The distinction between conservatism and the ideational ideologies has led some nonconservatives to deny any intellectual content to conservatism and has led some conservatives to attack all ideologies. Both the critics and the defenders of conservatism are wrong, however, when they minimize its intellectual significance. Conservatism is the intellectual rationale of the permanent institutional prerequisites of human existence. It has a high and necessary function. It is the rational defense of being against mind, of order against chaos. When the foundations of society are threatened, the conservative ideology reminds men of the necessity of some institutions and the desirability of the existing ones. All ideologies need not be ideational ideologies. The theory of conservatism is of a different order and purpose than other common political theories, but it is still theory. Conservatism is not just the absence of change. It is the articulate, systematic, theoretical resistance to change.
(Samuel P. Huntington, "Conservatism as an Ideology," The American Political Science Review 51 [June 1957]: 454-73, at 460-1)
Note from KBJ: As an exercise, apply what Huntington says here to the debate about homosexual "marriage."
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 