Prompt+1

What are the beliefs associated with Conservatism?
Ben Leb -- Conservatism was born in 1790 when Edmund Burke published his //Reflections on the Revolution in France.// In this work, Burke decried the French Revolution as too radically republican and democratic.


 * According to Burke, Conservatism is marked by the perception that society is a contract wherein "the state ought **not** to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade..." Burke held that the state was a partnership but one, "not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born."
 * This partnership between the past, present and future citizens of a state and the past, present and future leaders of a state definitely rules out revolution, but does not preclude any change.
 * Therefore, a key tenant of conservatism is that **gradual change is the only acceptable form of change within society**

Another key figure in the conservative movement was the Austrian Foreign Minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich.

Brynn - General Conservative beliefs included:
 * hated revolutionary upheavals,
 * unwilling to accept either the liberal demands for civil liberties and representative governments or the nationalistic aspirations generated by the French revolutionary era
 * the community took precedence over individual rights
 * This philosophy was supported by hereditary monarchs, government bureaucracies, landowning aristocracies and revived churches.


 * Joseph de Maistre - Frenchman. Most influential spokesman for a counterrevolutionary and authoritarian conservatism. supported the restoration of hereditary monarchy, which he regarded as a divinely sanctioned institution. Only absolute monarchy could guarantee order in society.