A Quote by Russell Kirk

To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped.

Russell Kirk

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Accumulation America American Argument Arise Began Belief Centralization Complete Confusion Conservatism Conservative Conservatives Defense Escaped Expansion Forces Founder Fully Hamilton Impression Industrial Interest Interests Large Never New Political Popular Private Private Property Property Simply States Tradition United United States

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Russell Kirk
American - Historian
October 19, 1918 - April 29, 1994

I think there's a growing amount of confusion about what conservatism is. And it is time for us to understand that conservatism is not built on personalities. Conservatism is not simply built on how angry you might seem from time to time. Conservatism is built on a set of principles and ideas that our nation desperately needs.

Marco Rubio

Donald Trump descends in a very powerful way from longstanding tenets of American conservatism, they're just not the movement conservatism we associate with Reagan.

Sam Tanenhaus

Conservatism as a formal political doctrine didn't exist in America in 1940. The word 'conservative' was associated primarily with fringe groups - anti-industrial Southern agrarians and the anti-New Deal tycoons who led the Liberty League.

Tom Reiss

Conservatism is not the problem. Conservatism is the founding of this country, essentially. Conservatism isn't even really an ideology. Conservatism is just what is right, proper, decent, and moral. That's all it is.

Rush Limbaugh

One of the most important things liberals don't understand about conservatism, obscured by too much lazy talk about conservatism's various 'wings,' is that its tenets form a relatively organic base for its adherents, where 'traditional morality' serves the interests of laissez-faire economics and vice-versa.

Rick Perlstein

There are no conservatives in the United States. The United States does not have a conservative tradition. The people who call themselves conservatives, like the Heritage Foundation or Gingrich, are believers in -- are radical statists. They believe in a powerful state, but a welfare state for the rich.

Noam Chomsky

I'm not denying I've espoused and promoted conservatism, because conservatism's the alternative. And conservatism works every time it's tried. That's the problem. It really hasn't been tried. Even people claiming to be conservative, when it comes time to actually do it, chicken out.

Rush Limbaugh

I put my conservatism up against anyone. I'm a pretty staunch conservative, with pretty rabid ideas about conservative values... Questioning my conservatism doesn't seem like a particularly interesting project or exercise.

S.E. Cupp

You can recruit the populace conservatism for the interests of corporate conservatism that the two things can be married into one unholy union.

Jeff Sharlet

Liberalism, contrary to popular belief, is facing backward in considering the injustice of its ancestors. Conservatism, contrary to popular belief, is facing forward in considering the psychology of its descendants. Definitively, it seems in the modern world that neither side really knows which direction it's facing, and men of the sharpest judgment are simply turned off from picking either of the poisons.

Criss Jami

f you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals - if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Ronald Reagan

Conservatism has always meant more to me than simply sticking up for private property & free enterprise. It has also meant defending our heritage & preserving our values.

Gerald R. Ford

Look, I'm a conservative, I'm a very conservative guy, and - and the Trump campaign is making your job over at NBC really, really, really easy in terms of going after conservatives and Republicans if he's the standard bearer for conservatism.

Ben Shapiro

I think a Donald Trump presidency raises a new kind of version of conservatism which more closely resembles a kind of Father Coughlin, America first populism and nativism and isolationism, than the confident, modern, cosmopolitan, thoughtful, engaged conservatism of Ronald Reagan and Paul Ryan.

Bret Stephens

Northeastern conservatism is moderate, accepts the modern welfare state, and dislikes mixing religion with politics. Western conservatism is hawkish, hates government, and embraces individual freedom. Southern conservatism is populist, draws on evangelical Christianity, and plays upon racial resentments.

Jacob Weisberg

The rise of the presidency began with the Louisiana Purchase, which in 1803 doubled the land mass of the United States. History taught the framers that, just as Rome changed from republic to empire with conquest of new lands, territorial acquisition would lead to the centralization of political power.

Noah Feldman

A Quote by Russell Kirk

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