(Download) "Conservatism and the Political Order (Essay)" by Modern Age ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Conservatism and the Political Order (Essay)
- Author : Modern Age
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 161 KB
Description
As we prepare this final issue of the 2008 volume of Modern Age for the press, a long, arduous, and often rather bizarre presidential campaign is drawing to a close, and its outcome will be known by the time the issue is in print. No matter which slate of candidates wins, the result would have been almost unthinkable a year ago. Barack Obama was still a little-known long shot, and Joseph Biden was a perennial also-ran. John McCain's campaign seemed to have foundered hopelessly, and Sarah Palin was virtually unheard of outside Alaska. For the editors it is a source of some consolation that Modem Age is not in the business of political prognostication. This journal is, however, concerned about politics in much the same way as conservatism itself. Just as Modem Age is not involved with predicting the winners of elections or endorsing candidates or platforms, so conservatism is not a political program, but rather a political vision. Liberal pundits who have in recent months gleefully proclaimed the end of an era of conservative political influence and success begun by Ronald Reagan have, therefore, mistaken the essence of conservatism. No political party or electoral outcome has ever been the ideal fulfillment of conservative principles. This is true in part because various conservative thinkers interpret these principles from contrasting and sometimes contentious perspectives, and their differences will not be definitively resolved before the Parousia. Still more important, there is no single set of policy prescriptions that any particular thinker could confidently identify as the complete realization even of his own version of conservatism. It is not surprising that the first President Bush, with his somewhat equivocal relationship to conservatism, was bemused by the "vision thing."