attack rather than an admission, is advanced by the radical camp. "We liberals," they say, "are in- terested in people. Our concern is with human beings, while you Conservatives are preoccupied with the preservation of economic privilege and status." Take them a step further, and the Lib- erals will turn the accusations into a class argu- ment: it is the little people that concern us, not the "malefactors of great wealth." Such statements, from friend and foe alike, do great injustice to the Conservative point of view. Conservatism is not an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man's material well- being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place -- that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role. The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man's nature. The Conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect the superior side of man's na- ture, and thus take precedence over his economic wants. Conservatism therefore looks upon the en- -10- |