The conservative intellectual movement in America was forged in fierce dispute with its opponent to the left. Indeed, many of conservatism's founding texts—Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom, Whittaker Chambers's Witness, Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences—were written as broadsides against the perceived leftward tendencies of a world in disarray. It is little wonder, then, that much of the commentary on conservatism has been polemical.
Nonetheless, the movement has also attracted the attention of sympathetic scholars. Foremost among them is George H. Nash, chronicler of the American Right's ideas for nearly 50 years. Despite his own conservatism, however, Nash insists that he is not a cheerleader for the cause, only its historian. Nash sees his task as telling the story of American conservatives without inserting his preconceived notions or moral judgments into the narrative. “Objectivity,” Nash tells me, “is an ideal to be worked toward, to be aspired to, although I recognize that no one will ever achieve perfect objectivity.”
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