Small-c conservative

A small-c conservative is anyone who believes in the philosophy of conservatism but does not necessarily identify with an official Conservative Party.

Context

Canadian

The term was especially popular in Canada during the 1990s when the Progressive Conservative Party was centre-right with the Reform Party (later, the Canadian Alliance) further to the right. Members and supporters of the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance would thus describe themselves as small-c conservatives.

British

This term is also used in the United Kingdom to describe those who are conservative in the sense of resisting radical change rather than being members or supporters of the official Conservative Party. For example, the House of Lords as a body tends to resist social change and executive power and therefore—regardless of the numbers of lords who take the Conservative party whip—it is described as "small-c conservative".[1]

Australian

A small-c conservative in Australia is generally a member of the Liberal Party, but is more moderate on social policy and conservative on fiscal policy. The Liberal Party is made up of such small-c conservatives as well as the more right-wing big-C conservatives.

gollark: I don't know why nobody buys them. Maybe we should randomly swap out existing ones people have for them.
gollark: GTech™ still has perfectly working products.
gollark: Sorry, I totally forgot.
gollark: Oh, right, the fake honeypot board rooms are still up.
gollark: (this "Oh dear." is unrelated; I have made a mistake in an unrelated context)

References
  1. Ingolfur Blühdorn, Uwe Jun, Economic efficiency-democratic empowerment, p. 109

See also
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.