{"id":4550,"date":"2018-05-05T15:48:45","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T15:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/05\/what-a-conservative-is-and-why-george-w-bush-wasnt-one\/"},"modified":"2018-05-05T15:48:45","modified_gmt":"2018-05-05T15:48:45","slug":"what-a-conservative-is-and-why-george-w-bush-wasnt-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/05\/what-a-conservative-is-and-why-george-w-bush-wasnt-one\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Conservative Is and Why George W. Bush Wasn&#8217;t One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/conservatism-in-crisis\/\">Robert W. Merry<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">In an influential 1957 essay entitled \u201cConservatism as an Ideology,\u201d political scientist Samuel P. Huntington listed fundamental elements of the conservative creed, embraced by nearly all of its proponents: society is the organic product of slow historical growth, and existing institutions embody the wisdom of previous generations; man is a creature of instinct and emotion as well as reason, and evil resides in human nature rather than in any particular societal institutions; the community is superior to the individual, and the rights of men derive from civic responsibility; except in an ultimate moral sense, humans are unequal, and society always consists of a variety of classes, orders, and groups; the settled schemes of government based on human experience are always superior to abstract experimentation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">Thus, wrote Huntington, conservatism differs from other ideologies (except radicalism) in that it lacks any \u201csubstantive ideal\u201d\u2014a vision of the perfect society. \u201cNo political philosopher,\u201d he said, \u201chas ever described a conservative utopia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">George W. Bush was a utopian. No other word adequately defines his vision of a Middle East culture in which the ancient Bedouin sensibilities are wiped away in favor of Western values and structures. His stated resolve to \u201crid the world of evil\u201d demonstrated a lack of any conservative sensibility on where evil resides. He certainly didn\u2019t manifest any understanding of society, particularly Middle Eastern society, as the organic product of slow historical growth. And he placed abstract experimentation over human experience in formulating this war policy rationale.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Robert W. Merry: In an influential 1957 essay entitled \u201cConservatism as an Ideology,\u201d political scientist Samuel P. Huntington listed fundamental elements of the conservative creed, embraced by nearly all of its proponents: society is the organic product of slow historical growth, and existing institutions embody the wisdom of previous generations; man is a creature of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/05\/what-a-conservative-is-and-why-george-w-bush-wasnt-one\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What a Conservative Is and Why George W. Bush Wasn&#8217;t One&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}