6.2.4 Conservative Attitudes
Conservative attitudes include resistance to change, distrust of government interference, or a search for safety in a return to the past.
The word ‘conservative’ is derived from the impulse to conserve that which is of value. Conservatives share a belief that collective experience provides the soundest foundation upon which to proceed, and that if any change is needed it should be made cautiously. Conservatism is sometimes loosely described as being ‘right-wing’, although that word is equally used to describe an individualist ideology (6.2.2).
A desire for stability is the key to conservative attitudes. Although traditional conservatism is based upon satisfaction with the status quo, the World Values Survey Wave 7 in 2023 revealed a widespread tendency to seek safety in the past. An Economist magazine analysis of the results, Authoritarians are on the march, revealed that “[l]arge numbers of people around the world continue to swear fealty to traditional beliefs, sometimes intolerant ones … cynical politicians sometimes set out to engineer insecurity because they know that frightened people yearn for strongman rule.”
The different motivations are further analysed in the following sub-sections:
● Burkean stewardship conserves and enhances what has been shown to work well (6.2.4.1). This traditionalist approach to government is named after Edmund Burke, who described it eloquently. It aims to provide stability and competence for everyone’s benefit.
● Conserving wealth and power, for the government and its associates, doesn’t benefit anyone else (6.2.4.2). A ruling elite might defend its own interests at the expense of the rest of the population.
● A ‘Laissez faire’ approach reduces the role of government, to let institutions and markets evolve naturally (6.2.4.3). Advocates of this approach distrust politicians who try to make changes, and they resent regulation.
● ‘Neoconservatism’ takes a system that appears to be successful and tries to impose it elsewhere (6.2.4.4). It is a missionary instinct. It is a foreign policy that is intended to increase global stability, but imposing a regime change is usually destabilising in practice.
● Reactionary conservatives reject recent change (6.2.4.5). Older people, or people who are uneasy about cultural changes, or those who have suffered economically, might want to ‘turn the clock back’.
● A retreat to identity is a more extreme form of flight to the past which is sometimes described as the ‘alt-right’ (6.2.4.6). Donald Trump and others have exploited people’s fear of cultural change by urging them to band together with people like themselves, in opposition to other groups. Such political appeals might be nationalist, racist, or religious.
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/624d.htm.