Edmund Burke Talks Conservatism

While today we view liberals as young, hip democrats and conservatives as old, gun owning republicans, these ideologies were defined different in 19th century Europe. The essential question that we were determined to learn in class was what the major political ideologies of the 19th century were, and how they influenced social and political action. The first thing we did in class was define, in our opinion, liberalism, conservatism, and nationalism, and use them in a sentence. While most of us seemed to have an idea of what some of these meant, we all found it hard to put into words. The general consensus was that conservatives support old ideas, liberals are more radical, and nationalists might have something to do with the country. We were then put into groups and assigned one of these three ideologies in 19th century Europe, and given a reading on it. With this reading, we would create a one minute presentation on the ideology. There were two groups creating a presentation on each ideology, and the group with the most effective presentation for each ideology would win chocolate. Clearly, the stakes were high.

These two videos we made using Chatterpix made up our presentation on Conservatism. The videos depict Edmund Burke, also known as " The Father of Conservatism". Burke, voiced by myself, gives the viewers a description of what conservatives believe and what they are opposed to. Burke talks about how he loves monarchy, the hierarchical class system dominated by the aristocracy, and the Church, and hates innovation and reform. This reflects the conservative belief that tradition is the best solution to social and political problems. Conservatives impacted social and political problems by encouraging traditional solutions to problems, and since they were mostly rich, traditional elites, they were the ones in power. Edmund Burke in particular hated the French Revolution, and he also talks about Joseph de Maistre, who wrote a book opposing constitutionalism and reform. Due to the use of a silly British accent, our presentation was voted the best, and we received chocolate.

Along with conservatism, there were two other major political ideologies in the 19th century: liberalism and nationalism. Both of them influenced social and political action. Liberals believed in reform, freedom, and rights, as well as restricting the power of the clergy, aristocracy, and nobility and instead having a meritocracy. They were also against many traditional practices, and preferred constitutional monarchy over absolutism. Nationalism was the ideology that countries were bound together through shared language, customs, and history, and that unity as a national was important. Nationalists in Germany and Italy wanted the unification of their sections into one nation, and wanted to get rid of foreign rulers. These two ideologies were relatively similar. As you can see, the beliefs of these ideologies in the 19th century are a bit different than they are in the modern age.