美国保守主义：政治进程而非固有观念

American Conservatism as Political Process and Not as an Essential Idea

政治保守主义在美国的发展经历了一个长期累积生成的过程。近年来,美国政治保守主义者愈发倾向于维护传统的社会等级;视自由市场为美国经济生活的最佳仲裁者;把信仰、基于信仰的知识和家庭视为道德准则和现实智慧的主要源泉;对多边主义的外交政策或任何把美国看作世界民族之林的普通一员的思想嗤之以鼻。大体说来,在回应自由主义者关于"国家需要规制市场"的主张时,保守主义者强调,真正需要被规制的是个人,而规制方式应该是通过自由市场的竞争活力和对信仰与家庭价值的长久忠诚。保守主义的这套原则与实践并不是凭空出现的,也并不见得会为所有时代的保守主义者全盘接受。正是经过好几代人的努力,保守主义者才创造出一个基础广泛的政治运动,具备了足以行使国家政治权力的空间。

In the United States political conservatism has developed through accretion.Political conservatives in recent decades have tended to embrace traditional social hierarchies; they have embraced the free market as the best adjudicator of Americans' economic life course; they have trusted faith,faithbased knowledge,and family,not secular knowledge or experts,as the primary provider of moral truths and practical wisdom; and they have scorned a multilateral approach to foreign policy or any sense that the United States is but one nation among many countries. Broadly,conservatives have argued in response to liberals' claims that the state needs to discipline the market that,in fact,it is individuals that need disciplining through the rigors of the free market and the enduring claims of faith and family. All in all,conservatives have struggled over several generations to create a broadbased movement flexible enough to exercise national political power.