Scholars explain that far-right movements are motivated by a commitment to retain social prestige, and unlike traditional conservatives, sympathizers with the Far Right are reactionary conservatives who resists social change at all costs.
However, work on the Far Right and reactionary conservatism, especially work focused on the s, fails to place the movement in its appropriate historical context, theorize and subsequently test the theory. My project first grounds reactionary conservatism in the political context of the s.
I examine the driving forces behind the Far Right's resistance to social change in relation to the progress of the Civil Rights movement and the ever-present Cold War. Through a comparison of Far Right literature to mainstream conservative thought, the Far Right's anxiety toward social change stands out. To this point, even by the 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville was noting its widespread acceptance and dissemination across democratic America.
An authentic conservatism accepts the moral equality of individuals but insists that liberals and especially progressives err in thinking that the principle is respected primarily due to institutional and philosophical changes. From Burke onwards, conservatives insist that this popular Enlightenment conceit misunderstands human nature, as well as it misapprehends the often affective basis for our attachment to others and the roots of our convictions.
For Burke, Tocqueville, Scruton, and others, one must recognize that people treat each other as moral equals when they share a form of life together. This can take a variety of forms, from belonging to the same community, to worshiping together on a Sunday, to engaging in one-on-one forms of commerce. One of the most important characteristics of this way of life is that ordinary people engage in it freely and gladly.
This demonstrates its significance. Without a shared form of life, which generates ties of political friendship and love, people become incapable of treating each other as moral equals. They see others as mere means to an end, at best—or potentially threatening strangers who must be outcompeted and overcome, at worst. Oftentimes, these anxieties will lead people to turn to the state with demands that it entrench special powers and entitlements for self-advancement and protection, which can come at the expense of others.
The state will then grow into an alien power, which sets itself above everyone as the sole force holding societies together. As a consequence, any respect for moral equality will disappear as the powerful come to dominate, and the weak suffer what they must. Of course, this does not mean things should not change; a form of life is maintained by living people over generations. It grows and changes as they do.
However, hard-won forms of life that provide a sense of meaning and attachment should not be surrendered easily. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man. We are all born despots, from the most absolute monarch in Asia to the infant who smothers a bird with its hand for the pleasure of seeing that there exists in the world a being weaker than itself. So Rove—I will give him this much—knows the workings of the fearful, reactionary mind.
It was one of the conservative sheets, comic-less, reactionary Republican to the core. This was effected, and Louis Philippe was balked of his desire to interfere in Portugal to promote a reactionary policy. Her husband expressed himself forcibly on a public occasion against some reactionary measures of the government.
Into this surcharged atmosphere came Metternich with his exaggerated statements about the great reactionary party in France.
We are not speaking of a reactionary revolution but of the "activist. A social conservative. Conservative as an adjective US, economics, politics, social sciences :.
Conservative as an adjective British, politics :. Conservative as an adjective physics, not comparable :. Having power to preserve in a safe or entire state, or from loss, waste, or injury; preservative.
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