisdom no single generation can design from scratch, so reform should be gradual. Yet the same Whig backed the American colonists and attacked the East India Company, which is why both reformers and traditionalists claim him.
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Joseph de Maistre
Born
Where Burke wanted prudent reform, de Maistre rejected the Enlightenment altogether, defending throne and altar as divinely ordained and treating the executioner as society's cornerstone. Reading him beside Burke shows the gap between conservative and reactionary positions.
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Benjamin Disraeli
Born
Disraeli's novel Sybil described Britain as "two nations", rich and poor, and his governments widened the vote and passed public health and factory laws. His "one nation" Toryism, using the state to bind classes together, is the tradition later free-market conservatives rejected.
More about Benjamin Disraeli4
G. K. Chesterton
Born
Chesterton's distributism argued that both big capitalism and socialism concentrate property, and that tradition depends on widely owned small farms, shops and workshops. His "democracy of the dead" defence of tradition sits awkwardly with any market conservatism.
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Friedrich Hayek
Born
Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) made the case that central planning leads to coercion, and his "spontaneous order" became the intellectual basis of free-market conservatism. Yet his essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative" rejected conservatism for lacking principles and fearing change, a disagreement at the heart of this list.
More about Friedrich Hayek6
Michael Oakeshott
Born
Oakeshott's essays, especially "On Being Conservative" (1956), treat conservatism as a disposition to enjoy the present rather than a programme, and his "Rationalism in Politics" criticised plans of every kind, Hayek's included. He described The Road to Serfdom as a plan to resist all planning.
More about Michael Oakeshott7
Russell Kirk
Born
Kirk's The Conservative Mind (1953) built an American conservative lineage from Burke and grounded it in religion, custom and "the permanent things". He distrusted libertarians as "chirping sectaries" and later opposed the 1991 Gulf War, setting him against both free-marketeers and hawks.
More about Russell Kirk8
Frank Meyer (political philosopher)
Born
A former Communist, Meyer argued in In Defense of Freedom (1962) that virtue only counts if freely chosen, so traditional morality needs a limited state. This "fusionism" tried to reconcile Kirk's traditionalists with libertarians, and Kirk rejected it.
More about Frank Meyer (political philosopher)9
William F. Buckley Jr.
Born
More organiser than theorist, Buckley founded National Review in 1955 to "stand athwart history, yelling Stop", and used it to hold together traditionalists, libertarians and anticommunists while excluding the John Birch Society. His early defence of Southern segregation, later regretted, is part of the record.
More about William F. Buckley Jr.10
Leo Strauss
Born
Strauss, a German-Jewish émigré at Chicago, argued in Natural Right and History (1953) that modern thought had slid into relativism and that classical philosophy offered standards to judge regimes. Unlike Burke, he distrusted appeals to history and tradition as such, and his students' influence on neoconservatism remains debated.
More about Leo Strauss11
Robert Nisbet
Nisbet's The Quest for Community (1953) argued that the centralised state and the market both erode family, church and local association, leaving lonely individuals open to mass movements. He was as wary of a warfare state run by conservatives as of the welfare state.
More about Robert Nisbet12
Irving Kristol
Born
A former Trotskyist, Kristol described a neoconservative as "a liberal who has been mugged by reality" and accepted a modest welfare state while attacking the unintended consequences of Great Society programmes in The Public Interest. His "Two Cheers for Capitalism" withheld the third cheer that libertarians wanted.
More about Irving Kristol13
Keith Joseph
Born
After the 1974 defeats, Joseph said he had only then "become a Conservative", rejecting the post-war consensus he had served in favour of monetarism and a smaller state. His Centre for Policy Studies supplied Thatcherism with ideas, and his speeches openly broke with Disraelian paternalism.
More about Keith Joseph14
Ian Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar
Born
Thatcher's most articulate internal critic, Gilmour argued in Inside Right (1977) and Dancing with Dogma (1992) that conservatism is a pragmatic tradition, not an ideology, and that monetarism was a rationalist dogma of the kind Oakeshott warned against. Sacked from the cabinet in 1981, he spoke for the "wets".
More about Ian Gilmour, Baron Gilmour of Craigmillar15
Thomas Sowell
Born
Sowell's A Conflict of Visions (1987) frames politics as a clash between a "constrained" view of human nature, which trusts markets and tradition, and an "unconstrained" one, which trusts reason and reform. His economics-first conservatism has little time for the communitarian worries of Nisbet or Berry.
More about Thomas Sowell16
Roger Scruton
Born
Scruton's The Meaning of Conservatism (1980) put loyalty, home and the nation before markets, and he criticised Thatcherite economics for neglecting them. His later Green Philosophy made a conservative case for environmentalism based on attachment to place.
More about Roger Scruton17
Wendell Berry
Born
The Kentucky farmer-writer, who refused the conservative label as often as he earned it, argued in The Unsettling of America (1977) that industrial agriculture and the global economy destroy the households and communities conservatives say they defend. He died in August 2026.
More about Wendell Berry18
Patrick Deneen
Born
Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed (2018) argues that liberalism, including the free-market version most conservatives defend, dissolves the family and local ties it relies on. His later Regime Change calls for an elite that uses state power for the common good, a position Hayek's heirs regard as a betrayal.
More about Patrick Deneen19
Yoram Hazony
Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism (2018) and Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022) defend independent nation states against both global institutions and liberal universalism, and he organises the National Conservatism conferences. Critics on the right say his project trades Burke's caution for a new ideology.
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