Anton and the Claremonsters

Twenty-one years ago, Charles Kesler criticized conservatism for being insufficiently political and insufficiently American. Neither libertarianism nor traditionalism was comfortable making claims about justice and injustice, preferring to wage their battles on grounds of economic efficiency and historical precedent. Neither variety was true to the Founders' thought and practice. Accordingly, conservatism had surrendered two of the most potent terms of American political debate, equality and justice, to the Left—a bit like tying not one, but both hands behind one's back. Kesler's prescription: conservatism must become more political by becoming more American, by rediscovering the Founders' conservatism, a republicanism of equal natural rights. This entailed recovering the entire tradition of political philosophy. Here, Kesler was following Harry Jaffa, the founder of West Coast Straussianism. For Jaffa, the Founders (and their true son Lincoln) had established the best practicable regime under modern conditions, a regime Aristotle and Locke alike would approve of. Jaffa downplayed (without denying) three typically Straussian tensions: that between ancients and moderns, between reason and revelation, and between philosophy and politics.