10 Conservative Rules
These rules, by Thomas Sowell, is what seperates the right from the left. the right from the wrong.
1. The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.
This word order signifies harmony. There are two aspects of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth. Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato taught this doctrine, but even the educated nowadays find it difficult to understand. The problem of order has been a principal concern of conservatives ever since conservative became a term of politics.
2. The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity… Custom enables people to live together peaceably. Convention permits us to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions.
3. Conservatives believe in the principle of prescription. We are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than our ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us. Thus, the emphasis on prescription and on those things established by immemorial usage, by the establishment of precedent, including rights to property.
4. Conservatives value prudence as a principle. Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals are imprudent. They dash at their objectives without heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away .
5. Conservatives cherish variety. They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems. For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law. All other attempts at leveling lead to social stagnation.
6. Man is imperfect. Thus no perfect social order ever can be created. Because of human restlessness, mankind would grow rebellious under any utopian domination, and would break out once more in violent discontent or else expire of boredom. To seek for utopia is to end in disaster. In a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk. Prudent reform permits us to preserve and improve this tolerable order. If the old institutional and moral safeguards of a nation are neglected, then the anarchic impulse in humankind breaks loose: “the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
7. Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Upon the foundation of private property, great civilizations are built. The more widespread is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth. Economic leveling, conservatives maintain, is not economic progress. Getting and spending are not the chief aims of human existence. A sound economic basis for the person, the family, and the commonwealth is desirable.
8. Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. Although Americans have been attached strongly to privacy and private rights, they also have been a people conspicuous for their spirit of community. In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. Some of these functions are carried out by local political bodies, others by private associations: so long as they are kept local, and are marked by the general agreement of those affected, they constitute healthy community. But when these functions pass by default or usurpation to centralized authority, then community is in serious danger.
9. The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. Politically speaking, power is the ability to do as one likes, regardless of the wills of one’s fellows. A state in which an individual or a small group are able to dominate the wills of their fellows without check is a despotism, whether it is called monarchical or aristocratic or democratic . When every person claims to be a power unto himself, then society falls into anarchy.
10. Conservatives understand that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression.
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Originally Posted by chamaeleo
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