BOOKS
THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST LIBERALISM, CONTD .
Conservatism as a social philosophy is being erected anew in
America, on the foundation laid by Edmund Burke. As a political move–
ment, conservatism is nothing new; but the budding theoretical con–
servatives have separated themselves from conservative politicians; Taft
and Bricker are not their spokesmen.
Many of the objections to contemporary liberalism are well founded:
there are "totalitarian liberals," "muddle-headed liberals," "do-good
liberals"-who have lost the liberal tradition as surely as Bricker has
lost the conservative. I hope, each time I open a new booP by a con–
servative, that I will find a plea for community, for the idea of the
nation as a way of life, for habituation to law and the acceptance of
obligation. I hope to see a treatment of social problems that will be
political in the large sense, making politics the principle and context of
social behavior, and morals the base of politics. Such a book is needed.
To be effective, it should expose the illusions of the mass-mind and the
sophistry of cheap politics; it should have its roots in Greek thought
and it should grow toward the future.
But the new conservatism is disappointing. Its ideas are unanalyzed
and its grasp on current reality is feeble.
It
should be radical, in the
etymological sense of going to the roots, being primary, thoroughgoing.
And it should recognize that the best liberal thought of our day has ac–
cepted much of the conservative correction and reached tentatively for
a synthesis. Unfortunately, the new conservatism distorts the writings
of the liberals as fully as the Marxists do, so that most of its criticism
is beside the point.
Conservatism and liberalism are the two great democratic traditions.
Under the pressure of political defeat, liberalism may now refurbish
its theory; conservatism, pushed to the wall for a number of years, has
already started to do so. But the conservative revival will amount to
little without the imagination and skill to apply its principles to current
problems in a way that will not only conserve, but create.
1 THE CONSERVATIVE MIND. From Burke to Santayana. By Russell
Kirk. Henry Regnery Company. $6.50.
