# Conservatism is "based on faith"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 2, 2005, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538 "2005-03-02T02:39:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rkts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c4cdca/32.png) [@rkts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rkts)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/1 "2005-03-02T02:39:29Z")
My best friend is a conservative Christian, and I, a liberal atheist, tend to avoid discussing anything religious or political with her. However, a while ago, during a mostly unrelated conversation, she tangentially observed how interesting it is that “there are not very many conservative atheists. Of course, I think that’s because a lot of conservatism is based on faith.” This statement intrigued me, and I considered asking her what she meant by it, but, per my policy, did not. Now I am wondering: How prevalent is this sentiment among conservative Christians, and why? I am not surprised that conservatism and Christianity are usually linked, even (or especially) in the minds of the conservative Christians; but I have long seen them as occupying a common mindset, rather than causing each other. Generally I have assumed that Christians at least pretend that their politics are defensible by reason rather than blind faith; they do not claim to “just have faith” in Bush as they would in Jesus. Yet here my friend seems to openly state this is not the case. To put it another way, I have long thought that conservatives consider their view the objectively correct one, with or without a God; their faith just helps them discover the truth. But my friend’s statement suggests that, if you do not accept the Christian God, there is no real reason to accept conservatism either. I can understand faith influencing some issues, such as abortion or same-sex marriage; but how can it lead one to support, for example, the Iraq war (about which my friend seems to feel particularly strongly), besides fostering an “Us vs. them” attitude that no one would admit to possessing? Could a Christian argue **coherently** for their support of the Iraq war, on the basis of their belief in God and the Bible? In short, is my friend’s view more common than I think, or is she more eccentric than I think, or am I misinterpreting her? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/2 "2005-03-02T02:58:42Z")
Conservatism in general is based on the assumptions that what is, is right; that what worked well enough in the past will work well enough in the future; that the values and assumptions in which we were raised to believe are, after all, valid ones. In other words, it does not require any great imaginative “leap of faith” to think like a conservative – but it does require a certain intellectual sloth and quietism, a certain reluctance to engage in iconoclastic re-examinations of things; and that is “faith,” of a kind. (This applies to what most people think of when they hear the word “conservative” without further qualification; it does not apply to all variants of “conservative” political thought, such as foreign-policy neoconservatism, or radical libertarianism.) ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/3 "2005-03-02T03:49:04Z")
First of all, you have to define what you mean by “conservative”. Even the simplest definition still requires it to be broken down into social conservatism and economic conservatism. Your friend may be talking about social conservatism that promotes strong family values, reluctance to accept alternative lifestyles, etc. That probably is influenced by stron Christian beliefs of a certain strain. I have never met an atheist that was all that socially conservative either (other there are bound to be a few somewhere). Economic conservatism, however, is a certain set of beliefs about how government should run, defense, tax structures, and redistribution of wealth should be handled. There may be a coorelation with religious beliefs here too but it is far from obvious. There are many atheists, agnostics, and every other type represented here. It is not necessary to have any particular religious beliefs at all to decide that economic conservatism is the best business plan for our country. For the record, I am an agnostic libertarian/economic conservative. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/4 "2005-03-02T04:30:17Z")
> [@](#): > > Conservatism in general is based on the assumptions that what is, is right; that what worked well enough in the past will work well enough in the future; that the values and assumptions in which we were raised to believe are, after all, valid ones. You were doing fine, here. (Based on a sort of “commonly accepted, traditional” definition of conservatism.) But you lost it with > [@](#): > > it does require a certain intellectual sloth and quietism, a certain reluctance to engage in iconoclastic re-examinations of things I would note that it probably took a certain amount of iconoclastic re-examination for a lot of people brought up in the traditions of the New Deal and the Great Society to decide to look around for a different set of ideals and flock to the Republican banner over the last 25 years. By interjecting loaded terms such as “sloth,” you’ve poisoned the discussion at its inception. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/5 "2005-03-02T04:33:01Z")
Well, this can be turned around quite easily, since most political philosophies of the left are also based on faith. Faith that mankind can be remolded into the socialist ideal, faith in a government that can provide for all without massive corruption and sloth, faith that revolution is inevitable and will spread worldwide. There’s lots of faith in politics, and not all of this faith is toward a god. Much of it is toward other entities that can be just as inspiring, yet might turn out to be as fleeting or fictional. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/6 "2005-03-02T07:42:09Z")
Conservatism = Fallacy of appeal to tradition. Works for me. ---
**Author:** ![Othersider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/cab0a1/32.png) [@Othersider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Othersider)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/7 "2005-03-02T09:19:09Z")
Actually I’ve wondered about this a little. I have known some liberal theists, but I have met very few conservative atheists, to the best of my knowledge. Obviously there can’t be a perfect correlation, but I’ve occasionally wondered if there is a correlation at all. Perhaps we should conduct some studies on it. 😃 ;j For the record, I’m a flaming moderate. Actually, I’m pretty moderate on most issues, but on some things I lean more one way or the other…so they seem to balance out…heh. I’m also a lapsed Christian, curious but apathetic, and somewhat agnostic…if that makes any sense at all. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/8 "2005-03-02T11:04:12Z")
I’ve known plenty of atheist or agnistic conservatives, but then I hang around with conservatives more than most folks here. My cousin is one. He’s a scientist, quite atheist, and strongly conservative in the economic sense. Socially, he’s a touch more moderate, but well to the right of this board. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/9 "2005-03-02T11:54:36Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#): > > … Faith that mankind can be remolded into the socialist ideal… Geez, nothing like, the post after **Tom~** suggested that **Brain Glutton** had poisoned the well to the left, having you poison the well to the right. I used to enjoy reading a perspective that differed from mine but was thought through and expressed firmly but without rhetorical slams. What happened? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/10 "2005-03-02T13:24:13Z")
Well, I was speaking purely from a philosophical viewpoint, and it is indisputable that most socialist ideologies require not only societal change, but attitude changes within individuals as well. As always, how this translates into practical politics varies widely. I certainly didn’t mean to poison the well. I just wanted to point out that political appeals to faith seem rather widespread, a fact I think few people would disagree with. I hope that clears that up a little, **Polycarp**. I do want to keep this high level as well. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/11 "2005-03-02T13:54:58Z")
> [@rkts](#): > > Generally I have assumed that Christians at least pretend that their politics are defensible by reason rather than blind faith; they do not claim to “just have faith” in Bush as they would in Jesus. Yet here my friend seems to openly state this is not the case. > > To put it another way, I have long thought that conservatives consider their view the objectively correct one, with or without a God; their faith just helps them discover the truth. Careful there—you seem to be equating _all_ faith with “blind faith.” Faith is not necessarily blind. In fact, the word “faith” is used in different ways, with different meanings, and one common meaning is basically as a synonym for “religion” or “religious beliefs.” I think you’re right that conservatives consider their view the objectively correct one; but when you say “with or without a God,” things get a little problematic, because for anyone with strong, sincere religious beliefs, those beliefs are going to inform their beliefs about everything else. If you take God out of the picture, or fundamentally change their religious beliefs, they’d have to rethink what truth is. Certainly there are liberal Christians and conservative atheists. But conservatism and religion do have some things in common, such as a respect for tradition and for authority (particularly God’s authority), and the notion that there is A Right Way and A Wrong Way to do things (a la Rush Limbaugh’s “The Way Things Ought To Be”). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/12 "2005-03-02T14:39:19Z")
> [@Othersider](#): > > For the record, I’m a flaming moderate. But are you a radical centrist? 🙂 > **[Let's debate "radical centrism" and the New America Foundation](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=304885)** > > There’s a new political tendency emerging in America: “Radical centrism.” It appears to defy “left-right” categorization in cultural as well as economic terms. It expressly rejects socialism, but many of its proposals are welfare-statist or... ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/13 "2005-03-02T14:47:04Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > I would note that it probably took a certain amount of iconoclastic re-examination for a lot of people brought up in the traditions of the New Deal and the Great Society to decide to look around for a different set of ideals and flock to the Republican banner over the last 25 years. > By interjecting loaded terms such as “sloth,” you’ve poisoned the discussion at its inception. That’s why I included a qualifier. The Reagan-era rebellion against the social contract that had prevailed since the New Deal was more in the nature of radical libertarianism than ordinary “conservatism.” And so is Bush’s present war on Social Security. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/14 "2005-03-02T15:10:50Z")
The role of faith in political thinking is placed in a broader perspective in this article: “Which Civilisation?” by Michael Lind, in _Prospect,_ 10/25/01 – [http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=598:](http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=598:) > [@](#): > > [T]he most important civilisational divide-one that seems even more important after the events of 11th September-may be the one between supernatural civilisations and secular civilisations. The divide is roughly, but not completely, correlated with the divide between pre-modern agrarian societies and industrial societies. Of the supernatural civilisations, the most significant have been the Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and the Indic (Hinduism and Buddhism). The two major Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam, conquered most of the world’s territory and people, including south Asia and the Americas. Only China and Japan, among the major non-western nations, escaped Muslim or Christian rule. Today Muslim theocracies like Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia are the most extreme examples of societies based on supernatural religion. > > On the secular side of the civilisational divide, there have been three major traditions: humanism, rationalism and romanticism. These three traditions originated in Europe but now have adherents around the world. All three are essentially secular worldviews which do not need to invoke the authority of divine revelation or mystical gnosis (though some romantics are mystics or pantheists and some humanists have been religious believers). In respects other than their common secularism, the three traditions are fundamentally different from one another. > > Humanist civilisation crystallised in Renaissance Italy, before spreading to the Netherlands, Britain, and the US. This liberal, commercial, increasingly democratic civilisation has spread to other nations by emulation (Lafayette’s France, Atatork’s Turkey, Yeltsin’s Russia) and by conquest and conversion (post-1945 Germany and Japan). Humanists seek to ameliorate the problems of social life with the guidance of practical wisdom, derived chiefly from history, literature and custom, with little or no reference to supernatural religion or natural science, with the possible exception of the emergent sociobiology. Humanists tend to be modest as philosophers and cautious as reformers. Examples of great humanist thinkers and statesmen are Petrarch, Erasmus, Bacon, Montaigne, Voltaire, Franklin, Hume, Burke, Smith, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. > > Rationalism, a world view underlying a number of secular creeds, first crystallised in 17th and 18th-century France. Rationalists reject the humanist distinction between practical wisdom and natural science. The goal of rationalists of all kinds is to devise a science of society, modelled on natural science, which can serve as the basis for the construction of a “rational” social order. Stephen Toulmin makes a useful distinction between the “reasonableness” of Renaissance humanists and the “rationality” of Enlightenment philosophes. The rationalist pantheon includes social engineers like Condorcet, St Simon, Comte, Fourier, Bentham, Marx, Lenin and Ayn Rand. (The “secular humanists” who support world federalism and utopian social reform are really rationalists). > > Romanticism, the third major secular world view, has spread widely from its original homeland, late 18th and early 19th-century Germany. Romantics reject both reasonableness and rationality, they exalt the inspired unreason of the artistic genius, the child, the primitive uncorrupted by civilisation. Rousseau, Emerson, Wagner, Nietszche and Frantz Fanon should be on a list of romantic prophets, and idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel arguably are closer to romanticism than to humanism or rationalism. > > The American revolution, and the French revolution in its constitutional phases, were humanist. The French terror and the Bolshevik terror were rationalist. The second world war was a struggle of three secular civilisations: humanism (Roosevelt and Churchill), rationalism (Stalin) and romanticism (Hitler). The war by Islamic radicals against the US, Europe and Israel is, among other things, a conflict between religious and humanist civilisation. In this analysis, both rationalism and romanticism could be said to be based on “faith,” but not of a supernatural nature. Rationalism (whether in socialist or libertarian form) is based on faith in the power of reason, romanticism on faith in certain esthetic values. Humanism (which exists in several “liberal” and “conservative” variants) is the political tradition requiring the least “leap of faith,” being relatively unambitious, and based on the lessons of experience. Lind goes on to expressly refute claims that humanism is rooted in Christianity: > [@](#): > > My claim is that the civilisation shared by most Prospect readers is humanist, a relatively young global civilisation based on the post-medieval, Italian-Dutch-Anglo-American tradition of the constitutional, commercial society. Needless to say, this definition of humanist civilisation differs dramatically from conventional catechisms about the “rise of the west.” > > For example, the familiar idea that there is a unitary liberal “west” that is defined by the RRE tradition-Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment-is untrue. Renaissance humanism is incompatible with Reformation Protestantism, while Enlightenment rationalism is alien to both. The fact that these three traditions have coexisted in Britain, the US and other countries does not mean that they are three phases of the same tradition. > > Another version of the “rise of the west” story, more sympathetic to Catholicism than the RRE approach, holds that the “west” is a synthesis of the “Greco-Roman” and “Judaeo-Christian” traditions. In fact, the “Judaeo-Christian” tradition has little to do with the tolerant, individualist, commercial society. > > Consider the claim that Christianity is responsible for the liberal ideal of political equality. In reality, early-modern liberal republican theorists derived this from Cicero and the Stoics. Christians and Muslims believe in the equality of believers before God, a conception which was not interpreted until recently to mandate equality. Indeed, Paul admonished slaves to return to their spiritually-equal masters. The Christian churches only turned against chattel slavery after secular philosophers like David Hume had begun denouncing it. Southern Protestants in the US defended slavery throughout the civil war, and the Catholic church defended it until it was abolished decades later in Catholic Cuba and Brazil. > > Popular sovereignty, republicanism, democracy, the rule of law rather than the rule of men, the idea of a natural law transcending the conventional law of nations-these, too, are part of a pre-Christian, Greco-Roman heritage familiar to educated Europeans and westerners from the Renaissance until the 19th century. Credit for these concepts can no more be given to Moses and Jesus than to Muhammad. > > But didn’t Protestantism produce capitalism? The intellectual historians who vulgarise Max Weber’s nuanced discussion of the affinities between Protestantism and capitalism into a cause-and-effect relationship are easily refuted. Commercial capitalism, in a remarkably familiar form, evolved in Catholic Europe, particularly in northern Italy, for half a millennium, between the 1100s and the 1500s. Only the political repression of Italy by counter-Reformation Spain gave the lead to northwestern Europe-and there capitalism and industry burgeoned in pluralist Holland and in Britain after the invasion of “Dutch William” in 1689. It did not happen in Puritan societies like Calvin’s Geneva or Cromwell’s England or the Scotland tyrannised by the kirk. In the US, the centre of capitalism has been not Puritan New England or the Southern Bible Belt, but polyglot, secular, permissive Manhattan-formerly known as New Amsterdam. > > What about natural science? Christian apologists nowadays claim that Christianity cleared the way for natural science by demythologising the world. This would come as news to Pope John Paul II, who in September 2000 performed a 30-minute exorcism on a 19-year-old woman who began shouting at him during a public audience. Evangelical Protestants, as well as Catholics, believe in demons and engage in exorcism. The conservative Protestant JF Cogan says that the growth in the human population, relative to the fixed number of fallen angels, means that some overworked demons are forced to commute among a number of possessed individuals at “the speed of electricity.” Even more innovative is the Rev Jim Peasboro of Savannah, Georgia, who in his book The Devil in the Machine: Is Your Computer Possessed by a Demon? explains that “any PC built after 1985 has the storage capacity to house an evil spirit.” All this is justified by reference to Jesus whose many successful exorcisms are recounted in the New Testament. > > Modern natural science was built in the last several centuries on the surviving foundations of ancient Hellenic science-the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus (310-230 BC). Like Muslims, Christians repeatedly have tried to repress science when it threatened their dogmas, from the days of Galileo until the present, with Protestant fundamentalists in the US still waging a campaign to ban discussion of Darwinian biology from classrooms or to pair it with Biblical “creation science.” According to Stephen Hawking, who attended a 1981 Vatican conference on cosmology, “the Pope told us that it was fine to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the work of God.” > > So, does liberty of conscience have Christian roots? It was only after they failed to create theocracies on the territories that they controlled in the wars of religion that Catholics and Calvinists resigned themselves to the idea of a secular state (to this day, ultramontanist Catholics and Protestant theologians dream of theocratic government). After Mussolini came to power in Italy, Pope Pius XI declared: “if there is a totalitarian regime, it is the Church regime, given that man belongs wholly to the Church.” (The Vatican did not make its peace with liberal democracy until the 1960s.) The major Protestant reformers were just as tyrannical. “Those who object to the punishment of heresy are like dogs and swine,” Calvin thundered. Martin Luther was moderate by comparison, writing in 1528: “I can in no way admit that false teachers should be put to death: it is enough that they should be banished.” Of the Jews, the relatively tolerant Luther wrote: “Burn down their synagogues… force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying 3,000 lest the whole people perish… There it would be wrong to be merciful.” > > \ > > In the interest of social peace, political elites in the English-speaking world, as well as in continental Europe, have abandoned intellectual consistency by assigning each of these three rival secular traditions authority in a different sphere. When discussing politics, Americans use the language of Renaissance humanist republicanism; when discussing business, science and technology, they are Cartesian rationalists; when discussing morals and religion, they tend to speak a Calvinist language of public confession and repentance; and in the arts, they use the German romantic categories of genius, originality and inspiration. Now and then there are collisions as when, every year or two, an exhibit of “blasphemous” art illustrates the conflict between Christian and romantic conceptions of creativity. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/15 "2005-03-02T15:38:25Z")
I think your cite is Cogent, but you must realise by now you will win no rhetorical points. For every factual reference to theist abuses (as defined from a humanist perspective) you will encounter refutations in the form of assertions that these abuses are mere perversions of supernatural law, which is reinvented on-the-fly to win the argument. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/16 "2005-03-02T16:14:40Z")
> [@Mr. Moto](#): > > Well, I was speaking purely from a philosophical viewpoint, and it is indisputable that most socialist ideologies require not only societal change, but attitude changes within individuals as well. > > As always, how this translates into practical politics varies widely. > > I certainly didn’t mean to poison the well. I just wanted to point out that political appeals to faith seem rather widespread, a fact I think few people would disagree with. > > I hope that clears that up a little, **Polycarp**. I do want to keep this high level as well. Well (hah!) I thought you were at the ‘poison’ stage when you equated all liberals with socialists. Just as easy to say that all conservatives are fascists. Just as easy, sure, and just as wrong. It’s clear that the political spectrum contains all forms and variations. Making an _extremis_ case only hurts your argument. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/17 "2005-03-02T16:19:27Z")
**Mr. Moto** : > [@](#): > > Well, this can be turned around quite easily, since most political philosophies of the left are also based on faith. Faith that mankind can be remolded into the socialist ideal, faith in a government that can provide for all without massive corruption and sloth, faith that revolution is inevitable and will spread worldwide. And in that sense, they are conservative. Fortunately, you did not label these positions as “liberal”. After all, in Russia the conservatives–the Communists–were in the left and the liberals–led by Boris Yeltsin–were on the right. And I’ve charactrerized political correctness as conservative as well; they have “faith” that racism remains a major force in society. Liberalism is simply a willingness to re-evaulate and possibly reject established societal assumptions. Conservatism is the determination to continue embracing these assumptions. Liberalism can open the door to new assumptions, but once your embrace of these assumptions solidifies, it becomes a form of conservatism. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/18 "2005-03-02T16:29:10Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > Liberalism is simply a willingness to re-evaulate and possibly reject established societal assumptions. Conservatism is the determination to continue embracing these assumptions. Liberalism can open the door to new assumptions, but once your embrace of these assumptions solidifies, it becomes a form of conservatism. Conservatives accept social change. They just think that it needs to be gradual. Or, as Disraeli said: > [@](#): > > In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is, not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of the people, or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/19 "2005-03-02T17:29:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > it does not require any great imaginative “leap of faith” to think like a conservative – but it does require a certain intellectual sloth and quietism, a certain reluctance to engage in iconoclastic re-examinations of things; and that is “faith,” of a kind This description is applicable only to the most trivial definition of “conservatism” (desire to maintain the _status quo_). Since many of the notions generally understood to be “conservative” in modern American politics reject the status quo (shrinking the size and scope of government, enacting new entanglements between marriage and state, etc), it is absurd to characterize conservatism generally as “sloth and quietism”. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2005, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538/20 "2005-03-02T19:37:09Z")
> [@Steve MB](#): > > This description is applicable only to the most trivial definition of “conservatism” (desire to maintain the _status quo_). Since many of the notions generally understood to be “conservative” in modern American politics reject the status quo (shrinking the size and scope of government, enacting new entanglements between marriage and state, etc), it is absurd to characterize conservatism generally as “sloth and quietism”. Well, from a broader historical perspective, the New Deal/Great Society are a newfangled deviation from what had traditionally been the status quo (likewise, sexual abstinence is a return to traditional morality). OTOH, low tax, low regulation free market has been described as economic liberalism. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatism-is-based-on-faith/292538.md?page=2)