Conservatism joins liberalism and socialism as the third of three rival ideological movements spreading throughout the Western countries following the American and French Revolutions. They are three separate bodies of thought, three separate views of the individual in relation to the state, and three separate sources of party, program and policy.

The conservatism matrix has to be constructed around the organic society and the relation of each individual to it. The vertical axis is concerned with the reaction of conservatism against rationalism, secularism and the romance with individualism. The horizontal axis concentrates on the nature and character of social cohesion. At one extreme is order, so important as to be canonic, “transcendent order.” On the opposite point of the horizontal axis is trust. Once there is established order, change can be accepted, if there is demonstration that it has already become a part of the community. This is the essence of trust.

The LLQ is the pre-conservatism quadrant, an ideology in the making. Converting loosely joined, primitive populations into an integrated society with hope of order could not wait for prescription, usage, history. Primitive governments needed trust in order to spread trust. And this required appeals to the transempirical worlds of mystery and charisma. The ULQ is the essence of Burkean conservatism as a recognized body of political thought. Burke rejected as radical such Lockean, Rousseauean formulations as natural right and natural law in favor of law as governance itself, resting on established and proven earthly authority. Thus, on the basis of trust born of convention, tradition and prudence, a hierarchy would govern and its regime would be aristocracy. The URQ has been for two centuries the quadrant of organized, self-conscious conservatism. The doctrinal/educational emphasis was the strength and the weakness of the conservative parties. While Socialist parties combined doctrine with parliamentary control, conservatives, including Catholic conservatives, resisted explicitly organized politics because of restraints on their organizational life coming from religious centers, especially the Catholic church. Although a tendency or culminating point in all four quadrants, conservatism comes closest to genuine radicalism in the LRQ. The purpose or goal of conservative thought in this quadrant is to build a nation. Nation becomes nation-state whenever the components of nationalism (Folk as race and Folk as nation; Roman culture as nation; heroes and sacrifice as nation) legitimizes the claim to rule. In its most radical form, this type of conservatism has been known as fascism.