PeonForHer
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Joined: 9/27/2008 Status: offline
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If that's true, then it's probably got a lot to do with a belief in reason over 'instinct'. Liberals (and socialists) favour rationalism. Michael Oakeshott, the British conservative political philosopher, said: "The general character and disposition of the Rationalist are, I think., difficult to identify. At bottom he stands (he always stands) for independence of mind on all occasions, for thought free from obligation to any authority save the authority of reason'. His circumstances in the modern world have made him contentious: he is the enemy of authority, of prejudice, of the merely traditional, customary or habitual. His mental attitude is at once sceptical and optimistic: sceptical, because there is no opinion, no habit, no belief, nothing so firmly rooted or so widely held that he hesitates to question it and to judge it by what he calls his 'reason' . . . . For a liberal or a socialist, the appeal to reason is self-evident. S/he can't understand that conservatives don't value reason in the same way. As Oakeshott implies, conservatives place a higher value on authority, prejudice (a word that he, and other conservative philosphers, use in an approving way); the traditional, customary or habitual. To put it simply: in an important sense of the word, it's fair to say that conservatives don't actually 'think' as much as liberals. Hence John Stuart Mill, a founding father of liberalism and arch rationalist, nicknamed the conservatives the Stupid Party: Mill said, I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2004/05/in_the_words_of_a_great_conser_1.html
< Message edited by PeonForHer -- 2/6/2010 9:48:52 AM >
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