The 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, who opposed the French 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.
The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.
—Simone Weil, "The Power of Words" in Selected Essays 1934-1943 (1957)
On August 11, 1984, United StatesPresidentRonald Reagan, while running for re-election, was preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio. As a sound check prior to the address, Reagan made the following joke
to the radio technicians:
Though this was not the first time Reagan had joked prior to giving a speech or address, the Soviet official news agency, TASS, condemned the joke, declaring that "USSR condemns this unprecedentedly hostile attack of US President" and that "this kind of behaviour is incompatible with high responsibility the heads of nuclear states are bearing for the destinies of their own people and the mankind".
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