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Jeane Kirkpatrick

Jeane Kirkpatrick

Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick (born November 19, 1926) is an American conservative political scientist and member of the neoconservative movement. After serving as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 campaign, she was nominated as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. An ardent anticommunist, she is famous for her "Kirkpatrick Doctrine," which advocates U.S. support of anticommunist governments around the world, including authoritarian dictatorships. Along with Empower America co-directors William Bennett and Jack Kemp, she called on the Congress to issue a formal declaration of war against the "entire fundamentalist Islamic terrorist network" the day after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center.

Biography

Jeane Kirkpatrick, born Jeane Duane Jordan in Duncan, Oklahoma, graduated from Barnard College in 1948, and received a doctorate in political science from Columbia University in 1968. During her early academic career she was a Marxist, joining the Youth section of the American Socialist Party. At Columbia her principal adviser was Franz Neumann, a revisionist Marxist. In 1967, she joined the faculty of Georgetown University, and became a full professor of political science in 1968. She became active in politics as a Democrat in the 1970s, and was active in the later campaigns of former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey. Kirkpatrick published a number of articles in political science journals reflecting her disillusionment with the Democratic party, and was especially critical of the foreign policy of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. In 1980 she became the foreign policy adviser for the Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan during his campaign. After winning the election, Reagan nominated Kirkpatrick as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a position she held for four years. She was one of the strongest open supporters of Argentina's military dictatorship following the March 1982 Argentine invasion of the United Kingdom's Falkland Islands (the Argentinian name for the islands is las Malvinas), which triggered the Falklands War (referred to in Argentina as: Guerra de las Malvinas). Kirkpatrick sympathized with Argentina's President Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri whose military regime clamped down on leftists (see "Dirty War"). Her support was basically muted when the administration ultimately decided to declare support for the British (see U.S. shuttle diplomacy during the Falklands War). She later became a member of Reagan's national security team, where she was accused of accepting bribes, falsifying tapes that implicated Soviet forces in the shooting down of a South Korean passenger jet (Flight 007) on September 1, 1983, and advocating the dismantling of India, all of which she denied. At the 1984 Republican National Convention, Kirkpatrick delivered the memorable "Blame America First" speech, in which she praised the foreign policy of the Reagan administration and excoriated the leadership of the Democratic Party for its shift away from the policies of former Democratic presidents such as Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy to a stance that de-emphasized assertive confrontation with foreign rivals. In 1985 Kirkpatrick became a Republican and returned to teaching at Georgetown. She became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. In 1993 she co-founded Empower America, a public-policy organization.

Views

Comparing authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, she said: :Authoritarian regimes really typically don’t have complete command economies. Authoritarian regimes typically have some have kind of traditional economy with some private ownership. The Nazi regime left ownership in private hands, but the state assumed control of the economy. Control was separated from ownership but it was really a command economy because it was controlled by the state. A command economy is an attribute of a totalitarian state [http://www.acton.org/publicat/randl/interview.php?id=34] Explaining her disillusionment with international organizations, especially the United Nations, she stated:
- As I watched the behavior of the nations of the U.N. (including our own), I found no reasonable ground to expect any one of those governments to transcend permanently their own national interests for those of another country.
- I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.
- Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal. Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God."

Books


- The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State -- And Other Surprises, 1992 (ISBN 0844737283)
- Legitimacy and Force: National and International Dimensions, 1988 (ISBN 0887386474)
- International Regulation: New Rules in a Changing World Order, 1988 (ISBN 1558150269)
- Legitimacy and Force: Political and Moral Dimensions, 1988 (ISBN 0887380999)
- Legitimacy and Force: State Papers and Current Perspectives 1981-1985, 1987 (ISBN 9999962750)
- The United States and the World: Setting Limits, 1986 (ISBN 0844713791)
- The Reagan Doctrine and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1985 (ISBN 999650591X)
- Reagan Phenomenon and Other Speeches on Foreign Policy, 1983 (ISBN 0844713619)
- U.N. Under Scrutiny, 1982 (ISBN 9993887293)
- Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics, 1982 (ISBN 0671438360)
- Presidential Nominating Process: Can It Be Improved, 1980 (ISBN 0844733970)
- Dismantling the Parties: Reflections on Party Reform and Party Decomposition, 1978 (ISBN 0844732931)
- The New Presidential Elite: Men and Women in National Politics, 1976 (ISBN 087154475X)
- Political Woman, 1974 (ISBN 0465059708)

Quotes


- "What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving."
- "Neither nature, experience, nor probability informs these lists of 'entitlements', which are subject to no constraints except those of the mind and appetite of their authors." -- Jeane Kirkpatrick talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which she termed "a letter to Santa Claus".
- "When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States. But then, they always blame America first. . . . The American people know better." - speech delivered at the 1984 Republican National Convention

External links


- [http://www.empoweramerica.org Empower America] - official site of the Empower America organisation
- [http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/kal-007.htm The Truth About the Korean Airlines Flight-007] - written by Alvin A. Snyder for the Washington Post (September 1, 1996)
- Kirkpatrick, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jeane Kirkpatrict, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jeane

November 19

November 19 is the 323rd day of the year (324th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 42 days remaining.

Events


- 461 - St. Hilarius becomes Pope.
- 1493 - Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).
- 1794 - The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to clear up some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
- 1816 - Warsaw University is established.
- 1850 - Alfred Lord Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate, a position he held until his death in 1892.
- 1863 - American Civil War: Union President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the military cemetery dedication ceremony in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
- 1881 - A meteorite lands near the village of Großliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
- 1916 - Samuel Goldfish (later renamed Samuel Goldwyn) and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Company (the company later became one of the most successful independent filmmakers.)
- 1924 - In Los Angeles, California, famous silent film director Thomas Ince ("The Father of the Western") dies of a heart attack in his bed (rumors soon surface that he was shot dead by publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst.)
- 1941 - World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
- 1942 - World War II: Battle of Stalingrad - Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.
- 1944 - World War II: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
- 1946 - Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
- 1954 - Sammy Davis, Jr. loses his left eye in an automobile accident in San Bernardino, California.
- 1959 - Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
- 1961 - Michael Rockefeller, son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappears in the jungles near Atsj, Papua New Guinea.
- 1967 - The Establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
- 1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
- 1973 - American football player Lance Rentzel is arrested for exposing himself to a ten-year-old girl; he is later sentenced to five years' probation.
- 1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.
- 1977 - Transportes Aereos Portugueses Boeing 727 crashes in Madeira islands killing 130
- 1979 - Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
- 1984 - A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.
- 1985 - Cold War: In Geneva, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
- 1985 - Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion verdict against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in U.S. history, stemming from Texaco establishing a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.)
- 1990 - Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the “Girl You Know It’s True” album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.
- 1994 - In Britain, the first National Lottery draw was held. A £1 ticket gives a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.
- 1996 - Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead the multi national force in Zaire.
- 1997 - In Des Moines, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive.
- 1998 - Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against US President Bill Clinton.
- 1998 - Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for US$71.5 million.
- 1999 - Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
- 1999 - In Istanbul, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ends a two-day summit by calling for a political settlement in Chechnya and adopting a Charter for European Security.
- 2004 - The Malice at The Palace brawl between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers occurs.

Births


- 1464 - Emperor Go-Kashiwabara of Japan (d. 1526)
- 1563 - Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, English statesman (d. 1626)
- 1600 - King Charles I of England (d. 1649)
- 1600 - Leo Aitzema, Dutch historian and statesman (d. 1669)
- 1617 - Eustache Le Sueur, French painter (d. 1655)
- 1700 - Jean-Antoine Nollet, French abbot and physicist (d. 1770)
- 1711 - Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian writer and polymath (d. 1765)
- 1722 - Leopold Auenbrugger, Austrian physician (d. 1809)
- 1722 - Benjamin Chew, Chief Justice of colonial Pennsylvania (d. 1810)
- 1805 - Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and Suez Canal engineer (d. 1894)
- 1831 - James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States (d. 1881)
- 1833 - Wilhelm Dilthey, German philosopher (d. 1911)
- 1843 - Richard Avenarius, German philosopher (d. 1896)
- 1859 - Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Russian composer (d. 1935)
- 1862 - Billy Sunday, American evangelist (d. 1935)
- 1875 - Mikhail I. Kalinin, President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (d. 1946)
- 1883 - Ned Sparks, Canadian actor (d. 1957)
- 1887 - James B. Sumner, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955)
- 1888 - José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban chess player (d. 1942)
- 1889 - Clifton Webb, American actor (d. 1966)
- 1893 - René Voisin, French classical trumpet player
- 1897 - Quentin Roosevelt, son of United States President Theodore Roosevelt (d. 1918)
- 1898 - Arthur R. von Hippel, German-born physicist (d. 2003)
- 1899 - Allen Tate, American poet and critic (d. 1979)
- 1900 - Mikhail Lavrentyev, Russian scientist (d. 1980)
- 1900 - Anna Seghers, German writer (d. 1983)
- 1905 - Tommy Dorsey, American bandleader (d. 1956)
- 1907 - Jack Schaefer, American author (d. 1991)
- 1909 - Peter Drucker, American management theorist (d. 2005)
- 1912 - George Emil Palade, Romanian cell biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 1915 - Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)
- 1917 - Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (d. 1984)
- 1919 - Alan Young, British-born American actor (Mister Ed)
- 1920 - Gene Tierney, American actress (d. 1991)
- 1921 - Roy Campanella, baseball player (d. 1993)
- 1922 - Yuri Knorosov, Russian epigrapher (d. 1999)
- 1924 - William Russell, British actor
- 1926 - Jeane Kirkpatrick, U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations
- 1929 - Slavko Avsenik, Slovenian musician
- 1929 - Norman Cantor, Canadian medieval scholar (d. 2004)
- 1933 - Larry King, American television interviewer
- 1935 - Bob Gibson, baseball player
- 1935 - Rashad Khalifa, Egyptian imam (d. 1990)
- 1936 - Dick Cavett, American talk show host
- 1936 - Yuan T. Lee, Taiwanese-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1938 - Ted Turner, American businessman
- 1939 - Tom Harkin, U.S. Senator
- 1941 - Dan Haggerty, American actor
- 1942 - Calvin Klein, American clothing designer
- 1942 - Sharon Olds, American poet
- 1943 - Aurelio Monteagudo, Cuban-born Major League Baseball player (d. 1990)
- 1947 - Bob Boone, baseball player and manager
- 1947 - Lamar S. Smith, American politician
- 1949 - Ahmad Rashad, American football player and sportscaster
- 1951 - Lord Falconer, British lawyer and politician
- 1953 - Robert Beltran, American actor
- 1953 - Tom Villard, American actor (d. 1994)
- 1956 - Ann Curry, American journalist
- 1957 - Ofra Haza, Israeli singer (d. 2000)
- 1958 - Michael Wilbon, Sports Analyst
- 1960 - Elizabeth Hulette, American professional wrestler (d. 2003)
- 1960 - Allison Janney, American actress
- 1961 - Meg Ryan, American actress
- 1962 - Jodie Foster, American actress
- 1963 - Terry Farrell, American actress
- 1963 - Jon Potter, British field hockey player
- 1965 - Laurent Blanc, French footballer
- 1966 - Gail Devers, American athlete
- 1966 - Rocco DiSpirito, American chef
- 1966 - Jason Scott Lee, American actor
- 1969 - Terrence Carson, American actor
- 1972 - Sandrine Holt, Canadian actress
- 1973 - Savion Glover, American choreographer, actor, and dancer
- 1975 - Sushmita Sen, Indian beauty queen and actress
- 1976 - Jun Shibata, Japanese singer and songwriter
- 1985 - Chris Eagles, British footballer

Deaths


- 498 - Pope Anastasius II
- 1478 - Emperor Baeda Maryam of Ethiopia (b. 1448)
- 1492 - Jami, Persian poet (b. 1414)
- 1557 - Bona Sforza, Queen of Sigismund I of Poland (b. 1494)
- 1577 - Matsunaga Hisahide, Japanese warlord (b. 1510)
- 1598 - Yi Sun-sin, Korean admiral (killed in battle) (b. 1545)
- 1630 - Johann Schein, German composer (b. 1586)
- 1649 - Caspar Schoppe, German scholar (b. 1576)
- 1665 - Nicolas Poussin, French painter (b. 1594)
- 1672 - John Wilkins, English Bishop of Chester (b. 1614)
- 1682 - Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Royalist commander in the English Civil War (b. 1619)
- 1692 - Thomas Shadwell, English poet and playwright
- 1723 - Antoine Nompar de Caumont, French courtier and soldier (b. 1632)
- 1772 - William Nelson, American colonial governor of Virginia (b. 1711)
- 1773 - James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster, Irish politician (b. 1722)
- 1785 - Bernard de Bury, French composer (b. 1720)
- 1798 - Wolfe Tone, Irish republican (b. 1763)
- 1804 - Pietro Guglielmi, Italian composer (b. 1728)
- 1810 - Jean-Georges Noverre, French dancer and ballet master (b. 1725)
- 1822 - Johann Georg Tralles, German mathematician and physicist (b. 1763)
- 1828 - Franz Schubert, Austrian composer (b. 1797)
- 1850 - Richard Mentor Johnson, American politician (b. 1780)
- 1883 - William Siemens, German engineer (b. 1823)
- 1887 - Emma Lazarus, American poet (b. 1859)
- 1897 - William Seymour Tyler, American educator and historian (b. 1810).
- 1915 - Joe Hill, American labor activist (executed) (b. 1879)
- 1918 - Joseph Fielding Smith, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1838)
- 1924 - Thomas Ince, American film director (b. 1882)
- 1938 - Lev Shestov, Russian philosopher (b. 1866)
- 1942 - Bruno Schulz, Polish writer and painter (shot) (b. 1892)
- 1960 - Phyllis Haver, American actress (b. 1899)
- 1967 - Charles Watters, US Army chaplain (b. 1927)
- 1974 - George Brunies, American musician (b. 1902)
- 1976 - Sir Basil Spence, British architect (b. 1907)
- 1985 - Stepin Fetchit, American actor and dancer (b. 1907)
- 1988 - Christina Onassis, daughter of billionaire, Aristotle Onassis. (b. 1950)
- 2004 - Piet Esser, Dutch sculptor (b. 1914)
- 2004 - John Robert Vane, British pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1927)
- 2005 - Erik Balling, Danish TV and film director (b. 1924)

Holidays and observances


- Church of England - Hilda of Whitby
- Also see November 19 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
- Mali - Liberation Day
- Monaco - Monegasque National Day
- Oman - Birthday of Sultan Qaboos bin Said
- Puerto Rico - Discovery of Puerto Rico (1493)
- United States - Equal Opportunity Day;
- United Arab Emirates - Pilgrimage
- World Toilet Day

External links


- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/19 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20051119.html The New York Times: On This Day] ---- November 18 - November 20 - October 19 - December 19 -- listing of all days ko:11월 19일 ms:19 November ja:11月19日 simple:November 19 th:19 พฤศจิกายน

United States

:For alternative meanings, see the disambiguation page for US, USA, United States, or American. The United States of America is a federal democratic republic situated primarily in central North America. It comprises 50 states and one federal district, and has several territories. It is also referred to, with varying formality, as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the States, or simply and most commonly, America. The official founding date of the United States is July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of the government was profoundly changed in 1788, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The date on which each of the fifty states adopted the Constitution is typically regarded as the date that state "entered the Union" (became part of the United States). Since the mid-20th century, following World War II, the United States has emerged as a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological, and cultural affairs.

Geography and climate

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia, the Bahamas, and numerous smaller nations. It is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, in the west; the Arctic Ocean, in the northernmost areas; and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, in the eastern and southeastern areas. Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, sometimes abbreviated CONUS, and as the Lower 48. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower 48 by Canada. The archipelago of Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization. When inland water is included in the total area, only Russia and Canada are larger than the United States; if inland water is excluded, China ranks third and the U.S. ranks fourth. The United States' total area is 3,718,711 square miles (9,631,418 km²), of which land makes up 3,537,438 square miles (9,161,923 km²) and water makes up 181,273 square miles (469,495 km²). The United States' landscape is one of the most varied among those of the world's nations: among its many features are temperate forestland and rolling hills, on the east coast; mangrove, in Florida; the Great Plains, in the center of the country; the Mississippi–Missouri river system; the Great Lakes, four of the five of which are shared with Canada; the Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains; deserts and temperate coastal zones, west of the Rocky Mountains; and temperate rain forests, in the Pacific northwest. Alaska's tundra, and the volcanic, tropical islands of Hawaii add to the geographic diversity. Hawaii The climate varies along with the landscape, from tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida to tundra in Alaska and atop some of the highest mountains. Most of the North and East experience a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold winters. Most of the South experiences a subtropical humid climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. Rainfall decreases markedly from the humid forests of the Eastern Great Plains to the semi-arid shortgrass prairies on the high plains abutting the Rocky Mountains. Arid deserts, including the Mojave, extend through the lowlands and valleys of the southwest, from westernmost Texas to California and northward throughout much of Nevada. Some parts of California have a Mediterranean climate. Rainforests line the windward mountains of the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska.

History

American history started with the migration of people from Asia across the Bering land bridge approximately 12,000 years ago following large animals that they hunted into the Americas. These Native Americans left evidence of their presence in petroglyphs, burial mounds, and other artifacts. It is estimated that 2-9 million people lived in the territory now occupied by the U.S. before European contact, and the subsequent introduction of foreign diseases such as small pox that greatly diminished the native populations. Some advanced societies were the Anasazi of the southwest, who inhabited Chaco Canyon, and the Woodland Indians, who built Cahokia, located near present-day St Louis, a city with a population of 40,000 at its peak in AD 1200. Vikings first visited North America around 1000, but did not settle permanently. Following the discovery voyages of Christopher Columbus around 1492, other Europeans began to explore and settle there. During the 1500s and 1600s, the Spanish settled parts of the present-day Southwest and Florida, founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 and Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) in 1607. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, also in 1607. Within the next two decades, several Dutch settlements, including New Amsterdam (the predecessor to New York City), were established in what are now the states of New York and New Jersey. In 1637, Sweden established a colony at Fort Christina (in what is now Delaware), but lost the settlement to the Dutch in 1655. This was followed by extensive British settlement of the east coast. The British colonists remained relatively undisturbed by their home country until after the French and Indian War, when France ceded Canada and the Great Lakes region to Britain. Britain then imposed taxes on the 13 colonies, widely regarded by the colonists as unfair because they were denied representation in the British Parliament. Tensions between Britain and the colonists increased, and the thirteen colonies eventually rebelled against British rule. British Parliament, George Washington (1789-1797).]] In 1776, the 13 colonies split from Great Britain and formed the United States, the world's first constitutional and democratic federal republic, after their Declaration of Independence of that year, and the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783). The original political structure was a confederation in 1777, ratified in 1781 as the Articles of Confederation. After long debate, this was supplanted by the Constitution in 1789, forming a more centralized federal government. Prior to all these was the Albany Congress in 1754, in which a union was first seriously proposed. From early colonial times, there was a shortage of labor, which encouraged unfree labor, particularly indentured servitude and slavery. In the mid-19th century, a major division occurred in the United States over the issue of states' rights and the expansion of slavery. The northern states had become opposed to slavery, while the southern states saw it as necessary for the continued success of southern agriculture and wanted it expanded to the territories. Several federal laws were passed in an attempt to settle the dispute, including the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The dispute reached a crisis in 1861, when seven southern states seceded1 from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, leading to the Civil War. Soon after the war began, four more southern states seceded. During the war, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, mandating the freedom of all slaves in states in rebellion, though full emancipation did not take place until after the end of the war in 1865, the dissolution of the Confederacy, and the Thirteenth Amendment took effect. The Civil War effectively ended the question of a state's right to secede, and is widely accepted as a major turning point after which the federal government became more powerful than state governments. Thirteenth Amendment). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of Manifest Destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. [http://americanart.si.edu/t2go/1lw/1931.6.1.html (more)] ]] During the 19th century, many new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the continent. Manifest Destiny was a philosophy that encouraged westward expansion in the United States. As the population of the Eastern states grew and as a steady increase of immigrants entered the country, settlers moved steadily westward across North America. In the process, the U.S. displaced most American Indian nations. This displacement of American Indians continues to be a matter of contention in the U.S. with many tribes attempting to assert their original claims to various lands. In some areas American Indian populations were reduced by foreign diseases contracted through contact with European settlers, and US settlers acquired those emptied lands. In other instances American Indians were removed from their traditional lands by force. Though some would say the U.S. was not a colonial power until the Spanish-American War when it acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the dominion exercised over land in North America the United States claimed is essentially colonial. The Philippines became independent in 1946. During this period, the nation also became an industrial power. This continued into the 20th century, which has been termed "the American Century" because of the nation's overriding influence on the world. The US became a center for innovation and technological development; major technologies that America either developed or was greatly involved in improving include the telephone, television, computer, the Internet, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, aviation, and aeronautics. In addition to the Civil War, another major traumatic experience for the nation was the Great Depression (1929 to 1939). The nation has also taken part in several major foreign wars, including World War I and World War II (in both of which the US later joined the Allies). During the Cold War, the US was a major player in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and, along with the Soviet Union, was considered one of the world's two "superpowers". With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the world's leading economic and military power. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States became very involved in police actions and peacekeeping, including actions in Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Liberia, and the first Persian Gulf War driving Iraq out of Kuwait. After attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States and other allied nations found themselves involved in what has come to be called the "War on Terrorism," which has primarily encompassed military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Government

Iraq of the United States.]]

Republic and suffrage

The United States is an example of a constitutional republic, with a government composed of and operating through a set of limited powers imposed by its design and enumerated in the United States Constitution. Specifically, the nation operates as a presidential democracy. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and local. Officials of each of these levels are either elected by eligible voters via secret ballot or appointed by other elected officials. Americans enjoy almost universal suffrage from the age of 18 regardless of race, sex, or wealth. There are some limits, however: felons are disenfranchised and in some states former felons are likewise. Furthermore, the national representation of territories and the federal district of Washington, DC in Congress is limited: residents of the District of Columbia are subject to federal laws and federal taxes but their only Congressional representative is a non-voting delegate.

Federal government

The federal government is the national government, comprising the Legislative Branch (led by Congress), the Executive Branch (led by the President), and the Judicial Branch (led by the Supreme Court). These three branches were designed to apply checks and balances on each other. The Constitution limits the powers of the federal government to defense, foreign affairs, the issuing and management of currency, the management of trade and relations between the states, and the protection of human rights. In addition to these explicitly stated powers, the federal government—with the assistance of the Supreme Court—has gradually extended these powers into such areas as welfare and education, on the basis of the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution.

The Congress

necessary and proper The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives consists of 435 members, each of whom represents a congressional district and serves for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population; in contrast, each state has two Senators, regardless of population. There are a total of 100 senators, who serve six-year terms. The powers of Congress are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. The Constitution also includes the necessary-and-proper clause, which grants Congress the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers."

The President

necessary-and-proper clause At the top level of the executive branch is the President of the United States. The President and Vice-President are elected as 'running mates' for four-year terms by the Electoral College, for which each state, as well as the District of Columbia, is allocated a number of seats based on its representation (or ostensible representation, in the case of D. C.) in both houses of Congress (see U.S. Electoral College). The relationship between the President and the Congress reflects that between the English monarchy and parliament at the time of the framing of the United States Constitution. Congress can legislate to constrain the President's executive power, even with respect to his or her command of the armed forces; however, this power is used only very rarely—a notable example was the constraint placed on President Richard Nixon's strategy of bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The President cannot directly propose legislation, and must rely on supporters in Congress to promote his or her legislative agenda. The President's signature is required to turn congressional bills into law; in this respect, the President has the power—only occasionally used—to veto congressional legislation. Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses. The ultimate power of Congress over the President is that of impeachment or removal of the elected President through a House vote, a Senate trial, and a Senate vote. The threat of using this power has had major political ramifications in the cases of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. The President makes around 2,000 executive appointments, including members of the Cabinet and ambassadors, which must be approved by the Senate; the President can also issue executive orders and pardons, and has other Constitutional duties, among them the requirement to give a State of the Union address to Congress once a year. Although the President's constitutional role may appear to be constrained, in practice, the office carries enormous prestige that typically eclipses the power of Congress: the Presidency has justifiably been referred to as 'the most powerful office in the world'. The Vice President is first in the line of succession, and is the President of the Senate ex officio, with the ability to cast a tie-breaking vote. The members of the President's Cabinet are responsible for administering the various departments of state, including the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the State Department. These departments and department heads have considerable regulatory and political power, and it is they who are responsible for executing federal laws and regulations. George W. Bush is the 43rd President, currently serving his second term.

The Courts

George W. Bush The highest court is the Supreme Court, which consists of nine justices. The court deals with federal and constitutional matters, and can declare legislation made at any level of the government as unconstitutional, nullifying the law and creating precedent for future law and decisions. Below the Supreme Court are the courts of appeals, and below them in turn are the district courts, which are the general trial courts for federal law. Separate from, but not entirely independent of, this federal court system are the individual court systems of each state, each dealing with its own laws and having its own judicial rules and procedures. A case may be appealed from a state court to a federal court only if there is a federal question; the supreme court of each state is the final authority on the interpretation of that state's laws and constitution.

State and local governments

supreme court of each state. Note that Alaska and Hawaii are shown at different scales, and that the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.]] The state governments have the greatest influence over people's daily lives. Each state has its own written constitution and has different laws. There are sometimes great differences in law and procedure between the different states, concerning issues such as property, crime, health, and education. The highest elected official of each state is the Governor. Each state also has an elected legislature (bicameral in every state except Nebraska), whose members represent the different parts of the state. Of note is the New Hampshire legislature, which is the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, and has one representative for every 3,000 people. Each state maintains its own judiciary, with the lowest level typically being county courts, and culminating in each state supreme court, though sometimes named differently. In some states, supreme and lower court justices are elected by the people; in others, they are appointed, as they are in the federal system. The institutions that are responsible for local government are typically town, city, or county boards, making laws that affect their particular area. These laws concern issues such as traffic, the sale of alcohol, and keeping animals. The highest elected official of a town or city is usually the mayor. In New England, towns operate directly democratically, and in some states, such as Rhode Island and Connecticut, counties have little or no power, existing only as geographic distinctions. In other areas, county governments have more power, such as to collect taxes and maintain law enforcement agencies.

Political divisions

With the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen colonies proclaimed themselves to be nation states modeled after the European states of the time. Although considered as sovereigns initially, under the Articles of Confederation of 1781 they entered into a "Perpetual Union" and created a fully sovereign federal state, delegating certain powers to the national Congress, including the right to engage in diplomatic relations and to levy war, while each retaining their individual sovereignty, freedom and independence. But the national government proved too ineffective, so the administrative structure of the government was vastly reorganized with the United States Constitution of 1789. Under this new union, the continued status of the individual states as sovereign nation states fell into dispute in 1861, as several states attempted to secede from the union; in response, then-President Abraham Lincoln claimed that such secession was illegal, and the result was the American Civil War. Since the Union victory in 1865, the independent status of the individual states has not been broached again by any state, and the status of each state within the union has been deemed by mainstream officials and academics to be settled as being subordinate to the union as a whole. In subsequent years, the number of states grew steadily due to western expansion, the purchase of lands by the national government from other nation states, and the subdivision of existing states, resulting in the current total of 50. The states are generally divided into smaller administrative regions, including counties, cities and townships. The United States–Canadian border is the longest undefended political boundary in the world. The U.S. is divided into three distinct sections:
- the "continental United States," also known as "the Lower 48" and more accurately termed the conterminous, coterminous or contiguous United States
- Alaska, which is physically connected only to Canada
- the archipelago of Hawaii, in the central Pacific Ocean. The United States also holds several other territories, districts, and possessions, notably the federal district of the District of Columbia, which is the nation's capital, and several overseas insular areas, the most significant of which are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. The Palmyra Atoll is the United States' only incorporated territory; it is unorganized and uninhabited. The United States Navy has held a base at a portion of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 1898. The United States government possesses a lease to this land, which only mutual agreement or United States abandonment of the area can terminate. The present Cuban government of Fidel Castro disputes this arrangement, claiming Cuba was not truly sovereign at the time of the signing. The United States argues this point moot because Cuba apparently ratified the lease post-revolution, and with full sovereignty, when it cashed one rent check in accordance with the disputed treaty.

Foreign relations and military

sovereign] The immense military and economic dominance of the United States has made foreign relations an especially important topic in its politics, with considerable concern about the image of the United States throughout the world. Reactions towards the United States by other nationalities are often strong, ranging from uninhibited admiration and mimicking of all things American to anti-Americanism. US foreign policy has swung about several times over the course of its history between the poles of strict isolationism and imperialism and everywhere in between. Three of the nation's four military branches are administered by the Department of Defense: the Army, the Navy (including the Marine Corps), and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime, but is placed under the Department of the Navy in time of war. The combined United States armed forces consist of 1.4 million active duty personnel, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard. Military conscription ended in 1973. The United States Armed forces are considered to be the most powerful military (of any sort) on Earth and their force projection capabilities are unrivaled by any other nation. The 2005 defense budget amounted to $401.7 billion, which is an increase of 4% over 2004 and of 35% since 2001. Over 50% of that number is spent in research & development. (For comparison, in 2004 the European Union (considered as the second-largest military force) had a combined total of 1.6 million troops, and a defense budget of €160 billion, with less than 10% of that being spent on R&D.)

Largest cities

The United States has dozens of major cities, including 11 of the 55 global cities of all types — with three "alpha" global cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The figures expressed below are for populations within city limits. A different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metro area populations, although the top three would be unchanged. Note that some cities not listed (such as Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) are still considered important on the basis of other factors and issues, including culture, economics, heritage, and politics. The twenty largest cities, based on the United States Census Bureau's 2004 estimates, are as follows:

Economy

The United States has the largest single-country economy in the world, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $40,100. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. gross domestic product The largest industry of the U.S. is now service, which employs roughly three quarters of the U.S. work force. The United States has many natural resources, including oil and gas, metals, and such minerals as gold, soda ash, and zinc. In agriculture, the U.S. is a top producer of, among other crops, corn, soy beans, and wheat; the United States is a net exporter of food. The U.S. manufacturing sector produces goods such as, cars, airplanes, steel, and electronics, among many others. Economic activity varies greatly from one part of the country to another, with many industries being largely dependent on a certain city or region; New York City is the center of the American financial, publishing, broadcasting, and advertising industries; Silicon Valley is the country’s primary location for high-technology companies, while Los Angeles is the most important center for film production. The Midwest is known for its reliance on manufacturing and heavy industry, with Detroit, Michigan, serving as the center of the American automotive industry; the Great Plains are known as the "breadbasket" of America for their tremendous agricultural output; the intermountain region serves as a mining hub and natural gas resource; the Pacific Northwest for fish and timber, while Texas is largely associated with the oil industry; the Southeast is a major hub for both medical research and the textiles industry. Several countries continue to link their currency to the dollar or even use it as a currency (such as Ecuador), although this practice has subsided since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Many markets are also quoted in dollars, such as those of oil and gold. The dollar is also the predominant reserve currency in the world, and more than half of global reserves are in dollars. The largest trading partner of the United States is Canada (19%), followed by China (12%), Mexico (11%), and Japan (8%). More than 50% of total trade is with these four countries. In 2003, the United States was ranked as the third most visited tourist destination in the world; its 40,400,000 visitors ranked behind France's 75,000,000 and Spain's 52,500,000. Labor unions have existed since the 19th century, and grew large and powerful from the 1930s to the 1950s. See Labor history of the United States. Since 1970 they have shrunk in the private sector and now cover fewer than 8% of the workers. However union membership has grown rapidly in the public sector, especially among teachers, nurses, police, postal workers, and municipal clerks. There have been few strikes in recent years. The United States' imports exceed exports by 80%, leading to an annual trade deficit of $700,000,000,000, or 6% of gross domestic product. It is the largest debtor nation in the world, with total gross foreign debt of over $13,000,000,000,000 (2005 estimate); and it absorbs more than 50% of global savings annually. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has increased the use of neoliberal economic policies that reduce government intervention and reduce the size of the welfare state, backing away from the more interventionist Keynsian economic policies that had been in favor since the Great Depression. As a result, the United States provides fewer government-delivered social welfare services than most industrialized nations, choosing instead to keep its tax burden lower and relying more heavily on the free market and private charities. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the national level ($5.15 per-hour), including the highest, Washington State at $7.35. Twenty-six states are the same as the federal level; two--Ohio and Kansas--are below; and six do not have state laws. America's wealth is relatively highly concentrated. The average C.E.O. earns 500 times the typical amount a worker grosses, this is up from 25 times in the late 1970s. In terms of wealth the top 1% of Americans own 40% of all assets and 50.1% of the country's income goes to the top twenty percent of households. Average wages for the majority of employees have been largely stagnating since the 1970s. America's poverty line defined as a family of four earning less than $19,157 is at 12.7% of the general population. Approximately one out of every five children in the United States grows up below the official poverty line. Among racial groups; African Americans have the lowest median income while Asians had the highest. Regionally, the southern states had the lowest median incomes while the West Coast and New England had the highest. The current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan remarked that the U.S.’s growing income inequality since the 1970s is, "not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing."[http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0614/p01s03-usec.html?s=itm] However, Greenspan also noted, "...you can look at the system and say it's got a lot of problems to it, and sure it does. It always has. But you can't get around the fact that this is the most extraordinarily successful economy in history."

Transportation

Alan Greenspan ]] Because the United States is a relatively young nation, most of the development of U.S. cities has taken place since the invention of the automobile. To link its vast territory, the United States built a network of high-capacity, high-speed highways, of which the most important element is the Interstate Highway system, commissioned in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and modeled after the German Autobahn. The United States also has a transcontinental rail system, which is used for moving freight across the lower forty-eight states. Passenger rail service is provided by Amtrak, which serves forty-six of the lower forty-eight states. Many cities in the United States have extensive mass-transit systems. New York City operates one of the world's largest and most heavily used subway systems. The regional rail and bus networks that extend into Long Island, New Jersey, Upstate New York, and Connecticut are among the most heavily used in the world. Air travel is often preferred for destinations over 300 miles (500 kilometers) away. In terms of passengers, seventeen of the world's thirty busiest airports in 2004 were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; in terms of cargo, in the same year, twelve of the world's thirty busiest airports were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Memphis International Airport. There are several major seaports in the United States; the three busiest are the Port of Los Angeles, California; the Port of Long Beach, California; and the Port of New York and New Jersey. Others include Houston, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Seattle, Washington; plus, outside the contiguous forty-eight states, Anchorage, Alaska, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Society

Demographics

Hawaii The mean center of the U.S. population continues to drift farther west and south. The fastest growing region is the western United States followed by the southern portion. According to Census 2000, the states that saw the greatest increases from 1990 were: Nevada (66.3%), Arizona (40%), Colorado (30.6%), Utah (29.6%), Idaho (28.5%), Georgia (26.4%), Florida (23.5%), Texas (22.8%), North Carolina (21.4%), and Washington (21.1%). [http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t2/tab03.pdf]

Ethnicity and race

:Main article: Racial demographics of the United States The United States is a very racially diverse country. According to the 2000 census, it has 31 ethnic groups with at least one million members each, and numerous others represented in smaller amounts. The majority of Americans descend from white European immigrants who arrived at the establishment of the first colonies (most after Reconstruction). This majority--69.1% in 2000--decreases each year, and is expected to become a plurality within a few decades. The most frequently stated European ancestries are German (15.2%), Irish (10.8%), English (8.7%), Italian (5.6%) and Scandinavian (3.7%). Many immigrants also hail from Slavic countries such as Poland and Russia. Other significant immigrant populations came from eastern and southern Europe and French Canada. Russia Hispanics from Mexico and South and Central America are the largest minority group in the country, comprising 12.5% of the population (2000 census). People of Mexican descent made up 7.3% of the population in the 2000 census, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. About 12.3% (2000 census) of the American people are African Americans (Blacks). African Americans are spread throughout the country, but their presence is largest in the South. Asian Americans--including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders--are a third significant minority (3.7% of the population in 2000). Most Asian Americans are concentrated on the West Coast and Hawaii. The largest groups are immigrants or descendants of emigrants from the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan. Indigenous peoples in the United States, such as American Indians and Inuit, make up 0.9% of the population (2000 census). About 35% live on Indian reservations.

Religion

Polls estimate that just under 80 percent of Americans are Christians of various denominations. The other 20 percent comprises other religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, other various faiths, and those without a specific religion. The United States is noteworthy among developed nations for its relatively high level of religiosity. According to a 2004 Gallup poll, about 44% of Americans attend a religious service at least once a week. However, this rate is not uniform across the country; attendance is more common in the Bible Belt—composed largely of Southern and Midwestern states—than in the Northeast and West Coast. In the Southern states, Baptists are the largest group, followed by Methodists; Roman Catholics are dominant in the Northeast and in large parts of the Midwest due to their being settled by descendants of Catholic immigrants from Europe (such as Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland) or other parts of North America (mainly Quebec and Puerto Rico). The rest of the country for the most part has a complex mixture of various Christian groups.

Education

West Coast's home at Monticello and the University of Virginia (library building shown above, and designed by Jefferson), the only collegiate campus on the list. Both sites are located in Charlottesville, Virginia.]] In the United States, education is a state, not federal, responsibility, and the laws and standards vary considerably. However, the federal government, through the Department of Education, is involved with funding of some programs and exerts some influence through its ability to control funding. In most states, all students must attend mandatory schooling starting with kindergarten, which children normally enter at age 5, and following through 12th grade, which is normally completed at age 18

Conservatism

:For related and other uses, see Conservatism (disambiguation) Conservatism is any of a number of political philosophies supporting traditional values or an established social order. As the word implies, conservatives seek to conserve the existing social order or to reinstate a social order from the past. Most conservative parties are on the political right, but there are countries where a conservative party falls on the left. Conservatism as a philosophy is much older than the left-right division, and it can include adherents from both. In the Netherlands, for example, defenders of ‘Dutch tolerance’ as a traditional national value and Islamist supporters of Sharia law both call themselves conservatives. In English-speaking countries, conservatism often refers to a political philosophy presented by Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke. Burkean conservatives wish to conserve heritage; they advocate the current social climate. To a Burkean, any existing value or institution has undergone the correcting influence of past experience and ought to be respected. Burkeans do not reject change, as Burke wrote "a state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation," but they insist that further change be organic, rather than revolutionary.

Tradition in conservatism

All conservatives value tradition. Tradition does not mean simply custom, habit or nostalgia for the past, though custom does inform tradition and sustain it. For a conservative, tradition is composed of standards and institutions that have been shown to promote the good, and therefore they find authority in tradition and apply it in politics. This authority, be it a person, a literature or a way of life, is rooted in the past, and thus cannot easily change . To keep tradition alive, conservatives pass it down from generation to generation, embodied in the eternal verities or the sophia perennis. Conservatives accept traditional values as authoritative, and judge the world around them by the standards they have come to trust. Many conservatives believe in God, and believe that He is not only the creator of the universe, but also the Author of those conservative values they espouse. Since conservatives believe tradition supercedes the political process, the laws and constitutions of liberal democracies that permit behavior that conflict with traditional values cause friction in their eyes. Conservatives in a democracy choose to participate, separate, or resist. They often participate in liberal republican politics, using government policy to encourage or preserve their values. Good examples of this are the Christian Democratic parties in Europe. Another method of conservative reform, imposing their values on the public, is common among nationalist or religious conservatives. This can take a relatively benign form, such as Conservative Christians trying to order public school students to pray, or a more violent form, such as Islamists putting to death anyone who blasphemes. Armed conservatives who consider their tradition to be absolute for all may become revolutionary conservatives. In Europe the Catholic-nationalist-conservative regimes of Salazar and Franco were examples. Though relatively rare, a modern example of conservatives who withdraw from society and attempt to live their lives in traditional ways is the Amish.

Some traditional values

Different forms of conservatism emphasise different values, many of them overlapping. For example:
- Order over chaos
- Orientation toward the past rather than the future
- The rural over the urban
- Unity and homogeneity, over discord and fragmentation
- The natural over the artificial and technological
- Existence over possibility
- Slow and incremental change over utopian projects
- Hierarchy over egalitarianism
- Acceptance of inequality over redistribution
- Sovereignty over union, in matters regarding the European Union Order Conservatives typically limit innovation out of risk aversion. Change is by nature risky; it can potentially disrupt or even ruin the social order, which is the only existing guarantee that conservative values will survive. Maintaining the status quo at least preserves these values, so conservatives favour heritage over innovation, incremental change over utopian projects, and unity over discord. This attitude is well summed up by the Shakespearean phrase, "Discretion is the better part of valor." Class Some conservatives consider loyalty to their social class to be paramount. These conservatives are almost always themselves of the privileged class, and consider the lower classes to be so intrinsically inferior that the subject does not merit discussion. In ancient Rome, the patrician class had this attitude toward the plebeian class, and much of the history of the Roman republic is a history of the class struggle. Class is not the same as wealth. It is strictly hereditary, and class conservatives look down on the "nouveau riche" as much as on the working poor. This attitude arises from the conservative distrust of socially disruptive behavior; those who have suddenly acquired wealth, like those who never managed to attain it in the first place, have not shown an ability to sustainably manage assets, and so they represent a threat to the traditional system of financial stewardship that drives conservative culture. Nature Conservatives tend to favour what they call the natural. Nature here is meant in contrast to the artificial or created (rather than invoking the natural world, though this is often included). They see evidence of a design or emergent order that is wiser than any human mind, especially one working outside of the rich traditional depository of values. Conservatives who adhere to the natural often appeal to organic metaphors, such as the notion of society as a living organism. The metaphor illustrates values such as 'rootedness', in which society is seen as a tree with its roots in the past and a crown in the present. Cutting contact with the roots would kill the tree. Through this metaphor, conservatives look askance at the potential for progress. Some may even regard the "natural" order as already for the best, so any deviation by definition would worsen the situation. Conservatives who believe in nature prefer hierarchy to egalitarianism, national sovereignty to created unions and acceptance of inequality to redistribution. Western conservatives derive some of their devotion to the free market from this notion. Virtue and Religion Many conservatives wish to enforce what they see as right living. They do not do this out of prudishness or a desire to make other people unhappy, but for two main reasons: first, they believe right living will do their neighbor good (whether he realizes it or not); second, because social mores tend to decay if they are not practiced by the community (which conservatives often find needs a little prodding). So they emphasize morality over a tacit (if not official) relativism, community over the individual and church involvement in government over laïcité.

Classification of conservatism

Cultural conservatism

Cultural conservatism hopes to enshrine the received heritage of a successful nation or culture. The culture in question may be as large as Western culture or Chinese civilization or as small as that of Tibet. Cultural conservatism does not always support its own culture: Kemal Ataturk attempted to transplant some Western institutions into Turkey, creating a republic. Cultural conservatives try to adapt norms handed down through a culture. The norms may be romantic: The anti-metric movement, demanding the retention of avoirdupois weights and measures in Britain, and opposing their replacement with the