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Conservatism in Europe and America
| Article
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11532 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
6,531 Words |
| Author
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David Gress
David Gress is professor of classics at Aarhus University,
Denmark, and fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute
in Philadelphia. He is the author of works on European history
and contemporary international relations, among them A History
of West Germany 1945-1991 (with Dennis Bark, 1993) and From
Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents (1998).
His most recent book is The Flickering Lamp: History,
Education, and American Culture in the New Century. |
For many Americans, a conservative is one who believes in free enterprise, the market economy, limited government, the sanctity of private property, and last, but by no means least, the importance of religion as the foundation of social order. To a great extent, the contemporary image of the conservative or are known as such are generally in favor of these same principles (with the partial exception of religion), although with less fervor than the Reagan administration. Nevertheless, there are profound differences between the main strands of conservative thought and politics on the two shores of the Atlantic. Today's superficial similarities should not blind us to the fundamental differences in temperament and outlook that are incarnated in the main conservative traditions in America and Europe respectively.
The most important reason for these differences is the origin of the United States as a political society deliberately created by human action in the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and the Constitution. The Founders acted in the name of liberty, prosperity, tolerance, and the consent of the governed to acts of government. These principles sprang from two intellectual and political traditions, namely the English tradition of rights and liberties that began with the Magna Carta of 1215 and researched a high point in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, and the republican ideals of ancient Greece and Rome as mediated by the Enlightenment culture of the eighteenth century. In the course of the struggle against James II, who wished to introduce absolute monarchy, English political thinkers produced a bill of rights, parts of which were taken over words for word in the American Bill of Rights. The American revolutionaries based their case for independence on the "rights of Englishmen" that the King was unfairly denying them. They based their hopes for a lasting political order on the notion that the new world, with its open frontier and sound agrarian base, was the ideal breeding ground for civic virtue and for the habits of mind and social behavior needed if the republic was to endure.
At the time of the Founding, the American conservatives were those who believed in the authority of the King of Great Britain and in the Church of England. Because America was from the beginning settled largely by Nonconformists - that is, dissenters from the Anglican Church - these conservatives were few in number except in some parts of the South. During the Revolutionary War, they were known as Tories, and after the defeat of Britain in 1783 some of them moved to Canada, which remained in British control, and there began the tradition of Canadian conservatism that in some respects resembles its British
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