Quotes About Conservatism

I'm excited to bring a dose of moderate, rational conservatism to 'The Cycle.'

Here's one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan.

Once the religious right got their beachhead in the Republican Party in 1980, they expanded it. Even Barry Goldwater was extremely hostile to the religious right, but Reagan catered to them. The religious right then expanded their base and that drove the moderates out.

Ronald Reagan was very successful.

I don't think the GOP is going to die; I think Trump is going to revive it.

How did a prairie-dwelling, red-meat-eating, gun-toting former conservative become the hope of liberal radio? It all started with this annoying habit I have of speaking my mind.

When you wage war on the public schools, you're attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You're not a conservative, you're a vandal.

No authentic conservative metaphysic can be operable when the discipline of God and the discipline of the soul have been ceded to the doxai, the dialectical structures and superstructures of modern life.

inner life is inadequately recognised or honoured by many conservative leaders and spokesmen, in word or in work. In effect the theology of conservatism has been sacrificed to the new gods and the new morality of modernity. The discipline of spiritual conservatism has been manifestly lessened by its own peculiar form of liberation theology, as it were, and by the purely quantitative point of view prevailing in the marketplace of ideas.

Dagley] had also taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse.

How can conservatives love their country, love their system of government, love the founders of their government, but resent and often hate the government itself?

We can now suggest an answer to the questions asked above. If conservatism is based on Strict Father morality, conservatives have the general metaphors of the Moral Order in their conceptual systems, with at least a couple of clauses, namely, God above human beings; human beings above animals and the natural world; adults above children; men above women. The Moral Order hierarchy used to have all the bigoted clauses in it; now it has many open slots available for such clauses. Let

Conservatives commonly characterize liberals in three ways: (1) as lovers of bureaucracy; (2) as defenders of special interests; and (3) as advocating only rights and no responsibilities (the "permissive society").

We can now see clearly why liberal arguments for social programs can make no sense at all to conservatives, whether they are arguments on the basis of compassion, fairness, wise investment, financial responsibility, or outright self-interest.

But to conservatives whose value system gives priority to Moral Strength, the problem of drugs is the personal lack of the moral strength to just say no. It is a problem of personal values, not of social change or drug treatment centers.

Pragmatic conservatism is less idealistic than central conservatism. The goal is to get ahead, to serve your self-interest. The idealistic parts of conservatism are seen as effective means to achieve that goal.

At the heart of conservatism is strict father morality, as we have seen. But strict father morality has complexities and natural variations. What liberals don't see is that the diversity

We will begin with three analytic failures by liberals: 1. Conservatism is "the ethos of selfishness." 2. Conservatives just believe in less government. 3. Conservatism is no more than a conspiracy of the ultrarich to protect their money and power and to make themselves even richer and more powerful. T

Conservatives deny that the private depends on public resources. Citing Ronald Reagan's credo that "The Government is the Problem," conservatives are constantly trying to eliminate public resources and to privatize as much as possible.

New ideas are never entirely new. They must make use of ideas already present in the culture. No conspiracy of the ultrarich explains why conservative ideas make sense to people and what sense they make. Fourth

the right wing is attempting to impose a strict father ideology on America and, ultimately, the rest of the world.

Norquist meetings have expanded to forty-eight states. Via ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), conservatism has spread at the state level, allowing conservatives to take over state legislatures, gerrymander congressional districts, and take over the House of Representatives with a minority of national voter support.

There are three principal conservative descriptions of conservatism. 1. Conservatism is against big government. 2. Conservatism is for traditional values. 3. Conservatism is just what the Bible tells us. We

But for conservatives, the very idea that the private depends on the public is anathema—immoral.