Friedrich Hayek Quotes
... the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards the right purpose .... Like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.
Friedrich A. Hayek, 1899-1992, Austrian Economist and Political Philosopher, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Why I Am Not A Conservative, 1960
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Actually, there have been “paranoid” fear of opposition political viewpoints in America very often. In the early days of the Republic, the Federalists main concern was not England or other foreign enemies, but Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans. And those Jeffersonians were absolutely convinced that the greatest danger to America was the Federalists who would bring back a monarchy if they could. The Jacksonians triggered a similar polarization. The Civil War stemmed from this extreme. Even America’s most popular President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected to 4 successive terms, was perceived as the major “enemy” of America along with his wife Eleanor and the other New Dealers.
What if you are a conservative in a liberal environment? Then what you are conserving is liberalism.
His reference was to his experience as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, which he and associates views as a liberal organization, while others viewed it as a conservative bastion of the establishment.
So far as he was concerned, Republican moderates—his own party members—were liberals. Anyone who did not support the extreme Conservative agenda, was an enemy and a liberal. He and the Tea Party drove almost all the moderate Republicans out of the party.
Over time, this has been a good description of the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.
This is one of the more passionate and colorful descriptions of Conservatives in the political literature. The conservative party were called Orangists as they were supporters of the monarchy of William V, Prince of Orange. As in modern times the conservatives included the upper classes, business people, religious advocates. The political conservatives were passionate, respected established authority, and in general, reactionary. The tended even then to flip-flopping as the conservatives had several factions--business conservatives, religious conservatives, monarchial conservatives, authoritarian conservatives and others. Depending on which faction was most powerful at the time, conservatives might advocate one position and change later when another faction was in control. Valckenaer also had some choice words to reflect his disdain for them. It is noteworthy that this description could describe political conservatives in almost any time period, in any culture. For example, it might have been a liberal writing about the Tea Party Republicans in 2014.
At the time most conservatives were very angry and hostile to liberals and attacked those who disagreed with them.
Friedrich August von Hayek CH FBA, often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-British economist and philosopher who is best known for his defence of classical liberalism. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and [...] penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena". His account of how changing prices communicate information that helps individuals co-ordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics, leading to his Nobel Prize.
