The 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, who opposed the French Revolution but supported the American Revolution, is credited as one of the forefathers of Western 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.
It first contested Alberta's 2008 provincial election, and was able to capture seven percent of the popular vote but failed to win a seat in the Legislative Assembly. Support for the party rose sharply in 2009 as voters grew increasingly frustrated with the government, resulting in a surprise win by outgoing leader Paul Hinman in an October by-election. The party's popularity continued to increase when in the fall of 2009, Danielle Smith won election as leader, and by December 2009, the Wildrose Alliance was the leading party in opinion polls with 39 percent support, 14 points ahead of both the governing Progressive Conservatives (PCs) and the opposition Liberals. Wildrose's caucus has grown to four members, after two former PC members of the Legislative Assemblydefected in January 2010 and an independent MLA joined the party in June 2010.
Here we get on track of what conservatism is. We must carefully observe the strength of Falkland's language. He does not say that when it is not necessary to change, it is expedient or advisable not to change; he says it is necessary not to change. Very well, then, the differentiation of conservatism rests on the estimate of necessity in any given case. Thus conservatism is purely an ad hoc affair; its findings vary with conditions, and are good for this day and train only. Conservatism is not a body of opinion, it has no set platform or creed, and hence, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a hundred-per-cent conservative group or party — Mr. Justice McReynolds and Mr. Baker may stand at ease. Nor is conservatism an attitude of sentiment. Dickens's fine old unintelligent characters who "kept up the barrier, sir, against modern innovations" were not conservatives. They were sentimental obstructionists, probably also obscurantists, but not conservatives.
Nor yet is conservatism the antithesis of radicalism; the antithesis of radical is superficial. Falkland was a great radical; he was never for a moment caught by the superficial aspect of things. A person may be as radical as you please, and still may make an extremely conservative estimate of the force of necessity exhibited by a given set of conditions. A radical, for example, may think we should get on a great deal better if we had an entirely different system of government, and yet, at this time and under conditions now existing, he may take a strongly conservative view of the necessity for pitching out our system, neck and crop, and replacing it with another. He may think our fiscal system is iniquitous in theory and monstrous in practice, and be ever so sure he could propose a better one, but if on consideration of all the circumstances he finds that it is not necessary to change that system, he is capable of maintaining stoutly that it is necessary notto change it. The conservative is a person who considers very closely every chance, even the longest, of "throwing out the baby with the bath-water," as the German proverb puts it, and who determines his conduct accordingly.
— Albert Jay Nock, A Little Conserva-tive in The Atlantic Monthly (October 1936)
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