SCHOLAR ISLAND

CONSERVATIVE

 

"To discover the order which inheres in things rather than
to impose an order upon them; to strengthen and perpetuate
that order rather than to dispose things anew according to
some formula which may be nothing more than a fashion; to
to legislate along the grain of human nature rather than
against it; to pursue limited objectives with a watchful
eye; to amend here, to prune there; in short to preserve the
method of nature in the conduct of the state. . .this is
Conservatism. "

R.J. White
The Conservative Tradition

 

"The only true conservative is the man who resolutely sets his face toward the future."

Theodore Roosevelt

 

"Let us not fall into the old error of intelligent reactionaries, that of ignoring our own debt to revolutions."

-G.K. Chesterton

 

"The truth is that it is one of the ironies-indeed illusions- of our
time that capitalists are themselves conservatives. In fact, capitalism
is a compulsively expansive and therefore destructive force. It is expansive and destructive not only to the earth and the environment but to the human psyche and spirit, feeding as it does on insatiable desires and manufactured desires. The one who conserves is in fact the one who resists the kind of expansive , greedy, capitalism that wraps itself so piously in cloaks of conservatism,"

Matthew Fox
A Spirituality named Compassion

 

"The intellectual as defender of traditional values, an un-
familiar figure in the past three centuries, may become more
conspicuous in the remaining two decades of this one. Conceivably, a sense of moral firmness will come to be genuinely
"counter cultural" amidst a populist hedonism. However, the
embers of tradition are by no means extinguished amidst the
ashes of classical bourgeois culture, and an articulate neo-
conservatism may provide the voice, and the sense of self-
confidence, which will enable many within the great American
middle class to do what fashionable liberal rhetoric urges
them to do-once again take control of their lives."

James Hitchcock
Is life a Spectator Sport ?
National Review Feb 6,1981

 

"A conservative is a person who does not think that anything should be done for the first time."

"Old-style conservatives used to be the staunchest defenders of Fortress America: their neo-conservative and New Right heirs now look rather favorably on the use of force abroad. Many liberals, once the banner carriers of Wilsonian activism, have lately come to view the use of force with the same distaste the Founding Fathers had reserved for 'entangling alliances;: as a sure pathway to moral and practical ruin."

-Josef Joffe   "Europe's American Pacifier

       **********

Book: "Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meter and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement" by Kevin J. Smant

Book: "A Case For Conservatism" by John Kekes

Book: "The Servile State" by Hilaire Belloc

Book: "Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology" by W. Wesley McDonald

Book: "An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, or, How I Became the Most Hated Hispanic in America" by Linda Chavez

Book: "Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present" Ed. by Jerry Z Muller

Book: "The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works that impact Today's Conservative Thinkers" by Chilton Williamson Jr.

Book: "Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology" by Peter Viereck

© 2001

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