Edmund Burke, an 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman who opposed the French Revolution but supported the American Revolution, is credited as one of the forefathers of conservative thought in the 1790s along with Savoyard statesman Joseph de Maistre. The first established use of the term in a political context originated in 1818 with François-René de Chateaubriand during the period of Bourbon Restoration that sought to roll back the policies of the French Revolution and establish social order.
Conservapedia is an English-language wiki project written from a self-described American conservativeChristian point of view. The website considers itself to be a supporter of conservative, family-friendly content. It was started in 2006 by homeschool teacher and attorney Andy Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, to counter what he called the "liberal bias" of Wikipedia. It uses editorials and a wiki-based system to generate content. Examples of the ideology of Conservapedia in its articles include: accusations against US President Barack Obama, criticism of Wikipedia's supposed liberal bias, criticism of relativity as promoting relativism, claiming a proven link between abortion and breast cancer and asserting that the goals of a so-called Homosexual Agenda includes indoctrination. Conservapedia also operates the Conservative Bible Project, a conservative interpretation of the Bible. Conservapedia has received negative reactions from the mainstream media, as well as from various figures from both ends of the political spectrum, including commentators and journalists, and has been criticized for bias and inaccuracies.
These reasons and this atmosphere are the explanations, we know it or not - and most of us in these degenerate days are largely ignorant in the matter - why we feel such a strong bias in favour of laissez-faire, and why state action to regulate the value of money, or the course of investment, or the population, provokes such passionate suspicions in many upright breasts. We have not read these authors; we should consider their arguments preposterous if they were to fall into our hands. Nevertheless we should not, I fancy, think as we do, if Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Paley, Adam Smith, Bentham, and Miss Martineau had not thought and written as they did. A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
The UK Conservative Party served with the Liberals in an all-party coalition government during World War I, and the coalition continued under Liberal PM David Lloyd George (with half of the Liberals) until 1922. Then Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin led the break-up of the coalition and the party governed until 1929, when it was defeated by Labour in a close election. In 1931, following the collapse of the Labour minority government, it entered another coalition, which was dominated by the Conservatives with some support from fractions of both the Liberals and Labour party (National Labour and Liberal Nationals).
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