Donald Peltier

 

I am a conservative, like my father before me.

Conservatism

In the United States, conservatism is rooted in the American Revolution and its commitment to republicanism, sovereignty of the people, and the rights and liberties of Englishmen while expelling the king and his supporters. Most European conservative writers do not accept American conservatism as genuine; they consider it to be a variety of liberalism. Modern American liberals in the New Deal do not disagree with that consensus view, but conservatives spend much more emphasis on the Revolutionary origins, with the Tea Party advocates using an episode from the 1770s for their name and some even dress in costumes from that era at their rallies.

Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, "the rule of law and the Christian religion," and a defense of "Western civilization from the challenges of modernist culture and totalitarian governments."

 

Conservatism

United States Conservatism

 

 

Fiscal Conservatism

Fiscal conservatism is the economic philosophy of prudence in government spending and debt. Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, argued that a government does not have the right to run up large debts and then throw the burden on the taxpayer:

It is to the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition or by descent or in virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied.. The public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large

Most conservatives, especially in the United States, believe that government action should focus on moral and social questions and oppose government action to help the poor, to regulate the economy, or to protect the environment. They believe that government programs that seek to provide services and opportunities for the poor actually encourage dependence and reduce self-reliance. They oppose affirmative action. They oppose a progressive income tax.

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