Classical composers not so PC

At the Political Compass website I came across this interesting chart on the political views of some of the leading classical composers.

Given the overwhelmingly left-liberal orientation of nearly all popular musicians it's refreshing to see some diversity of political opinion among the old-school.

My Views on Conservative and Centrist Politics

The key aspects of good conservative and centrist politics in my view are:

- an acknowledgement of limits; common sense tells us we live in a finite world where population growth, economic activity and government bureaucracy need to have boundaries
- a sense of balance; perfect solutions do not exist, politics is about trade offs and the search for optimum balance
- respect for the opinions of non-experts; governments and public corporations cannot blatantly disregard the opinions of the majority in their decision making since experts are often wrong
- in policy-making, the burden of proof should lie with those who advocate radical change rather than with those who wish to work within the existing order (if it ain't broke don't fix it)
- recognition of human nature; human beings are born with strengths and weaknesses and cannot be perfected through education or ambitious social programmes
- government is better than anarchy- a civilised, industrialised society cannot survive without reasonably strong government.

Some important contributors to traditional conservative/centrist thought (past and present) :

Aristotle, Thorstein Veblen, Adam Smith, John Gray, Gareth Hardin, Edmund Burke, Thomas Malthus, Thomas Hobbes, Joseph Schumpeter, Joseph Conrad and Christopher Lasch.