Defining Conservatism Down

[Kire]

Defining Conservatism Down

As the Right’s popularity has grown, its intellectual challenge to the Left has diminished.

by Austin Bramwell
August 29, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative

Had conservatism a Cassandra, she might, amidst the current mood of triumph, point out that whereas 50 years ago the American Right boasted several political theorists destined to exert a lasting influence, today it has not one to its credit. In the 1950s and ’60s, James Burnham, Richard Weaver, Leo Strauss, Harry Jaffa, Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, and Willmoore Kendall (among others) were all at the apex of their powers. No figure of similar stature remains.

To be sure, this does not mean that conservatism has gone into intellectual decline. We may, on the contrary, be living through the high summer of conservative ideas in America. If in 1950 all the right-wing intellectuals in America could fit into a single living room, today they could fill Madison Square Garden; if in 1950 one could read their combined monthly output in a single sitting, today one could not possibly keep abreast of the voluminous popular and scholarly literature that they produce. From journalism, politics, and law to religion, economics, and international relations, self-identified right-wingers abound.

Nonetheless, while the American Right may not have been losing candlepower, it has been deploying it in different ways. A half century ago, Willmoore Kendall proclaimed that he would become the American Burke. He meant at least three things: first, that America had lacked a genius to trace for all time the lineaments of an American conservative tradition; second, that an American conservative tradition nonetheless existed; and, third, and that he alone could midwife it into self-consciousness.

Nor was Kendall alone. Several of his coevals were contending to become the Father of American Conservatism. Russell Kirk made the cover of Time after The Conservative Mind rediscovered—some would say imagined—a Burkean sensibility in American politics. Others, imbued with Cold War foreboding, sought to define all that European civilization stood for in the hope of averting what they called the “crisis of the West.” In their warnings against liberalism and socialism, Richard Weaver, Whittaker Chambers, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin assumed the prophetic office. “Put away thine abominations,” they warned, “lest the Lord’s fury come forth like fire.”

More: http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_08_29/cover.html

[wli]

1. "conservatism" is fascist genocidal mania

The entire ideology is a crime against humanity. Every last one of them should stand trial for it.