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.
José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco (1819–1880) was a politician, monarchist, diplomat, teacher and journalist of the Empire of Brazil. Rio Branco's work in the press, highlighting threats posed by the armed conflicts in the Platine republics (Argentina and Uruguay), attracted the attention of Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, who invited him to act as secretary on a diplomatic mission to Montevideo. In 1869, he dispatched to Paraguay, this time to negotiate an end to its war with Brazil. In 1871, Rio Branco became the president of the Council of Ministers for the first time. He would become the Council's longest-serving president, and his cabinet the second longest, in Brazilian history. His government was marked by a time of economic prosperity and the enactment of several necessary reforms. The most important of these initiatives was the Rio Branco Law, which granted freeborn status to children born to slave women. Rio Branco died in 1880 and was widely mourned throughout the country. He is regarded by most historians as one of Brazil's greatest statesmen.
To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.
The September 11 terrorist attacks were a major turning point in George Bush's presidency. That evening, he addressed the nation from the Oval Office, promising a strong response to the attacks but emphasizing the need for the nation to come together and comfort the families of the victims. On September 14, he visited Ground Zero, meeting with MayorRudy Giuliani, firefighters, police officers, and volunteers. Bush addressed the gathering via a megaphone while standing on a heap of rubble, to much applause:
“
I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
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