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Sunday, February 10, 2008

Conservatism in America
(Defined with Attribution)

{ link » subject article}
From Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg, pp. 402-403:

But in America, as Friedrich Hayek and others have noted, a conservative is one who protects and defends what are considered liberal institutions in Europe but largely conservative ones in America: private property, free markets, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and the rights of communities to determine for themselves how they will live within these guidelines. This is why conservatism, classical liberalism, libertarianism, and Whiggism are different flags for the only truly radical political revolution in a thousand years. The American founding stands within this tradition, and modern conservatives seek to advance and defend it. American conservatives are opposed on principle to neither change nor progress; no conservative today wishes to restore slavery or get rid of paper money. But what the conservative understands is that progress comes from working out inconsistencies within our tradition, not by throwing it away. [emphasis and links added]
I have posted the above excerpt for the benefit of the disingenuous "reviewers" who simply can't get past the book's dust jacket, much less the more than 400 pages that follow.

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