Tag Archives: what is conservative?

Charles Darwin, Conservative?

Here’s an extract from a TNR piece by Alvaro Vargas Llosa on Charles Darwin: “Herein should lie Darwin’s appeal to the right: The English naturalist gave scientific validity to the revolutionary idea that order can be spontaneous, neither designed by … Continue reading

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Behind the Sharon Statement

If you’ve been around organized conservatism for long, you’ve almost certainly heard of the 1960 Sharon Statement, long cited as a declaration of principles around which the then-burgeoning conservative movement could rally, much as the Port Huron Statement later served … Continue reading

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Micklethwait and Wooldridge on American conservatism

The Economist’s blog Democracy in America notices us, and one of its commenters says: To quote the distillation of Burke’s principles found in Mr [John] Micklethwait and Mr [Adrian] Wooldridge’s book on the subject [The Right Nation: Conservative Power in … Continue reading

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A model of rational critique?

 Jonah Goldberg posts the “appalled” Ed Feser on secular conservatives.  Apparently Mr. Feser thinks of himself as the opposite of “smugly unreflective and dogmatic.”  Readers can decide for themselves.   I will respond to just one of Mr. Feser’s un-smug, non-dogmatic … Continue reading

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Why Secular?

I want to make something clear, again, so that it doesn’t crop up on the comments over & over: the point of this website (for me) is not to argue for the abolition of all religious sentiment.  Rather, it is … Continue reading

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Do We Exist?

Mr. Hume:  Concerning your correspondent: Modern rationalistic secularism is clearly a product of the left. (Think of the origin of the terms left and right.) That is only half true. How many of the French revolutionaries were unbelievers? Robespierre was … Continue reading

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Is the Secular Right an oxymoron?

A comment: I wonder what the writer’s here have to say about my contention in the TAC thread that the idea of a secular right is virtually an oxymoron. Modern rationalistic secularism is clearly a product of the left. (Think … Continue reading

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The varieties of conservatism

Jerry Muller, the author of Conservatism, has given me permission to reprint an article of his that might be of interest to readers of this website, “Dilemmas of Conservatism,” The Public Interest Number 139, Spring, 2000.

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