American, European, Australian conservatism

What is conservatism and how can there be different flavours?

At its essence, political conservatism is philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional ideas, institutions, customs, and values. Stuff that has been shown work to improve the general welfare of the society, community, nation. As William F. Buckley wrote:

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'

He also said:

Conservatism is the politics of reality

Why? Because conservatism is about conserving what works. It is a recognition that human nature is human nature and that man cannot be perfected.

But there are different flavours of conservatism. And they are a function of history.

American journalist at author George Will has described two versions of conservatism. According to Will, there is a fundamental difference between the two whereby American conservatism seeks to conserve liberty whereas European conservatism seeks to conserve blood and soil tradition. Importantly, American conservatism is about individual liberty. European conservatism is about institutions.

This is will from his 2019 book The Conservative Sensibility:

Although it distresses some American conservatives to be told this, American conservatism has little in common with European conservatism, which is descended from, and often is still tainted by, throne-and-altar, blood-and-soil nostalgia, irrationality, and tribalism. American conservatism has a clear mission: It is to conserve, by articulating and demonstrating the continuing pertinence of, the Founders’ thinking. The price of accuracy might by confusion, but this point must be made: American conservatives are the custodians of the classical liberal tradition.

Here is Victor Davis Hanson having a go at describing the difference:

But what is Australian conservatism? Well …