The Conservative Woman

Conservatism is neither a religion nor ideology, explained Russell Kirk; "it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order ... The conservative is a person who endeavors to conserve the best in our traditions and our institutions, reconciling the best with necessary reforms from time to time."

She may be a social networker, but the conservative woman's identity isn't dependent upon a group. She is her own woman. Her allegiance is to individual liberty and Individualism, the salient characteristic of Western Civilization, and to its economic system, free-market capitalism. She holds absolute the premise that power flows from the Creator to the people, who only loan it to the State.

The conservative woman rejects the social system known as Collectivism and its economic system, socialism, which robs her of her liberty, her social and economic choices, and the rewards of her labor.

Two great contemporary defenders of individualism exemplified modern conservatism:

President Ronald Reagan
"If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before ... In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. ... From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"Let me give you my vision: a man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master. They are the essence of a free economy and on that freedom all our other freedoms depend."



Russell Kirk outlined ten principles that characterize and guide American conservatives:

    1. The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order: we have a moral debt to our ancestors, who bestowed upon us our civilization, and a moral obligation to the generations who will come after us.
    2. Variety and diversity are the characteristics of a high civilization: uniformity and absolute equality are the death of all real vigor and freedom.
    3. Justice means that every man and every woman have the right to what is their own - to the things best suited to their own nature, to the rewards of their ability and integrity, to their property and their personality.
    4. Property and freedom are inseparably connected; economic leveling is not economic progress.
    5. Power is full of danger; therefore the good State is one in which power is checked and balanced, restricted by sound constitutions and customs.
    6. The past is a great storehouse of wisdom: modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants.
    7. Modern society urgently needs true community: and true community is a world away from collectivism.
    8. In the affairs of nations, the American conservative feels that his country ought to set an example to the world, but ought not to try to remake the world in its image.
    9. Men and women are not perfectible, conservatives know; and neither are political institutions: we cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
    10. Change and reform, conservatives are convinced, are not identical: moral and political innovation can be destructive as well as beneficial.
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