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User:TheQuestioner

6 bytes removed, 20:16, August 3, 2012
'''But''' accept authority that is legitimate and justified. I.e. don't listen to conspiracy theorists.
I am a libertarian conservative. I believe the greatest tradition of the American Constitution is its tradition of individual liberty. The state should have no ability to regulate people's beliefs and associations. I support conservative theorist [[Edmund Burke]]'s emphasis on traditionalism as a necessity for a society and his denouncing of the anti-traditionalism of the left-wing radicals of the [[French Revolution]]. Originally the French Revolution ''was'' moderate and a lot like the [[American Revolution]] in that it opposed the tyranny of a tyrannical king. '''But the French Revolution got taken over by the extreme left-wing nutcase Jacobins''' who turned the Revolution away from opposing a king, and into a quasi-communist revolution that murdered thousands of people in Stalin-like purges. Burke saw the French being led down a dangerous path away from tradition and into violent fanaticism.
What Burke meant by his conservatism, was not that change was "bad" but that change in all societies requires a connection to tradition, or in more legal terms "precedent", in order for it to rationally advance. The left-wing radicals of the French Revolution that Burke opposed, had completely denounced traditionalism and created a whole new system based on untested ideas that resulted in a descent into mass violence and repression. Burke was right that society needs to be based on tradition that itself is based on experience and '''not''' on radical ideals. There were some really stupid ideas though that the French Revolution challenged though, like challenging hereditary [[aristocracy]], a state-run church (I think the state has no business dictating religion), and ending [[anti-Semitism]] by allowing Jews to take part in public life in France.
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