Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought

Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought.

THE DREAM WALKS AGAIN

As the Reagan Presidency enters its final months, a specter is haunting conservatives: the specter of a return to the wilderness. Whether the next occupant of the White House be an unreconstructed McGovernite from Massachusetts or the incumbent Vice President from Texas, increasing numbers of conservatives fear that the new Administration will not be theirs and that political initiative in the Nineties will return to their foes on the Left. Like aging New Dealers after the passing of Franklin Roosevelt, anxious Reaganites have begun to lament that the euphoria of 1981 may not recur in their lifetimes.

The mounting restiveness in conservatives’ ranks transcends their immediate political prospects. As the unifying and invigorating struggles of the early 1980s recede from consciousness, disturbing signs of sectarianism have begun to afflict an always multifarious movement. Spreading, too, among older conservative leaders is the unsettling conviction that far too many “third generation” activists are insufficiently grounded in the historical and philosophical sources of their beliefs. Thus the Heritage Foundation has instituted graduate-level seminars for young rightists on such topics as “Classics of Twentieth-Century Conservatism”–surely an unusual project for a public-policy think tank to undertake. Thus the Intercollegiate Studies Institute has revived its summer-school program for college students–and has been overwhelmed by the response.

Meanwhile evidence accumulates that Academe, never very hospitable to conservative intellectuals and their world view, is becoming even more antagonistic. What do conservatives stand for if not the preservation of the best in Western civilization? And yet, this spring, in a decision of devastating symbolism, one of the trend-setting universities in the country abandoned its required “Western Culture” course for freshmen, and replaced it with something called “Cultures, Ideas, and Values.” Dropping many Western classics from the reading list, the new course will instead emphasize “cultural diversity” and “cultural interaction”–as if the best way for students to learn more about other cultures is to learn less about their own. As the American academy shows increasing signs of sclerosis, the need becomes more imperative to develop alternative means by which at least a Remnant may be educated.

At this critical juncture in the nation’s political and intellectual journey, it is singularly fitting that William F. Buckley Jr. has compiled an anthology of modern American conservative thought, with the able assistance of Charles R. Kesler, a frequent contributor to NATIONAL REVIEW. Although officially a revised edition of American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century (published in 1970), the volume at hand is essentially new. Less than one-third of the material appearing in the 1970 edition is reprinted here, enabling the editors to assemble a fresh, updated, and, in Kesler’s words, “representative selection of the best of American conservative thought.”

Usually, when one inspects an anthology, a few of its components seem marginal. Not here: every one of this hefty volume’s 26 selections truly belongs. Here one finds seminal essays and excerpts from books by such luminaries of the post-1945 conservative renaissance as Richard Weaver, Friedrich Hayek, James Burnham, Milton Friedman, and Russell Kirk. Here, too, are generous samplings from some of the Right’s leading political philosophers (Strauss, Voegelin, Kendall, and Jaffa, among others), as well as such influential younger thinkers as Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, and George Will. The neoconservative impulse is represented by Norman Podhoretz and Jeane Kirkpatrick (although not, oddly enough, by Irving Kristol). And topping off the confection are sublime and moving contributions by Whittaker Chambers and Albert Jay Nock.

Reading this impressive collection prompts many thoughts. First, one is struck anew by the philosophic introspection, literary breadth, and historical learning of most of the contributors. As their frequent and unforced allusions to ancient and modern figures attest, these are individuals who are genuinely at home in Western civilization. For them our heritage matters; it can teach. One wonders whether an anthology of modern liberal thought would disclose the same attributes in such abundance.

Moreover, while some of the essays in the Buckley/Kesler volume are polemical, and nearly all are marked by certitude that the West’s very survival is at stake, entirely absent from these pages are the rancor and shrillness that one associates with ideologues. One does not detect here the pent-up bitterness that seems to drive so many of conservatism’s enemies on the Left.

Keeping the Tablets is more than a timely compendium of estimable writings, however. As part of its scholarly apparatus, Buckley has reprinted “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?” (his introduction to the 1970 edition). In it he recounts some of the treacherous intellectual shoals through which the good ship NATIONAL REVIEW navigated in its early years. His essay contains an important lesson in prudence.

Charles Kesler’s introduction is differently focused and more ambitious. After identifying the principal intellectual components of the conservative Grand Alliance, he addresses the disconcerting fact that, for all its recent victories and hard-won status, American conservatism “cannot claim to be successful.” A former student (and now a colleague) of Harry Jaffa at Claremont McKenna College, Kesler contends that conservatism has fallen short because it “has not yet learned the vernacular of American politics”–above all, the teaching of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” According to Kesler, too many conservatives have denied “the first principles of the American founding” and have permitted liberals to pervert the Declaration’s true meaning. Thus Kesler has fired a new salvo in one of the longest-running internal battles on the American Right.

Not surprisingly, the contents of Keeping the Tablets to some degree reflect Kesler’s desire to remedy what he sees as conservatism’s deficiencies. More than the 1970 edition, the volume at hand deliberately emphasizes the continuing intellectual fissures on the Right–in order, says Kesler, “to spur the rethinking and crystallization of conservatism’s first principles.” Thus, for example, Willmoore Kendall’s strictures on Abraham Lincoln and the equality principle are immediately followed by Harry Jaffa’s rejoinder. In a subtle way this anthology attempts not just to represent modern conservatism but to further its self-definition.

Needless to say, many readers of NATIONAL REVIEW will not be persuaded by Kesler’s diagnosis and will be quick to propound other explanations for conservatism’s tenuous ascendancy. But in one sense, at least, his point clearly seems well taken: if conservatives are to prevail in the public arena, they must speak in recognizably American terms. Surely the ability to do this accounts in part for the success of postwar conservatism’s most popular political embodiment, Ronald Reagan, and his continuing hold on America’s affections. Whatever its limitations, his rhetoric and vocabulary are undeniably indigenous–hence comprehensible by everyday people leading everyday, untheoretical lives.

Indeed, after reading Buckley and Kesler’s volume one has precisely this wish: that it somehow could have been even longer and have incorporated more essays in applied conservatism–conservatism accessible to grassroots America. Of all the contributions to this volume, only Joseph Sobran’s “The Abortion Culture” discusses the religious and social issues that have mobilized millions and made possible the Reagan Presidency. Similarly, no contributor confronts head-on the two most revolutionary intellectual currents of our era: feminism and environmentalism. Both have had far more impact on American law and mores than postwar conservatism so far has–a matter worth sober reflection.

How one wishes also that there had been room for the now-classic essay “Goodbye to All That” by the ex-New Leftists Peter Collier and David Horowitz. And if conservatism be best understood in contrast to its principal domestic adversary, one wishes that the editors could have stretched their volume to include James Burnham’s unforgettable dissection of secular liberalism in Chapter 15 of Suicide of the West.

But all anthologies necessarily have their limits. As it happened, the editors of this one were obliged to drop eight essays from their final selection. In any case, this reader’s yearning for even more delectables on the menu does not diminish the feast put before us. Keeping the Tablets is indeed just that: a veritable picnic spread of wisdom and purposive scholarship.

Contemplating its varied riches reminds us of one thing more. The conservative intellectual movement since 1945 has become in a way like a hand, comprising five separate yet associated digits: traditionalist, libertarian, anti-Communist, neoconservative, and New Right. If any one of these is severed and removed, or tries to function to the exclusion of others, the hand as a whole loses effectiveness.

In this season of conservative discontent, then, as the American Right gropes for its compass, those within it who seek to rediscover their heritage now have an excellent place to begin. Buckley and Kesler deserve our thanks–and our readership.

Author:	Nash, George H.
Publication:	National Review
Article Type:	Book Review
Date:	Aug 5, 1988

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Keeping+the+Tablets:+Modern+American+Conservative+Thought-a06542234