The future is bright for conservatives. If conservatism is understood as somehow a post-modern phenomenon, we will no longer labor under the tiresome accusation that we are on the wrong side of history and therefore irrelevant… In the late 1970s, if you had asked someone what a conservative was, the answer would have been easy. [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Mark C. Henrie, as he explores Russell Kirk’s understanding of the American Constitutional founding. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher In the very first Federalist paper, Alexander Hamilton claimed that at stake in the process of American constitution-making was a matter of world-historical importance. He [...]
Two decades ago, George Nash, in his The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945,[1] told the story of how American conservatism was forged rather uneasily as a political movement from three intellectual groupings: traditionalists, libertarians, and anti-communists. Today on the conventional “Right,” however, we find many libertarians who argue as vigorously against the opponents of [...]
In the very first Federalist paper, Alexander Hamilton claimed that at stake in the process of American constitution-making was a matter of world-historical importance. He wrote that the outcome of the American experiment would determine “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they [...]
As Sigmund Freud never said, the great unanswered question is: “What do conservatives want?” You must confess that it is a genuine question, because the characteristic conservative stance for the past two centuries has been one of opposition. We are more clear, and unified, about what we oppose than by what we propose. Stephen Holmes, in his [...]
It is a commonplace that the defining characteristic of that characteristically modern literary form, the novel, is a concern for the revelation of the inner life of the ordinary man. Hence, the frequent use at first of the device of diaries or letters (e.g. in Richardson’s Clarissa and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe) culminating in the stream [...]