"... [Burkean] Conservatism ... is a Western phenomenon, a philosophy peculiar to the Atlantic community and certain of its extensions throughout the world.

"... this Conservatism accepts and defends most of the institutions and values of the contemporary West. Not only does it continue to hold in trust the great Western heritage from Israel, Greece, Rome and all Christianity, the way of life that speaks of humanity and justice; it also pledges its faith to what we know and cherish as constitutional democracy, the way of life that speaks of liberty and the consent of the people. Conservatism ... is full of harsh doubts about the goodness and equality of men, the wisdom and possibilities of reform, and the sagacity of the majority -- that is to say, about the democratic dogma. ... however, it ... respects the desire for human liberty hardly less firmly than it pleads the cause for social order."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 17.

RE: Society as a Partnership among Generations.

"Society is indeed a contract.... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

RE: How a Political System Comes into Being.

"Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident--the luckiest, indeed, that may befall a society."

Edward C. Banfield, Quoted in Newsweek (June 12, 1989).

RE: The Conservative Perception of Human Nature.

"Man, says the Conservative ... is a fabulous composite of some good and much evil, a blend of several enobling excellencies and several more degrading imperfections. 'Man is nor entirely corrupt and depraved,' William McGovern and David Collier have written, 'but to state that he is, is to come closer to the truth than to state that he is essentially good.' As no man is perfect, so no man is perfectable. If educated properly, placed in a favorable environment, and held in restraint by tradition and authority, he may display innate qualities of rationality, sociability, industry, and decency. Never, no matter how he is educated or situated or restrained, will he throw off completely his other innate qualities of irrationality, selfishness, laziness, depravity, corruptibility, and cruelty. Man's nature is essentially immutable, and the immutable strain is one of deep-seated wickedness."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 21-22

RE: Conservatism on Human Wickedness & Irrationality.

"While ... [the Conservative] is well aware of man's potentialities, he must counter the optimism of the Liberal with certain cheerless reminders that are no less true for telling not quite the truth: that evil exists independently of social or economic maladjustments; that we must search for the source of our discontents in defective human nature, rather than in a defective social order; and that man, far from being malleable, is subject to cultural alteration only slowly and to a limited degree. The Conservative therefore considers it his stern duty to call attention, as did John Adams, to 'general frailty and depravity of human nature' and to the weakness of reason as a guide to personal conduct or collective endeavor."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 22.

RE: Radical Ideology, Common Sense, & Human Imperfection.

"I never could understand the doctrine of the perfectability of the human mind. Despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. No man is more sensible than I am of the service to science ... and liberty that would have been rendered by the [French] encyclopedists and economists, by Voltaire, D'Alembert, Buffon, Diderot, Rousseau, La Lande, Frederic and Catherine, if they had possessed common sense. But they were all totally destitute of it. They seemed to believe that whole nations and continents had been changed in their principles, opinions, habits, and feelings by the sovereign grace of their almighty philosophy. They had not considered the force of early education on the minds of millions."

John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1814).

RE: The Conservative View of the Liberal/Radical Perception of Human Nature &         Human Potential

"...as understood by all the centuries of Christianity ... and by all other of the great world religions, man ia a creature by essence limited and bounded, his potential goodness corrupted by a portion of evil that, by his own efforts, cannot be overcome, fated to walk in the valley of the shadow of an alien material universe, under unreprievable sentence of death. ...religious doctrine ... was borne out in full and terrible detail by the entire history of man, in every continent, climate, and region of the earth, in every society at every stage of development from primitive tribe to mighty empire, constructed by whatever race, black, brown, yellow, red, or white. Only those who know very little about the history of mankind can suppose that cruelty, crime or weakness, mass slaughter or mass corruption, are exceptions from the normal rule. A doctrine of human nature that paints a picture of what man might be is a direct contradiction to what he has always and evertwhere been....

"The fundamental law of every science is the postulate that the pattern of what happens in the future will probably resemble that of what has been observed to happen in the past. Any belief requiring the assumption that the future will be radically different from the past is not only false on the evidence ... but non-scientific in kind. The grimmest lessons of the past about the inherents limits and defects of human nature have been continuously confirmed by wars with tens of millions dead, by mass persecutions and tortures, deliberate starvation of innocents, wanton killings by tens of thousands, the ingenuities of science used to perfect methods of mass terror, new forms of enslavement, gigantic genocides, the wiping out of whole nations and peoples. True enough, the record of the present, as of the past, is not unmixed black; the crimes and horrors are mingled with achievements, mercies, and heroism. But in the face of what man has done and does, it is only an ideologue obsessed with his own abstractions who can continue to cling to the vision of an innately uncorrupt, rational, and benignly plastic human nature possessed of an unlimited potential for realizing the good society.

"It is not merely the record that speakes in unmistakable refutation of the Liberal doctrine of man. ...almost all modern scientific studies of man's nature unite in giving evidence against the Liberal view of man as a creature motivated, once ignorance is dispelled, by the rational search for peace, freedom, and plenty. Every modern school of biology and psychology and most schools of sociology and anthropology conclude that men are driven by profound non-rational, often anti-rational, sentiments and impulses, whose character and very existence are not ordinarily understood by conscious reason. Many of these drives are aggressive, disruptive, and injurious to others and to society. ...these negative impulses ... are no less integral to the human psyche than those positive impulses pointing toward Liberal ideals.

"The Liberal assumes ... that men, given a knowledge of the problem and freedom to choose, will opt for peace, justice, and plenty. But the facts do not bear him out, either for individuals or for societies. Individuals choose, very often, trouble, pain, injury, for themselves and for others. Socities choose ... guns instead of butter, empire instead of justice, despotic glory instead of democratic cooperation. Of course, the Liberal can always say: that is because they, individuals and societies, were not sufficiently indoctrinated, educated, and civilized by the bad institutions held over from the past. To that argument, there can be no answer, because, in making it, he is speaking as an ideologue, and all evidence becomes irrelevant."

James Burnham, Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny       of Liberalism (New York: John Day, 1964), pp. 134-135.

RE: The Radical Ideology & Democratic Excesses of the French Revolution.

"Helvetius and Rousseau preached to the French nation liberty, till they made them the most mechanical slaves; equality, till they destroyed all equity; humanity, till they became weasels and African panthers; and fraternity, till they cut one another's throats like Roman gladiators."

John Adams, Aphorisms (1776-1821).

RE: Conservatism on Human Equality.

"Each man is equal to every other man in only one meaningful sense: he is a man, a physical and spiritual entity, and is thus entitled by God and nature to be treated as end rather than means. From the basic fact of moral equality come several secondary equalities that the modern Conservative recognizes ...: equality of opportunity, the right of each individual to exploit his own talents up to their natural limits; equality before the law, the right to justice on the same terms as other men; and political equality, which takes the form ... of universal suffrage. Beyond this, the Conservative is unwilling to go. Recognizing the infinite variety among men in talent, taste, appearance, intelligence and virtue, he is candid enough to assert that this variety extends vertically as well as horizontally. Men are grossly unequal -- and, what is more, can never be made equal -- in most qualities of mind, body, and spirit."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard Unity Press, 1982), pp. 23-24.

RE: Human Inequality & the Good Society.

"The good society of Conservatism rests solidly on ... [the] great truth [of the inequality of men]. The social order is organized in such a way as to take advantage of ineradicable natural distinctions among men. It exhibits a class structure in which there are several quite distinct levels, most men find their level early and stay in it without rancor, and equality of opportunity keeps the way at least partially open to ascent and decline. At the same time, the social order aims to temper those distinctions that are not natural. While it recognizes the inevitability and indeed the necessity of orders and classes, it insists that all privileges, ranks, and other visible signs of inequality be as natural and functional as possible. Equity, rather than equality, is the mark of ... [the Conservative's] society; the reconciliation, rather than the abolition, of classes is his constant aim. When he is forced to choose between liberty and equality, he throws his support unhesitatingly to liberty. Indeed, the preferance for liberty over equality lies at the root of the Conservative tradition...."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 24.

RE: Natural Aristocracy & Human Inequality.

"By natural aristocracy, in general, may be understood those superiorities of influence in society which grow out of the constitution of human nature. By artificial inequality, those inequalities of weight and superiorities of influence which are created and established by civil laws. By aristocracy, I understand all those men who can command, influence, or procure more than an average of votes; by an aristocrat, every man who can and will influence one man to vote besides himself. Few men will deny that there is a natural aristocracy of virtues and talents in every nation and in every party, in every city and village. Inequalities are a part of the natural history of man.

"I believe that none but Helvetius will affirm, that all children are born with equal genius.

"None will pretend, that all are born of dispositions exactly alike--of equal weight; equal strength; equal complexions; equal figure, grace, or beauty.

"That all men are born to equal rights is true. Every being has a right to his own, as clear, as moral, as sacred, as any other being has. This is as indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the imortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French revolution. For honor's sake ... for truth and virtue's sake, let American philosophers and politicians despise it."

John Adams, Letter to John Taylor of Caroline (1814).

RE: Thomas Jefferson on the Natural Aristocracy & Its Role in the Government.

"... I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy. On the question, What is the best provision, you and I differ.... You think it best to put the Pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where also they may be a protection to wealth against the Agrarian and plundering enterprises of the Majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively. Of this a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of legislation to protect themselves. From 15 to 20 legislatures of our own, in action for 30 years past, have proved that no fears of an equalization of property are to be apprehended of them.

"I think the best remedy is exactly provided by all our constitutions, to leave the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society."

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams (1813).

RE: Panaceas & Conservative Principles.

"I do not believe in looking about for some panacea or cure-all on which we should stake our credit and fortunes trying to sell it like a patent medicine to all and sundry. We ought not to seek after some rigid, symetrical form of doctrine, such as delights the minds of Socialists and Communists. Our own feelings and the British temperament are quite different. So are our aims. We seek a free and varied society, where there is room for many kinds of men and women to lead happy, honorable and useful lives. We are fundamentally opposed to all systems of rigid uniformity in our national life and we have grown great as a nation by indulging tolerance, rather than logic."

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Speech, Conservative Party Annual Conference (1946).

RE: Conservatism on Political Ideologies--Conservatism as an Anti-Ideology.

"The ideologue is convinced that, in his rigid closet-philosophy, all the answers to all the problems of humanity are plain to be discerned. We have but to be governed by his rules, and the earthly paradise is ours. He may be an a priori reasoner, or an a posteriori reasoner, but, in his system, no room is left for Providence, or change, or free will, or prudence. He is the devotee, often, of what [Edmund] Burke called an 'armed doctrine.' His ancestor was Procrustes, and he is resolved to stretch or hack all the world until it fits his bed. (Conservatism ... is the negation of ideology....).

"The Conservative believes that the individual is foolish, although the species is wise; unkike the confident intellectual, he declines to undertake the reconstruction of society and human nature upon the scanty capital of his private stock of reason. The Conservative believes that the world is not perfectable, and that we fallen human creatures, here below, are not made for happiness, and will not find hapiness -- at least, not if we deliberately pursue it; therefore, unlike the ideologue, he is not under the impression that any single fixed system of political concepts can bring justice and peace and liberty to all men at all times, if uniformly applied."

Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1956), pp. 2-4.

RE: Conservatism on the Cult of Reason.

"Conservatism ... is not an ideology. It does not breed fanatics. It does not try to excite the enthusiasm of a secular religion. If you want men who will sacrifice their past and present and future to a set of abstract ideas, you must go to Communism, or Fascism, or Benthamism. But, if you want men who seek, reasonably and prudentially, to reconcile the best in the wisdom of our ancesters with the change which is essential to a vigorous civil existence, then you will do well to turn to Conservative principles. The high-minded Conservative believes in Principle, or enduring values ascertained through appreciation of the wisdom of dead generations, the study of history, and the reconciliation of authority with the altered circumstances of our present life. He is a highly reasonable person, although he looks with deep suspicion on the cult of Reason -- the worship of an abstract rationality which asserts that mundane planning is able to solve all our difficulties of spirit and community. But the high-minded Conservative detests Abstraction, or the passion for forcing men and societies into a preconceived pattern divorced from the special circumstances of different times and countries."

Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1956), p. 6.

RE: Conservatism on Human Problems, Human Reason, & Free Will.

"The enlightened Conservative knows that certain problems of humanity are not susceptible of solution, and that others can be solved only by a great elapse of time, the healer of social wounds. The Conservative, moreover, puts only a limited trust in the power of human reason, and knows that our future depends, in considerable part, upon Providence, or chance, or that infinite combination of tiny causes which we call chance.

"... the Conservative believes that men and nations possess free will, and that, if a nation tumbles to ruin, that catastrophe is the consequence, for the most part, of the failure of heart and mind of the people who made up that nation or that civilization."

Russell Kink, Prospects for Conservatives (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1956), pp. 12-13.

RE: What Qualifies a Person for Civil Liberties.

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to flattery of knaves."

Edmund Burke, Letter to a Member of the French National Assembly (1791).

RE: The Rights of the Individual.

"The rights of man are both natural and social -- natural because they belong to man as man, are part of the great scheme of nature, and are thus properly considered the gift of God; social because man can enjoy them only in an organized community. The rights that men, in fact, enjoy have developed through centuries of struggle to a point where they are recognized and enforced by law. The great rights ... are more than natural or social. They are legal, constitutional, and historical. The Conservative has a notably concrete concept of human rights, and he avoids describing or justifying them in abstract, philosophical terms.

"... [The rights to] life, liberty, and property still form the irreducible that must be honored everywhere. The right to life is grounded in the eternal truth that man is end, not means. He has the right not merely to exist but to live; he must be looked upon by his fellows as no less than a man. The right to liberty means that he has the right to act and think as he pleases, so long as this does not impinge on the rights of other men. From original liberty, flow the freedoms of conscience, association, expression and movement, as well as the rights to justice and to pursuit of happiness. Man has no right to happiness, but he does have the right to pursue it with all the energies and talents God has given him. Finally, man has the right to acquire, hold, use, and dispose of property, as well as to enjoy the fruits that he reaps from it."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 36-37.

RE: Property & Human Rights.

"The Conservative refuses to make the easy, demagogic distinction between 'human rights' and 'property rights.' Property, in his view, is a human right, as important to man's existence and improvement as any other right. It is therefore to be honored without quibble and championed without reserve.

"... the Conservative advances these justifications of the institution of private property.

"Property makes it possible for a man to develop in mind and spirit. Tools, house, land, clothes, books, heirlooms -- how can any one deny that these are as essential as the air to man's growth to maturity and wisdom?

"Property makes it possible for a man to be free. Independence and privacy can never be enjoyed by any one who must rely on other persons or agencies -- especially government -- for food, shelter, and material comforts. Property gives him a place on which to stand and make free choices; it grants him a sphere in which he may ignore the state.

"Property is the most important single technique for the diffusion of economic power.

"Property is essential to the existence of the family, the natural unity of society.

"Property provides the main incentive for productive work. Human nature being what it is and always will be, the desire to acquire and hold property is essential to progress.

"Finally, property is a powerful Conservative agent, giving added support and substance to that temperament which helps stabilize society.

"The Conservative defense of private property is most certainly not a defense of its abuse, neglect, or existence in grotesque forms and exaggerated concentrations. Nor is it primarily a defense of industrial capitalism or large-scale private enterprise. Few Conservatives will assert, certainly in their more detached and Burkean moments, that any particular system of production and distribution is, like private property, rooted in the nature of things and men."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 37-38.

RE: Rights & Duties.

"Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our [British] Constitution, and you will see that our ancesters never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk (November 20, 1831).

RE: The Individual's Rights & Duties.

"The man who has rights also has duties. Rights are, at bottom, simply claims upon other men, and the law of equilibrium commands those who make claims to be ready to pay for them. In return for the chance to enjoy his rights in a community, a man has the obligation to use these rights responsibility. The right to life carries with it the duty to live morally. Freedom of conscience is matched by the duty to think wisely and worship decorously. Freedom of association calls on men to give back in full measure what they get from their fellows. No right carries with it greater obligations than the possession of property, which is a legacy of the past, a power in the present, and a trust for the future.

"The final price of freedom is self-discipline and self-restraint."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 38-39.

RE: Law--The Source of All Rights.

"Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge anyone to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws."

      Calvin Coolidge, Speech, Northampton, Massachusetts
            (1920).

"Liberty is not the right or chance to do what we choose; there is no such liberty as that on earth. No man can do as he chooses....

"What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or liberty under law; and this means the guarantees of law that a man shall not be interfered with while using his own powers for his own welfare. It is, therefore, a civil and political status...."

William Graham Sumner, "The Challenge of Facts" (1882).

RE: Human Nature, Political Systems, & the Necessity of Vigilance in the Protection of Fundamental Political Principles in a Constitutional Democracy.

"The [political] institutions of no country are rigidly respected in practice, owing to the cupidity and passions of men; and vigilance in the protection of [political] principles is even more necessary in a [constitutional] democracy than in a[n absolute] monarchy, as their violation is more certain to affect the interests of the people under such a form of government than under any other. A violation of the principles of a [constitutional] democracy is at the loss of the people, while, in a[n absolute] monarchy, it is usually their gain."

      James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat (1838).

"The growing menace to personal safety, to life, limb, and property, in homes, churches, playgrounds, and places of business, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern of every thoughtful citizen. Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government. A government that cannot fulfill this purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History demonstrates that nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets safe from bullies and marauders."

      Barry Morris Goldwater, Acceptance Speech, Republican
            National Convention, San Francisco, California
            (1964).

"Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of your responsibilities--those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen--must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will. This nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their version of heaven on earth. They are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.

"Absolute power does corrupt. And those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

"Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality.

"Equality, rightly understood, as our Founding Fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences.

"Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

"It is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private, or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism.

"It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.

"It is the cause of Republicanism to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large. It is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of conflict will mysteriously resolve itself into a world of harmony--if we just don't rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression.

"It is the cause of Republicanism to remind ourselves and the world that only the strong can remain free--that only the strong can keep the peace!"

      Barry Morris Goldwater, Acceptance Speech, Republican
            National Convention, San Francisco, California
            (1964).

".... the Conservative says ... man can govern himself, but there is no certainty that he will; free government is possible, but far from inevitable. Man will need all the help he can get from education, religion, tradition, and institutions if he is to enjoy even a limited success in his experiments with self-government. He must be counseled, encouraged, informed, and checked. Above all, he must realize that the collective wisdom of the community, itself the union of countless partial and imperfect wisdoms like his own, is alone equal to the mightest of social tasks. A clear recognition of man's conditional capacity for ruling himself and others is the first requisite of constitution-making."

Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 23.

RE: Anglo-American Constitutionalism & the Viability of Popular Government.

"... the British Constitution ... is a thing unique and remarkable. A series of undesigned changes brought it to such a condition, that satisfaction and impatience, the two great sources of political conduct, were both reasonably gratified under it. In this condition it became, not metaphorically but literally, the envy of the world, and the world took on all sides to copying it. The immitations [of the British Constitution by other societies] have not been generally happy. One nation alone, consisting of Englishmen, has practiced a modification of it successfully, admist abounding material plenty. It is not too much to say, that the only evidence worth mentioning for the duration of popular government is to be found in the success of the British Constitution during two centuries under special conditions, and in the success of the American Constitution during one century under conditions still more peculiar and more unlikely to recur. Yet, so far as our own [British] Constitution is concerned, that nice balance of attractions, which caused it to move evenly on its stately path, is perhaps destined to be disturbed. One of the forces governing it may gain dangerously at the expense of the other; and the British political system, with the national greatness and material prosperity attendant on it, may yet be launched into space and find its last affinites in silence and cold.

American experience has, I think, shown that, by wise Constitutional provisions thoroughly thought out beforehand, Democracy may be made tolerable. The public powers are carefully defined; the mode in which they are to be exercised is fixed; and the amplest securities are taken that none of the more important Constitutional arrangements be altered without every guarantee of caution."

      Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Popular Government (1885).

"The wisdom of our ancestors for more than 300 years has sought the division of power in the [British] Constitution. Crown, Lords and Commons have been checks and restraints upon one another. The concentration of all power over the daily lives of ordinary men and women in what is called 'the State,' exercised by what is virtually a single-chamber government, is a reactionary step contrary to the whole trend of British history and to the message we have given the world. The British race [nation, or society] has always abhored arbitrary and absolute government in every form. The great men who founded the American Constitution embodied this separation of authority in the strongest and most durable form. Not only did they divide executive, legislative and judicial functions, but also by instituting a federal system they preserved immense and sovereign rights to local communities, and by all these means they have preserved--often at some inconvenience--a system of law and liberty under which they have thrived and reached the leadership of the world. The Socialist conception of the all-powerful State entering into the smallest detail of the life and conduct of the individual and claiming to plan and shape his work and its rewards is odious and repellent to every friend of freedom. These absolute powers would make the group of politicians who obtained a majority of seats in Parliament the masters and not the servants of the people and would centralize all government in Whitehall.

"The worship of an all-powerful State, beneath which the ordinary mass of citizens lie prostrate, is one of the most deadly and insidious delusions by which a free people as we still are can cast away rights and liberties, which for their own sake and the sake of their children, they ought to hold dearer than life itself.

"The British nation now has to make one of the most momentous choices in its history. That choice is between two ways of life; between individual liberty and State domination; between the concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of property-owning democracy; between a policy of increasing control and restriction, and a policy of liberty, energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of finding opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard...."

      Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Election Speech
            (1951).

"Every tendency of Socialist government is towards the centralization of power. It is inherent in their conception of State control. But, as history shows, the division of ruling power has always been for than 300 years the aim of the British people. The division of power is the keynote of our Parliamentary system and of the constitutions we have spread all over the world. The idea of checks and counter-checks; the resistance to the theory that one man, or group of men, can by sweeping gestures and decisions reduce the rest of us to subservience; these have always been the war cries of the British nation and the division of power has always been one of the war cries of the British people. And from here the principle was carried to America. The scheme of the American Constitution was framed to prevent any one man, or any one lot, getting arbitrary control of the whole nation. Of course in America there are forty-eight States of the Union, all of which by their power lead their own life in their own way within their wide limits, and to argue it out among themselves, are defended and protected against anything in the nature of a one man or one caucus autocracy...."

      Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Speech, Conservative
            Party Annual Conference (1950).

"We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of the nations and of ages."

      Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France 
            (1790).

"A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation."

      Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France 
            (1790).

"A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman."

      Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France 
            (1790).

      Edmund Burke, Reflexions on the Revolution in France 
            (1790).

      Anonymous.

      The American Declaration of Independence (1776).

      Edmund Burke, Speech on the Impeachment of Warren
            Hastings (1788).

      Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton (1887).

      Alexander Tytler.

      John Caldwell Calhoun, Speech, U.S. Senate (1833).

      Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Radio Broadcast (1930).

      Andrew Ferguson, "Vanishing Voters, Vamoose!", The Weekly 
            Standard (April 10, 2000).

      Anthony Harrigan, American Perspectives (Southern States
            Industrial Council, 1972).

      Ross Baker (Rutgers University Professor of Political
            Science), Quoted by Roger Simon in "Who's the
            Dimmest Dim Bulb?  U.S. News & World Report 
            (April 3, 2000).

      Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited (The Free Press,
            1962).

      Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited (The Free Press,
            1962).

      John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848).

      John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869).

      William Howard Taft, Popular Government (1913).

      Alexis Charles Henri Clerel de Tocqueville, Democracy 
            in America (1840).

      James Madison, Essay Number 10, The Federalist (1787-1788).

      Theodore Roosevelt, Speech, Raleigh, North Carolina
            (1905).