Against the Swedenization of America

Imagine a foreign visitor who has learned just one fact about America: For the past century our politics has been defined by a contest between two movements, one intermittently calling itself “progressive” and the other more consistently calling itself “conservative.” He would rightly conclude from those labels that partisans of the two movements agree that the arc of history bends toward progressivism and away from conservatism. Progressives, that is, believe they have history’s wind in their sails. They constitute, in that sense, the party of the future. Conservatives, on the other hand, are committed to the stewardship and transmission of a legacy that is both vulnerable, thereby requiring conservation, and valuable, thereby deserving it. Conservatives thus constitute the party of the past.