‘What is conservatism?” Abraham Lincoln inquired rhetorically, as he campaigned for the Presidency of the United States. “Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?” By that test, the candidate told his audience, Abraham Lincoln was a conservative.
Other definitions have been offered. In Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary one encounters this: “Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.”
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