They defended a Protestant faith, an aristocratic political order, and, at most, a limited monarchy. There he predicted that the French Revolution would degenerate into terror and dictatorship. Authority preserves traditions which contain the accumulated wisdom and experience of past generations. It is tampered with at our peril. Frenzied 'theorizing' revolutionaries waste these treasures.
Authority permits human beings to evolve while preserving the inheritance of past civilization.
Legitimate authority, founded on centuries of evolution, is preferable to the system of naked power manufactured by rationalist revolutionaries. The authoritarian preservation of established morality is superior to the license of permissive libertarianism . The tension between the absolutism of de Maistre's reactionary conservatism and Burke's evolutionism illustrates a standard division among conservatives. European and North American liberals, who reject the reactionary conservatives' assumptions about the unquestionable merits of ancient authority and religious tradition, have, nonetheless, often found common cause with conservatives in defence of authority, sharing the belief that order, stability and traditional family values are essential for the rule of law and the development of a free but disciplined market order. However, a fundamental chasm endures between conservatives and liberals.