conservatism

• the enlightened tories were George Canning and Robert Peel
• Robert Peel supported the 1832 great reform act as he didn't want those with new money to revolt. He also established the met police force. His actions reflect traditional conservative ideas of change to conserve and order and security as a primary role of the state
• Peel said that 'without security there can be no liberty'
• George Canning supported Catholic emancipation by preparing legislation that would allow them to become MPs and supported the abolition of slavery because he was worried about debates over what property is. His actions reflect protecting the hereditary property of the status quo and changing to conserve
• noblesse oblige means 'the cost of privilege is responsibility' - backing up Conservative's belief in paternalism
• Edmund Burke wrote 'Reflections on the revolution in France' in 1790
• Benjamin Disraeli was a one-nation conservative who implemented the 1834 Factory Act which improved worker's conditions and limited the amount of hours children could legally be forced to work
• Benjamin Disraeli said that 'the palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy'
• Michael Oakeshott wrote On Being Conservative
• an example of neo-conservative Thatcherite policies is increasing police stop and search powers and her role in the Falklands war to exert British power
• Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged and the Virtue of Selfishness
• Robert Nozick wrote Anarchy State and Utopia
• Thatcher didn't believe that society existed which fits with her views on self-reliance and individual responsibility
• Thatcher put in Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 which prohibited schools promoting homosexuality
• Oakeshott said that the state should 'keeping the ship afloat at all costs... using experience to negotiate every storm, stoicism to accept necessary changes of direction... and not fixating on a port that may not exist'
• Burke reacted to the French Revolution which he disliked as it was not an organic society but based on a utopian view of human nature and a want for full equality. He believed in the inevitability of the ruling class
• Oakeshott said humans were 'fallible not terrible' and 'imperfect but not immoral'
• Oakeshott said the state should 'prevent the bad rather than create the good'
• Nozick called taxes 'legalised theft'
• empiricism is the idea that knowledge comes from experience while pragmatism is dealing with issues in a sensible way, using evidence and reason
• the 1944 Education Act or the 'Butler Act' made secondary education universal and free
• Irving Kristol said a New Right conservative was just 'a liberal mugged by reality'. This is because the optimism of neoliberal economics creates inequalities and tensions which need to be contained by a strong state (neoconservatism)
• Ayn Rand said 'the small state is the strong state'
• Burke sees society as a contract between 'the living, the dead and the yet to be born'
• Rand believes in objectivism which is the view that selfishness is rational, moral and dignified and humans should pursue their own self-interest above all else