I'd always understood conservatism in classical Burkean terms. This is characterised by aristocratic hierarchy, harmony, order, virtue, reciprocity shared values, tradition, and mutual concern. Since it looked back to an agrarian society ruled by a landed gentry it had little credibility in the new world of America and Australia after the 1850s.
Yet conservatism has adapted to the new world and survives in the present of a liberal capitalist world wearing a populist mask. It actually celebrates the bourgeois present and the capitalist ethos. How did it achieve this transformation? The rethinking of conservatism did not take place in Australia. Political philosophy barely exists in Australia and political ideas with a philosophic or ideological dimension have not been taken very seriously.
Is American neo-conservatism the new conservatism; one freed from nostalgia for the pre-modern past? If it is, then was the transformation undertaken by Irving Kristol?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 9, 2005 10:21 PM | TrackBack