Russell KirkThinkers

Conservatism is a belief in a transcendent order, an affection not for social evening-out but for proliferations of human existence, a belief in social order and classes, a belief in property, faith in custom over social engineering, and suspicion of hasty innovation.

Conservatism is concerned, first of all, with the regeneration of the spirit and character with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.

Conservatism is not a political ideology, but as a poetic, literary, and theological understanding (I..E religion, ethics, beauty) that focuses on the 'spiritual decay' of modern society and the need for authority. It is the belief in (and preservation of) 'permanent things' (as t.S. Elliot put it) , a 'transcendent moral order' and 'divine intent'.