Conservatism

Don’t break what works. Society’s customs and institutions carry hard-won wisdom, so change should be careful, tested, and gradual — and some things (family, faith, nation) deserve protection regardless of fashion.

Usually center-right: right on economics (markets, lower taxes) and traditional on social issues. But conservatism is defined more by its attitude to change than by any fixed policy — one-nation conservatives have backed welfare states enthusiastically.

A British tradition, from Benjamin Disraeli onward, holding that society is one body and the better-off have obligations to the worse-off. It accepts a welfare state and public services to keep the nation whole.

Both favor markets, but conservatism accepts state power for order, borders, and tradition, while libertarianism wants the state out of both the economy and private life. Conservatives also keep institutions — the army, the church, the family — that libertarians view with suspicion.

No — Burke’s point was that a state without the ability to reform cannot preserve anything. Conservatism prefers incremental, evidence-tested reform to transformation; its quarrel is with pace and hubris, not direction as such.

The UK Conservatives, Germany’s CDU/CSU, Japan’s LDP, India’s BJP, and the US Republican Party all sit in the conservative family, though each blends conservatism differently with liberalism or nationalism.

Historically central — conservatism defended established churches and religious morality. Today most conservative parties govern secularly but still defend faith communities’ place in public life.

That “institutions carry wisdom” can be cover for entrenched privilege, that gradualism just delays necessary reform, and that defending tradition can slide into defending hierarchy. Conservatives answer that reformers’ certainty has a worse track record.