Modern Political Ideologies Seminar Journal Essay

Modern Political Ideologies Seminar Journal - Essay Example During the interwar period, which is considered to be a not so positive time for Conservatism in Britain, the ideology has been seen as inclined towards the defense of class privileges and of the status quo, a negative opposition to Socialism, and a interest centers commercialist approach to the rising Nazi menace in the 1030s (Fair, 1987, p. 549). The difference between conservative ideology and ideational ideologies has led to non conservatives to deny any intellectual content to conservatism which led to conservatives attacking all the other ideologies. In Huntington’s view, both parties are wrong because they have minimized its intellectual significance. He explained that the conservative ideology as an intellectual rationale of the permanent prerequisites of human existence (Huntington, 1957, p. 168). It has a high and necessary function. As a case in point, when a society is under threat, the conservatism acts as a reminder to men of the necessity of some institutions and the desirability of the existing ones. As he had said, conservative ideology is not the absence of change; rather, it is the articulate, systematic, theoretical resistance to change (Huntington, 1957, p. 168). The term conservative ideology is different from one society to the other. For one, the aristocrats are the conservatives in Prussia in the 1820s; slave-owners are the conservatives in the South in the early 1850s while the liberals are considered the conservatives in America and other parts of the world. As seen in history, American liberals have been idealist, lobbying goals of greater freedom, social equality, and more meaningful democracy. Conservatism can also be seen as shaping mechanism of events rather than merely reactionary as can be seen in Disraeli’s foreign policy wherein it focused on the necessity for Britain to act constructively as a moderating and mediating power and to maintain its interest in the whole empire (Rayner 1995, p.