Conservatism emerged as a reaction to the French Revolution, which began under the slogans of liberty, equality, and fraternity and ended in revolutionary terror and the guillotine.
At first, everyone liked the republican-democratic ideas, and even Joseph de Mestre (1754-1821), one of the most gifted thinkers of his time, was a supporter of liberal ideas before the Jacobin dictatorship and only later switched to conservatism. When the revolutionaries began to look for enemies everywhere, and at the peak of the revolutionary struggle executed up to 60 people a day, it became clear to many that good intentions had gone a little wrong.
It is believed that during the French Revolution, 15,000 people were executed on guillotines in public. The French revolutionary army, going on a campaign against the rebels, carried with them camping guillotines. Scientists of the time believed that a severed head lived for another 5 to 10 seconds. Therefore, the executioner would take the severed head and show it to an ecstatic crowd so that the executed person could see how the public was laughing at him.
No one could feel safe and be sure that they would not be caught for any offenses before the revolution. One of the most prominent intellectuals, the Marquis de Condorcet, was arrested for ordering a six-egg omelette in a cafe while traveling under an assumed name, which seemed suspicious to the owner of the establishment, who called the “people’s police.” It is not surprising that in such circumstances many people realized the falsity of such “democracy” and began to rethink the need to preserve rather than destroy. This is how conservatism began to take shape as a reaction to the guillotine and the destruction of revolutionary terror.
Of course, some conservative figures advocated the preservation of the monarchy and noble privileges, some hid behind the “divine order,” but others quite rightly pointed out that neither the old discredited and unjust orders nor the new “democratic-guillotine” ones, which had little in common with true democracy and declared human rights, were acceptable.
Conservatism as a worldview ideological system was based on political principles that were opposite to the understanding of democracy at the time. Western European and American conservatism (J. Adams, O. Branson, B. Disraeli, A. de Tocqueville) was then characterized by a critical attitude to democracy and liberal values, emphasizing its shortcomings, in particular, the incompetence of the people in governing the state and the mercantilism of democratic demagogue leaders, the dangers of fraud and corruption in the electoral process. The conservatism of that time emphasized the priority of the collective, society, and the state, adhering to the concept of the imperfection of human nature, the incompetence of ordinary citizens, and the harmfulness of excessive individual freedom.
But times have changed, and conservatism has not only become, but today remains, perhaps the only defender of true, authentic democracy: freedom of speech, equality of citizens regardless of privilege, and equal political representation.
The current results of the U.S. presidential election were also a reaction to the destruction of traditional values by ideas of pseudo-equality, privileging certain groups, or “new-speak,” to use George Orwell’s apt words. Guillotines are not yet used, but the number of people punished and “kenneled” in violation of the Constitution for leftist “thought crimes,” for “wrong” thoughts and statements, and for posts on social media has also become significant.
When a minority imposes its incomprehensible will on society, when someone else’s values are imposed, when they pretend to be victims, but in fact the majority are victims, then conservatism emerges as a reaction to destruction and the instinct for self-preservation of society.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk