Cultural Survival Skills

How To Separate Real Conservatives From Phonies!

The following are key identifiers enumerated in The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, by Russell Kirk ( page 8).

The following are called “cannons of conservative thought”:

1. There is a “Belief in a transcendent order, or a body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom are religious and moral problems.”
2. There is an “Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems; conservatives resist what Robert Graves calls “logicalism” in society.”
3. A “Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a ‘classless society’. With reason, conservatives often have been called ‘the party of order’. If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum.  Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and the courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.”
4. The “Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all. Economic leveling, they maintain, is not economic progress.”
5. “Faith in prescription and distrust of ‘sophisters’ (i.e., clever politician’s and philosopher’s whose arguments are designed to deceive; think Barack Obama), ‘calculators, and economists’ who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks upon man’s anarchic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.”
6. A “Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman  must take Providence” ( i.e., God and nature) “into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence” (i.e., skillful good judgment).

Conservatives have used these guidelines for over two centuries. These are the values and beliefs that have built America as the greatest nation in the history of the world.

It is only the abandonment of these values and beliefs that have led to America’s great present decline. 

Vote only for true conservatives.

Do not listen to what politicians say. Research how they have behaved through history. Vote only for true conservative behavior patterns or….kiss our once great America goodbye!

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 2/8/16

P.S. Please send this blog to your citizen friends and family

Tags: Cannons of Conservative Thought, Conservatism...or Kiss Amerca Goodbye!, Conservative Values and Beliefs, How To Separate Real Conservatives From Phonies!, V. Thomas Mawhinney Ph.D., Vote Conservative, VTM

This entry was posted on February 8, 2016 at 3:49 PM and is filed under Boiling the American Frog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.