Anti-revolutionary not contra-revolutionary

The term 'anti-revolutionary', as Groen Van Prinsterer said many times, may not be narrowed down to protection of governmental authority against anarchistic threats. For the term includes an openness to any criticism which has as its aim a more responsible functioning of authority as true service; and it also includes an active working for the realization of that kind of authority.

When for examle, active resistance grows aganist governments of certain South American countries which allow social injustices to exist and afford protection only to the strong, then this resistance may very well be an expression of the upholding-in-deed of governmental authority, even if it manifests itself in the sharpest possible criticism of those in power. In circumstances such as these the words of Groen become fully actual again, even for 'anti-revolutionaries': "I must even be jealous of the title revolutionary, as soon as revolution means a just reformation according to the demands of the time and circumstances" (1847). One who blocks the reformation of authority under these circumstances must be called-using Groen's own words- a contra-revolutionary, not an anti-revolutionary because he doesn't choose the side of a just but of an unjust exercise of authority.

Bob Goudzwaard A Christian Political Option p.37