The Forgotten Conservative

In a recent, widely read symposium in The New Criterion, a range of thinkers debated what American conservatism should now do. Conservatism, as you may know, is in a state of flux and tumult. In his contribution, Charles Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, offered substantive guidance, critiqued certain contributors for overwrought ideas, but also closed with the admonition that many of the so-called New Right conservatives understand very little of what they think they are deposing. That is, they really don’t know what brought American conservatism into being, nor do they really understand the arguments that have shaped it, and why progressivism’s centralization of power and pulverization of civil society have been chiefly the two things that conservatism has set itself against.