Conservatism

“One might readily identify The Conservative Mind as seven books rather than as one. While the first four editions possess a righteous anger about them… the last three editions carry a more comfortable feel.

“Today that “fusionism” is being challenged by a new kind of conservatism that favors big government, a centrally controlled economy, and nationalistic populism. As Republicans try to sort out what kind of conservatives they are, an important strain of the coalition that Reagan brought together risks being overlooked: the cultural conservatives.” - Gene Veith

“Merging Christianity and conservatism will compromise the purity of the gospel. So the editors of this edition of FrontLine decided to frame the question this way: ‘Is Conservatism Enough?’ Enough for what?

“In a recent column for The New York Times, Ezra Klein proclaims that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have killed the ‘vibe shift.’ The cultural momentum that conservatives gained post-pandemic, particularly in the last year of the Biden presidency, is gone, Klein writes.

“The post-liberals are not wrong to point out many of the serious limits of theoretical or philosophical liberalism. Nor are they wrong that liberalism has been increasingly defined by excessive individualism, contempt for tradition and traditional wisdom…. But the post-liberals tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater.” - American Mind

“When the young and activist militants on the disaffected Right reduce Winston Churchill to the status of a dangerous forerunner of neoconservative foreign policy, or see in Ronald Reagan nothing but a sterile libertarianism—ignoring his courage and determination to defeat the scourge of communist totalitarianism, and his eloquent appeals to faith, community, and patriotic devotion to country—or facilely dismiss the pugnacious and brilliant William F. Buckley, Jr.

“Insofar as movement conservatism has followed the incentives of this mass politics, incessantly focused on winning national elections, it has taken the ‘popular conservative’ instinct that Kirk identified and redirected it in the direction of personal grievance and collective projects.

“Teaching the Virtues is not only a fine introduction to a conservative tradition animated by a regard for the Permanent Things, but also a promise of more to come. It is the first book published by a new imprint of the Russell Kirk Center, Mecosta House.” - Providence

“The meaning of American conservatism is perhaps more hotly contested today than at any other point in the movement’s history.” - L&L