Andrew Sullivan channels Edmund Burke on the true nature of conservatism on The Daily Dish.

For a conservative should not be implacably hostile to liberalism (let alone demonize it), but should be alert to its insights, and deeply aware of the need to change laws and government in response to unstoppable change in human society. Equally, a liberal can learn a lot from conservatism’s doubts about utopia, from the conservative concern with history, tradition and the centrality of culture in making human beings, and from conservatism’s love and enjoyment of the world as-it-is, even as it challenges the statesman or woman to nudge it toward the future. The goal should not be some new country or a new world order or even a return to a pristine past that never existed: but to adapt to necessary social and cultural change by trying as hard as one can to make it coherent with what the country has long been; to recognize, as Orwell did, that a country, even if it is to change quite markedly, should always be trying somehow to remain the same.

Sullivan makes the point that Burkean conservatism is intensely practical and non-ideological.  In this sense what Republicans currently call conservatism is actually right-wing radicalism.  As Burke is seen as the father of conservatism, the GOP has turned the term on its head.

Cross-posted from The Sensible Center

http://thesensiblecentercom.blogspot.com/2013/11/sullivan-on-burkes-conservatism.html