Items19The creator’s order
  1. 1Edmund BurkeEdmund BurkeBorn 1 Jan 1729The 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…0i
  2. 2Joseph de MaistreJoseph de MaistreBorn 1 Apr 1753Where 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.0i
  3. 3Benjamin DisraeliBenjamin DisraeliBorn 21 Dec 1804Disraeli'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.0i
  4. 4G. K. ChestertonG. K. ChestertonBorn 29 May 1874Chesterton'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.0i
  5. 5Friedrich HayekFriedrich HayekBorn 8 May 1899Hayek'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…0i
  6. 6Michael OakeshottMichael OakeshottBorn 11 Dec 1901Oakeshott'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.0i
  7. 7Russell KirkRussell KirkBorn 19 Oct 1918Kirk'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.0i
  8. 8Frank Meyer (political philosopher)Frank Meyer (political philosopher)Born 9 May 1909A 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.0i
  9. 9William F. Buckley Jr.William F. Buckley Jr.Born 24 Nov 1925More 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…0i
  10. 10Leo StraussLeo StraussBorn 20 Sept 1899Strauss, 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…0i