Relating Conservatisms
The ambiguously right-pointing term conservative refers to an aggregation of heterogeneous ideologies, but these ideologies are importantly related.
Wikipedia currently recognizes 8 forms of conservatism in its series on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conservatism_in_the_United_States&oldid=661999634">Conservatism in the U.S. and 14 variants in its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Conservatism&oldid=662040846">series on Conservatism.
In the United States:
- Paleoconservatism
- Neoconservatism
- Fusionism
I think we can reduce the number of sorts of conservatism. For example, I think that U.S. paleoconservatism is simply traditionalism in the context of the United States. Moreover, I think that so-called social conservatism is another term for traditionalism which connotes predisposition to favor Christian and in particular evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity, but has no necessary or denotative differences.
I also think that neoconservatism is not a sort of conservatism at all and that economic conservatism is a better term than fiscal conservatism because fiscal conservatism refers to a conservative approach to fiscal policy which first excludes conservatism within the private sector itself and secondly entirely ignores monetary policy. I have other differences as well.
John's types of conservatism:
- Social conservatism
- Economic conservatism
Informed conservatives do not say marriage has always been between a man and a woman.
U.S. social conservatives properly claim that marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman, and the tradition they refer to is implicitly the U.S. tradition.
Social conservatism is concerned with tradition within a particular society, as in Burke's rights of Englishmen.
Proper social conservatives in the U.S. don't care about how social norms have changed since prehistoric man across the world. They care about preserving the institutional norms of the United States.
The article implicitly confirms the sort of marriage traditional in the states: "Our modern view of marriage...has generally predominated in Western societies over the past 200 years"
"Cursory research" into the origin of U.S. marriage law affirms the tradition is Judeo-Christian marriage.