A CONSERVATIVE, in the best sense, sees the world and its inhabitants as . . .
. . . an interdependent organism, comprising innumerable local communities and territories, each adapting to particular conditions. A conservative is someone who goes with the grain of humanity and the nature of the physical world, rather than trying to regiment and fashion a utopia through force of law. And, needless to say, an acceptable conservative is not who who thinks all the answers are obvious but is a modest person who admits that problems are not easily solved, that perfection is unattainable in this world and that it is often necessary to admit mistakes, change one's mind and start again.
(Paul Johnson, "Current Events: Looking for a True Conservative," Forbes, November 16, 2009)
Mr. Johnson also offers an eccentric (he is a Brit, after all) taxonomy of conservatism:
One kind was neatly summed up by that bluff old Victorian the Duke of Cambridge: "It is said I am against change. I am not against change. I am in favor of it in the right circumstances. And those circumstances are when it can no longer be resisted."
Then there are reactionaries. Margaret Thatcher is a good example. She did not agree with Winston Churchill's principle that Labour's nationalization program . . . could not be reversed. . . .
There are also romatic conservatives. These are the intellectual descendants of Edmund Burke, who see their views as creative and imaginative. . . . The outstanding recent example . . . is William F. Buckley . . . .
A fourth category is made up of economists, ranging from Milton Friedman to Friedrich Hayek, who identify conservatism with capitalism. . . .
Mr. Johnson oddly describes the radical-left climate-change, green crowd as a species of reactionary conservative.
[Its] aim is to confine and even reverse capitalism, returning to a precapitalist arcadia in which woods and forests expand, the sea is no longer harvested, energy is strictly rationed and controls on human activity, especially wealth and job creation, are universal.
. . . .
. . . . Their faith, like most forms of political absolutism, is a substitute for genuine religion. In fact it is, in one sense, a crude form of religion -- pantheism, the worship of the Earth an all its manifestations.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link from Harris County Almanac.
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