"Some of the fundamental ideas that have come to animate the West, in the course of time, are these: the dignity of the individual, the duty of government towards its citizens, the rule of law, the centrality of rational discourse, and the value of progress. Some of the fundamental institutions: parliaments, universities, courts of law, learned societies, the press, and the free market."
If you are speaking of the modern western world, it seems misleading and inaccurate to speak of "millennia" as if the institutions you have here mentioned ("parliaments, universities, courts of law, learned societies, the press, and the free market") were somehow homogeneous throughout all those disparate times and cultures.
There is a great deal in the Hellenistic period which would be antithetical to the tastes of modern conservatism. There is no need to invoke tradition here; it does not buttress your point in any way.
Why are "the dignity of the individual, the duty of government towards its citizens, the rule of law, the centrality of rational discourse, and the value of progress" Conservative distinctions? Those sound very much to me like American values. Attempting to insert them under the rubric of "Conservatism" is a cheap and back-handed slap at American citizens. It is unfortunate that this sort of flippant dismissiveness has become a hallmark of modern "progress"... |
