Liberal Conservative

Liberal conservatism is a political ideology combining conservative policies with liberal stances, especially on economic and social issues, or a brand of political conservatism strongly influenced by liberalism. It is a political position which incorporates support for civil liberties and capitalism, along with some social-conservative positions.

As both "conservatism" and "liberalism" have had different meanings over time and across countries, the term "liberal conservatism" has been used in quite different ways. It usually contrasts with conservatism, which rejects the principle of equality as something in discordance with human nature, and emphasizes instead the idea of natural inequality. As conservatives in democratic countries have embraced typical liberal institutions such as the rule of law, private property, the market economy, and constitutional representative government, the liberal element of liberal conservatism became consensual among conservatives. In some countries (e.g. the United Kingdom and the United States) the term "liberal conservatism" came to be understood simply as "conservatism" in popular culture, prompting some conservatives who embraced more strongly classical liberal values to call themselves "libertarians".

Nevertheless, the liberal-conservative tradition in the United States often combines the economic individualism of classical liberals with a Burkean form of conservatism that emphasizes the natural inequalities between men, the irrationality of human behavior as the basis for the human drive for order and stability, and the rejection of natural rights as the basis for government. However, from a different perspective, American conservatism, a "hybrid of conservatism and classical liberalism", has exalted three tenets of Burkean conservatism, namely the diffidence toward the power of the state, the preference of liberty over equality and patriotism, while rejecting the three remaining tenets, namely loyalty to traditional institutions and hierarchies, scepticism regarding progress and elitism. Consequently, in the United States the term "liberal conservatism" is not used and American modern liberalism happens to be quite different from the European brand. The opposite is true in Latin America, where economically liberal conservatism is often labelled under the rubric of neoliberalism both in popular culture and academic discourse.

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