Traditionalist Conservatism
Encyclopedia
Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditional conservatism," "traditionalism," "Burkean conservatism", "classical conservatism" and (in the United Kingdom
and Canada
), "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law
and transcendent moral order, tradition
, hierarchy
and organic unity
, agrarianism
, classicism
and high culture
, and the intersecting spheres of loyalty. Some traditionalists have embraced the labels "reactionary
" and "counterrevolutionary", defying the stigma that has attached to these terms since the Enlightenment
. Having a hierarchical view of society, many traditionalist conservatives, including a few Americans, defend the monarchical
political structure as the most natural and beneficial social arrangement.
Traditionalism— not being an exact political model— has existed since the inception of civilization; its contemporary expression, however, developed in 18th century Europe (particularly in response to the English Civil War
and the French Revolution
). Not until the mid-20th century did traditionalist conservatism in the United States begin to organize itself in earnest as an intellectual and political force. This more modern expression of traditionalist conservatism began among a group of U.S. university professors (labeled the "New Conservatives" by the popular press) who rejected the notions of individualism
, liberalism
, modernity
, and social progress
, promoted cultural and educational renewal, and revived interest in the Church
, the family, the state, local community, etc.
and transcendent moral order lay the foundation for traditionalist conservative thought. Reason and Divine Revelation inform natural law
and the universal truths of faith. It is through these universal truths of faith that man orders himself and the world around him. Mankind organized society on the basis of these universal truths of faith. The traditionalist holds axiomatic the belief that religion precedes civilization (vide, T. S. Eliot
's essays Christianity and Culture). Most traditionalist conservatives embrace High Church
Christianity
— e.g. T. S. Eliot
, an Anglo-Catholic — and Russell Kirk
— a Roman Catholic — and Rod Dreher
— an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Not all traditionalists, however, are High Church
Christians. Other traditionalists whose faith traditions are notable include Caleb Stegall
, who is an evangelical Protestant. Many conservative mainline Protestants are also traditionalist conservatives, including some of writers for Touchstone Magazine
. Many traditionalists are Jewish, such as the late Will Herberg
, Irving Louis Horowitz
, Mordecai Roshwald
, and Paul Gottfried
. A number of traditionalists are atheist.
and custom
guide man and his worldview. Each generation inherits the experience and culture of its ancestors and through convention and precedence man is able to inherit the culture of his ancestors and pass it down to his descendants. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, often regarded as the father of modern conservatism
: "The individual is foolish, but the species is wise."
(i.e., it always involves various interdependent inequalities, degrees, and classes and that political structures that recognize this fact prove the most just, thriving, and generally beneficial). Hierarchy allows for the preservation of the whole community simultaneously, instead of protecting one part at the expense of the others.
(i.e., preserving the small family farm, open land, the conservation of natural resource, and stewardship of the land) are central to a traditionalist's understanding of rural life.
who revere high culture
in all of its manifestations (e.g., literature, music, architecture, art, theater). Likewise, traditionalists shun low culture
and popular culture
, as well as what they regard as distortions of high culture such as modernism
.
or regional
community, traditionalists hold up patriotism
as a key principle. Traditionalist conservatives think that loyalty to a locality or region is more central than any commitment to a larger political entity. Traditionalists also welcome the value of subsidiarity
and the intimacy of one's community. Nationalism
, alternately, leads to jingoism and views the state as abstract from the local community and family structure rather than as an outgrowth of these local realities.
Traditionalist conservatism began with the thought of Anglo-Irish Whig
statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke
, whose political principles were rooted in moral natural law and the Western tradition. Burke believed in prescriptive rights and that those rights were "God-given". He also defended what he referred to as "ordered liberty" (best reflected in the unwritten law of the British constitutional monarchy). Burke also advocated for those transcendent values that found support in such institutions as the church, the family, and the state. He was a fierce critic of the principles behind the French Revolution
, and in 1790 his observations on its excesses and radicalism were collected in Reflections on the Revolution in France
. In Reflections he took to task the radical innovations of the revolutionaries, such as the "Rights of Man". American social critic and historian Russell Kirk
wrote that, "The Reflections burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes."
Burke's influence extended to later thinkers and writers both in his native Britain and in Continental Europe. Among those influenced by his thought were the English Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, William Wordsworth
, and Robert Southey
, Scottish Romantic author Sir Walter Scott, and the counter-revolutionaries writers, the French François-René de Chateaubriand
and Louis de Bonald, and the Savoyard Joseph de Maistre
. In the United States the Federalist Party and its leaders, such as President John Adams
and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton
, best represented Burke's legacy.
After Burke's traditionalist conservatism found its fiercest defenders in three "cultural conservatives" and "critics of material progress": Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, Thomas Carlyle
, and John Henry Newman.
According to traditionalist scholar Peter Viereck, Coleridge and his associate and fellow poet William Wordsworth
began as supporters of the French Revolution
and the radical utopianism it spawned. But by 1798 their collection of poems, Lyrical Ballads had rejected the Enlightenment
thesis of reason over faith and tradition. Coleridge's later writings, including Lay Sermons (1816), Biographia Literaria (1817), and Aids to Reflection (1825) justified traditional conservative positions on hierarchy and organic society, criticism of materialism and the merchant class, the need for "inner growth" that is rooted in a traditional and religious culture. Coleridge was a firm believer in social institutions and a harsh critic of Jeremy Bentham and his Utilitarian philosophy.
Writer, historian, and essayist Thomas Carlyle
was also an early traditionalist thinker, defending medieval notions such as aristocracy, hierarchy, organic society, and class unity over socialism and the "cash nexus" of laissez-faire
capitalism
. According to Carlyle, the "cash nexus" was when social relationships were merely reduced to economic gain. A champion of the poor, Carlyle believed that the fabric of British society was being threatened by mobs, plutocrats, socialists, and others who wanted to exploit them and perpetuate class resentment. A devotee of Germanic culture and Romanticism
, Carlyle is most known for his writings Sartor Rasartus (1833–1834) and Past and Present (1843).
In the mid-19th century the Church of England
experienced a "catholic revival" in the form of the Oxford Movement
, a religious movement designed to restore the Catholic nature of Anglicanism. Led by John Keble
, Edward Pusey, and John Henry Newman, the Tractarians (so called for the publication of their Tracts for the Times
) condemned religious liberalism while defending "dogma, ritual, poetry, [and] tradition". Like Coleridge and Carlyle, Newman (who became a Roman Catholic in 1845 and eventually a Cardinal in the Church) and the Tractarians were critical of material progress, or the notion that wealth, prosperity, and economic gain were the sum of human existence.
Culture and the arts were also important to British traditionalist conservatives and two of the most prominent defenders of tradition in culture and the arts were Matthew Arnold
and John Ruskin
.
Matthew Arnold
, a poet and cultural critic, is best known for his poetry and literary, social, and religious criticism. His book Culture and Anarchy (1869) took on the middle-class Victorian values of the day (Arnold viewed middle class tastes in literature as "philistinism")and argued for a return to the classical literature of the past. Arnold also viewed with skepticism the plutocratic grasping in socioeconomic affairs which Coleridge, Carlyle, and the Oxford Movement
criticized.
One of the themes that traditionalist conservatives have consistently reiterated has been the theme that industrial capitalism is as questionable as the classical liberalism
which spawned it. Carrying on in this tradition was cultural and artistic critic John Ruskin
, a medievalist who called himself a "Christian socialist" and cared much for standards in culture, the arts, and society. For Ruskin (as with all the 19th century cultural conservatives), the Industrial Revolution
had fomented dislocation, rootlessness, and the mass urbanization of the poor. In his art criticism he wrote The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), which took on the Classical tradition while defending Gothic art and architecture. His other works included The Seven Lamps of Architecture and Unto This Last (1860).
In politics the ideas of Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, and other traditionalist conservatives were distilled into the policies and philosophy of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli in his younger years was an opponent of middle class capitalism and the industrial policies that were promoted by the "Manchester liberals" (The Reform Bill and the Corn Laws). Seeking a way to alleviate the suffering of the urban poor in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Disraeli sought out to unify the nation by way of "One Nation Conservatism," where a coalition of aristocrats and the common working man would unite to stave off the influences of the liberal middle class. This new coalition would serve as a way to work with the enfranchised masses while grounding them in "ancient conservative traditions". Disraeli's ideas (including his criticism of Utilitarianism) found fruit in the "Young England" movement and in writings such as "Vindication of the English Constitution" (1835), "The Radical Tory" (1837), and his "social novels" Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845). A few years later his "One Nation Conservatism" found new life in the "Tory Democracy" of Lord Randolph Churchill
and in the early 21st century in the "Progressive Conservatism" of the Red Tory
thesis of British philosopher Phillip Blond
.
In the early 20th century traditionalist conservatism found its defenders through the efforts of Hilaire Belloc
, G. K. Chesterton
and other proponents of the socioeconomic system they advocated: distributism
. Originating in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum
, distributism employed the concept of subsidiarity
as a "third way" solution to the twin "evils" of socialism and capitalism. It favors local economies, small business, the agrarian way of life, and craftsmen and artists. In such books as Belloc's The Servile State (1912), Economics for Helen (1924), and An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936) and Chesterton's The Outline of Sanity (1926), traditional communities that echoed those found in the Middle Ages were advocated and big business and big government condemned. In the United States distributist ideas were embraced by the journalist Herbert Agar
, Catholic activist Dorothy Day
, economist E. F. Schumacher
and were comparable to the work of Wilhelm Roepke.
A champion of the Western tradition and orthodox Christian culture, T. S. Eliot
was also arguably the "last great poet of the English language." Known for his poem "The Waste Land
", Eliot was a political reactionary who used modernist literary means for traditionalist ends. His After Strange Gods (1934) and Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948) align with the grand tradition of Christian humanism extending back to Edmund Burke
, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, Thomas Carlyle
, John Ruskin
, G. K. Chesterton
, and Hilaire Belloc
. Educated by Irving Babbitt
and George Santayana
at Harvard University, Eliot was friends with Allen Tate
and Russell Kirk
.
Praised by T. S. Eliot as the most powerful intellectual influence in Britain, historian Christopher Dawson
is a key figure in 20th century traditionalism. Central to his work was the idea that religion was at the heart of every culture, especially Western culture, and his writings, including The Age of Gods (1928), Religion and Culture (1948), and Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950), reflected this view. A contributor to Eliot's Criterion
, Dawson believed that after World War II, religion and culture were central to rebuilding the West in the wake of fascism
and the rise of communism
.
Burkean traditionalism was transported to the American colonies through the policies and principles of the Federalist Party and its leadership as embodied by John Adams
and Alexander Hamilton
. Federalists opposed the French Revolution, defended traditional Christian morality, and supported a new "natural aristocracy" based on "property, education, family status, and sense of ethical responsibility."
Former U.S. President John Adams
was probably one of the earliest defenders of a traditional social order in Revolutionary America. In his Defence of the Constitution (1787) Adams attacked the ideas of radicals like Thomas Paine
, who advocated for a unicameral legislature (Adams deemed it too democratic). His translation of Discourses on Davila (1790), which also contained his own commentary, was an examination of "human motivation in politics". Adams believed that that human motivation inevitably led to dangerous impulses where the government would need to sometimes intervene.
The leader of the Federalist Party was Alexander Hamilton
, former Secretary of the Treasury and co-author of The Federalist Papers (1787–1788), a series of newspaper tracts designed to influence the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Hamilton was critical of both Jeffersonian classical liberalism and the radical ideas coming out of the French Revolution. He rejected laissez-faire economics, favored a strong central government, and like Adams, opposed slavery.
In the era after the Revolutionary Generation, the Whig Party
(successors to the Federalists) came to represent Burkean conservatism in America. Whig statesmen led the charge for tradition and custom against the prevailing democratic ethos of the Jacksonian Era. Standing for hierarchy and organic society, in many ways their concepts of the Union paralleled Benjamin Disraeli's "One Nation Conservatism".
For many the most noteworthy Whig statesman (aside from Henry Clay
) was New England
politician, lawyer, and orator Daniel Webster
. A firm Unionist, his most famous speech was his "Second Reply to Hayne" (1829) where he criticized the argument from Southerners such as John C. Calhoun
that the states had a right to nullify the Constitution and therefore were more important than the federal republic as a whole.
Webster's intellectual and political heir was Rufus Choate
, another Whig statesman who was also an ardent disciple of Edmund Burke
. Choate was a part of the emerging legal culture in New England
, centered around the newly formed Harvard Law School
. He believed that lawyers were preservers and conservers of the Constitution and that it was the duty of the educated to govern political institutions. Choate's most famous address was "The Position and Functions of the American Bar, as an Element of Conservatism in the State" (1845).
Two figures in the Northern antebellum period were what Emory University
professor Patrick Allitt referred to as the "Guardians of Civilization": George Ticknor
and Edward Everett
.
George Ticknor
, a Dartmouth
-educated academic at Harvard, was the chief purveyor of humane learning in the Boston area. A founder of the Boston Public Library
and the scion of an old Federalist family, Ticknor educated his students in Romance languages and the works of Dante and Cervantes at home while promoting America abroad to his many international friends, including Lord Byron and Talleyrand.
Edward Everett
, like Ticknor, was educated at the same German university (Goettigen). He advocated for the U.S. to follow same virtues as the ancient Greeks and eventually went into politics as a Whig. A firm Unionist (like his friend Daniel Webster
), Everett deplored the Jacksonian Democracy that swept the nation. A famed orator in his own right, he supported Lincoln against Southern secession.
American Catholic journalist and political theorist (and former political and religious radical) Orestes Brownson is best known for writing The American Republic, a treatise examining how America fulfills Catholic tradition and Western Civilization. Brownson was critical of both the Northern abolitionists and the Southern secessionists and was himself a solid Unionist.
In the 20th century traditionalist conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic centered around two publications: the Bookman
and the American Review. Owned and edited by the eccentric Seward Collins
, these journals published the writings of the British Distributists, the New Humanists, the Southern Agrarians, T. S. Eliot
, Christopher Dawson
, et al. Eventually, Collins drifted towards support of fascism, and as a result lost the support of many of his traditionalist backers. Despite the decline of the journal due to Collins' increasingly radical political views, the American Review left a profound mark on the history of traditionalist conservatism.
Another intellectual branch of early 20th century traditionalist conservatism was known as the New Humanism
. Led by Harvard University
professor Irving Babbitt
and Princeton University
professor Paul Elmer More
, the New Humanism
was a literary and social criticism movement that opposed both romanticism
and naturalism. Beginning in the late 19th century, the New Humanism
defended artistic standards and "first principles" (Babbitt's phrase). Reaching an apogee in 1930, Babbitt and More published a variety of books including Babbitt's Literature and the American College (1908), Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), and Democracy and Leadership (1924) and More's Shelburne Essays (1904–1921).
One other group of traditionalist conservatives were the Southern Agrarians
. Originally a group of Vanderbilt University
poets and writers known as "the Fugitives" they included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate
, Donald Davidson
, and Robert Penn Warren
. Adhering to strict literary standards (Warren and traditionalist scholar Cleanth Brooks
later formulated a form of literary criticism known as the New Criticism), in 1930 some of the Fugitives joined other traditionalist Southern writers to publish I'll Take My Stand, which applied standards sympathetic to local particularism and the agrarian way of life to politics and economics. Condemning northern industrialism and commercialism, the "twelve southerners" who contributed to the book echoed earlier arguments made by the distributists. A few years after the publication of I'll Take My Stand, some of the Southern Agrarians
were joined by Hilaire Belloc
and Herbert Agar
in the publication of a new collection of essays entitled Who Owns America: A New Declaration of Independence.
The Southern Agrarians
had a great influence on New Conservative scholar Richard M. Weaver
and writer-farmer Wendell Berry
.
Other traditionalist conservative influences on the those who emerged in the 1940s and 1950s as "the New Conservatives" included Bernard Iddings Bell, Gordon Keith Chalmers, Grenville Clark, Peter Drucker, Will Herberg, and Ross J. S. Hoffman.
After the Second World War the first stirrings of a "traditionalist movement" took place. Among those who launched this movement (and in effect the larger Conservative Movement in America) was University of Chicago
professor Richard M. Weaver
. Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences
(1948) chronicled the steady erosion of Western cultural values since the Middle Ages
. In 1949, another professor, Peter Viereck
echoed the writings of Weaver with his Conservatism Revisited, which examined the conservative thought of Prince Klemens Metternich.
After Weaver and Viereck a flowering of conservative scholarship occurred starting with the publication of 1953's The New Science of Politics by Eric Voegelin
, 1953's The Quest for Community by Robert A. Nisbet, and 1955's Conservatism in America by Clinton Rossiter
. However, the book that defined the traditionalist school was 1953's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, written by Russell Kirk
, which gave a detailed analysis of the intellectual pedigree of Anglo-American traditionalist conservatism
.
When these thinkers appeared on the academic scene they became known for rebuking the progressive worldview inherent in an America comfortable with New Deal
economics, a burgeoning military-industrial complex, and a consumerist and commercialized citizenry. These conservative scholars and writers garnered the attention of the popular press of the time and before long they were collectively referred to as "the New Conservatives". Among this group were not only Weaver, Viereck, Voegelin, Nisbet, Rossiter, and Kirk but other lesser known thinkers such as John Blum, Daniel Boorstin, McGeorge Bundy, Thomas Cook, Raymond English, John Hallowell, Anthony Harrigan, August Heckscher, Milton Hindus, Klemens von Klemperer, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
, Richard Leopold, S. A. Lukacs, Malcolm Moos, Eliseo Vivas, Geoffrey Wagner, Chad Walsh, and Francis Wilson as well as Arthur Bestor, Mel Bradford
, C. P. Ives, Stanley Jaki
, John Lukacs
, Forrest McDonald
, Thomas Molnar
, Gerhard Neimeyer, James V. Schall, S.J., Peter J. Stanlis, Stephen J. Tonsor, and Frederick Wilhelmsen.
The acknowledged leader of the New Conservatives was independent scholar, writer, critic, and man of letters Russell Kirk
. Kirk was a key figure of the conservative movement: he was a friend to William F. Buckley, Jr.
, a columnist for National Review
, an editor and a syndicated columnist, and a historian and horror fiction writer. His most famous work was 1953's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (later republished as The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot). Kirk's writings and legacy are interwoven with the history of traditionalist conservatism, with his influence felt at the Heritage Foundation
, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
, and other conservative think tanks (most especially the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
).
The Conservative Mind was written by Kirk as a doctoral dissertation while he was a student at the St. Andrews University in Scotland
. Previously the author of a biography of American conservative John Randolph of Roanoke
, Kirk's The Conservative Mind had laid out six "canons of conservative thought" in the book, including:
Kirk goes on to examine the thought of a wide array of conservative thinkers, including Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke
, American Federalists John Adams
and Alexander Hamilton
, British literati Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and Robert Southey
, Southern conservatives John Randolph of Roanoke
and John Calhoun
, American Catholic
political thinker Orestes Brownson
, New England
writer Nathaniel Hawthorne
, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, British Catholic
John Henry Newman, American historian Henry Adams, scholars Irving Babbitt
, Paul Elmer More
, and George Santayana
, and Anglo-American poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot
.
and "educated for liberty" via the thought of such traditionalists as Richard M. Weaver
and Russell Kirk
. Through Kirk's influence (as well as other well known conservatives) it has been a center for traditionalist students, hosting lectures, symposiums, conferences, and debates and publishing journals such as Modern Age (periodical), The Intercollegiate Review, The Chesterton Review and The University Bookman as well as a variety of books by traditionalist scholars through its imprint, ISI Books. The president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
is T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr..
co-founded (with publisher Henry Regnery
) Modern Age, a conservative academic quarterly which for over fifty years has remained traditionalist in scope and has published various thinkers, such as Max Picard, Andrew Lytle, Richard M. Weaver
, Robert A. Nisbet, C. P. Ives, Ross Hoffman, and others. Historian George H. Nash has referred to Modern Age as "the principal quarterly of the intellectual right." Current Associate Editors include George W. Carey, Jude P. Dougherty, Jeffrey Hart, Thomas Molnar
, Marion Montgomery, Mordecai Roshwald
, Peter J. Stanlis, and Stephen J. Tonsor. Russell Kirk
was its editor for its first two years and from 1984 to 2007 its editor was literary critic George A. Panichas. The journal is now edited by R. V. Young
, who also serves as a contributor to another traditionalist publication, Touchstone Magazine
.
, Vice President for College Advancement and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Brewton-Parker College
; Dr. William Edmund Fahey, the President of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
; Bruce Frohnen
, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University, Pettit College of Law
and Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center; and Gary L. Gregg
, Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville
and director of the McConnell Center
.
In 1973 political scientist George W. Carey and James McClellan created "an annual review of books in the field of political science" entitled The Political Science Reviewer. Its current editor is Bruce Frohnen
and it is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
.
In 1974 Canadian Catholic priest Rev. Ian Boyd, C.S.B. created a quarterly journal for the International Chesterton Society. Called The Chesterton Review
, the publication "is dedicated to the exploration of the life and works of G.K. Chesterton and other writers who share a commitment to Chestertonian principles". The Review originally was based out of a Canadian college and then transferred to Seton Hall University
, where it came under the aegis of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for the Study for Faith and Culture. Among those who were the co-founders of the Institute were historian Dermot Quinn, editor and author Stratford Caldecott, and then ISI vice president Jeffrey O. Nelson.
1986 brought traditionalist reaction to Reagan Era
conservatism in the form of a symposium in The Intercollegiate Review. Referred to as "the state of conservatism", the symposium featured traditionalist scholars such as Mel Bradford
, Paul Gottfried
, Clyde Wilson, George A. Panichas, Gregory Wolfe, Russell Kirk
, Gerhart Niemeyer, and George W. Carey. The symposium looked at the rise of neoconservatives in the conservative movement and the centralization of Republican power in Washington in the Reagan Era.
In the 1980s traditionalist scholar Claes G. Ryn
and Joseph Baldacchino founded the National Humanities Institute
, a center for the study of the humanities from the conservative perspective which also publishes a bi-annual journal Humanitas
. Noted traditionalist scholars who serve on NHI's Academic Board include George W. Carey, Jude P. Dougherty, and Peter J. Stanlis. The National Humanities Institute
also operates the Center for Constitutional Studies and the Irving Babbitt Project.
In the mid-1990s, after the death of Russell Kirk
, the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
was founded by Kirk's widow, Annette Y. Kirk, and son-in-law, Dr. Jeffrey O. Nelson, to carry on his legacy. The Center offers seminars and residential fellowships and have a publishing arm. The Center also has an affiliate, the Edmund Burke Society of America, whose director is Dr. Ian Crowe.
and Robert Nisbet
began to pass on, and the second generation of "conservators" came to the fore the torch was also passed to members of the Baby Boom. This third generation, which could be referred to as the "Counter-Revolutionaries" fought to renew education and culture as the Culture Wars heated up and political correctness and multiculturalism emerged as new threats to conservative principles.
, W. Wesley McDonald
and others represented this next generation of traditionalists.
Beginning as a newsletter in the Chicago area in 1986, Touchstone Magazine
was founded by James Kushiner as a publication to unite Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic traditionalists. The journal received specific support from traditionalist icon Russell Kirk
in the early 1990s. Contributors include Rod Dreher
, R. V. Young
, Allan C. Carlson
, and Anthony Esolen.
In 1989 former Intercollegiate Review editor and Kirk assistant Gregory Wolfe founded Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion. Image
is published by Wolfe's Center for Religious Humanism.
A few years later the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society
, a socially conservative advocacy organization, was created by John Howard and Allan C. Carlson
. Howard was the founder of the paleoconservative Rockford Institute and Carlson was its former president.
, Rod Dreher
, Daniel Larison, and others, these traditionlists, largely from Generation X, proved to be a vanguard against both the progressives and the mainstream conservatives who were dominated by the neoconservatives and the Religious Right.
, Ellis Sandoz
's Eric Voegelin Institute and the Eric Voegelin Society, the New Centurion Program of the Conservative Institute, the Wilberforce Center for Colorado Statesmanship, the T. S. Eliot Society, the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, and the Free Enterprise Institute's Center for the American Idea
. A major funder of traditionalist programs, especially the Russell Kirk Center, is the Wilbur Foundation.
and the avant-garde
, which in turn are often linked with progressive
s and the left-wing. Postmodern writer and literary teorist John Barth
, said "I confess to missing, in apprentice seminars in the later 1970s and the 1980s, that lively Make-It-New spirit of the Buffalo Sixties. A roomful of young traditionalists can be as depressing as a roomful of young Republicans."
's The Conservative Mind (1953), including James Fenimore Cooper
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
, James Russell Lowell
, W. H. Mallock, Robert Frost
, and T. S. Eliot
.
In Kirk's The Conservative Reader (1982) the writings of Rudyard Kipling
and Phyllis McGinley
are featured as examples of literary traditionalism.
and Madeleine L'Engle
.
, Roy Campbell
, Wyndham Lewis
, Ray Bradbury
, Madeleine L'Engle
, and Flannery O'Connor
, most of whom could be labeled traditionalist in their poetry or fiction.
Evelyn Waugh
is often considered a traditionalist conservative.
, who is noted for his many books, including After Virtue (1981).
, is a self-described traditionalist conservative. Known for writing on such topics as foreign policy, animal rights, arts and culture, and philosophy, one of his most noted books is The Meaning of Conservatism (1980). Scruton is affiliated with the Center for European Renewal
, the Trinity Forum
, the Institute for the Psychological Sciences
, and the American Enterprise Institute
. He writes for such publications as Modern Age (periodical), National Review
, The American Spectator, The New Criterion, and City Journal.
has risen to prominence as an exponent of traditionalist philosophy, more specifically progressive conservatism, or Red Tory
ism. In Blond's view, Red Tory
ism would combine civic communitarianism
with localism
and traditional values as a way to revitalize British conservatism
and British society. He has formed a think tank, Res Publica.
, which was founded by British philosopher Roger Scruton
. The Salisbury Review
s current managing editor is Merrie Cave.
. The Cornerstone Group stands for traditional values and represents "faith, flag, and family". Prominent members include Edward Leigh
and John Henry Hayes
.
. Originally a think tank, it was founded by such traditionalists as scholar Andreas Kinneging
and journalist Bart Jan Spruyt
. It is affiliated with The Center for European Renewal
.
created the Center for European Renewal
. The Center is designed to be the European version of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
.
In 1964 conservatives around the nation, especially the New Right gathered around National Review
were united behind the U.S. presidential campaign of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater
. Goldwater had first come to the attention of the public by way of The Conscience of a Conservative, a ghostwritten conservative classic written for him by William F. Buckley, Jr.
's Catholic traditionalist brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell Jr.
The book, which advocated a conservative vision in keeping with Buckley's National Review
propelled Goldwater to unsuccessfully challenge Vice President Richard Nixon
for the 1960 Republican presidential nomination.
In 1964 Goldwater returned to challenge the Eastern Establishment which since the 1930s had controlled the Republican Party
. In a brutal campaign where he was maligned by his liberal Republican primary rivals (Rockefeller, Romney, Scranton, etc.), the press, the Democrats, and President Lyndon B. Johnson
, Goldwater once again found allies among conservatives, including the traditionalists. Russell Kirk
championed Goldwater's cause as the maturation of the New Right in American politics. In his syndicated columns Kirk advocated for Goldwater and would also campaign for him in the primaries. Goldwater's subsequent defeat would result in the New Right regrouping and finding a new figurehead in the late 1970s: Ronald Reagan
.
was given the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989.
was influenced by Russell Kirk
.
Former Tennessee
Republican Senator Fred Thompson, former Michigan
Republican Senator Spencer Abraham
, and former Illinois
Democratic Senator Paul Simon
have all been influenced by traditionalist conservative Russell Kirk
. Thompson gave an interview about Kirk's influence on the Russell Kirk Center's blog.
Republican Congressman Henry Hyde
and Michigan
Republican Congressmen Thaddeus McCotter and Dave Camp, the latter two of whom visited the Russell Kirk Center in 2009. In 2010 Indiana Congressman Mike Pence acknowledged Russell Kirk
as a major influence.
Republican Governor John Engler
is a close personal friend of the Russell Kirk family and also serves as a trustee of the Wilbur Foundation, which funds programs at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
in Mecosta, Michigan. Engler gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Kirk which is available from the Russell Kirk Center's blog.
hosted a National Leadership Conference entitled "Russell Kirk and the Prospects for American Conservatism". The event was held at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis, Indiana and featured such speakers as Ted V. McAllister, Michael P. Federici, George H. Nash, Dermot Quinn, and Rod Dreher
.
theorist Phillip Blond
and American author and scholar Allan C. Carlson
. It marked a milestone for traditionalism since it was the first public forum for Blond to connect his progressive conservative/Red Tory
philosophy with other traditionalists who favored the communitarianism
that the distributists advocated.
and the Democratic Party
the conservative movement has undergone some self-examination as to its future direction. Part of that self-examination has included a revival of the principles of conservative founding father Edmund Burke. In late October 2009 the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
hosted a Edmund Burke
Revival Conference at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
which included such speakers as Dr. George H. Nash, Dr. Peter J. Stanlis, and Dr. Ian Crowe. The Burke Society of the University of Virginia, among others, was in attendance.
philosopher and Res Publica think tank director Phillip Blond
came to the United States at the invitation of the American traditionalist blog, Front Porch Republic. Blond first lectured and attended a round table discussion at Georgetown University
's Tocqueville Forum, where he was introduced by the Forum's Dr. Patrick Deneen, a Front Porch Republic contributor. The round table discussion included comments from traditionalist journalists Ross Douthat
of the New York Times and Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative
, as well as the Templeton Foundation's Rod Dreher
, and others. Deneen moderated the round table.
From the Georgetown event Blond attended another event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
.
This was the first formal event in the United States between Blond, a British traditionalist who is an advisor to British MP David Cameron
, and the leading public figures of the growing American "neo-traditionalist" movement.
are one and the same political philosophy. While there is some overlap concerning principles and even policy prescriptions, traditionalist conservatism differs from paleoconservatism in that the former emphasizes culture while the latter emphasizes reactionary political action. Paleoconservatism is also somewhat more influenced by Old Right
and anti-immigrant politics. Paleoconservatism also is generally understood to be more ideological in nature and more militant in its approach to other conservative political philosophies, including neoconservatism
.
It may be ventured that paleoconservatism is possibly the political expression of traditionalist conservatism, especially as many paleoconservatives such as former presidential candidate and journalist Patrick J. Buchanan express traditionalist conservative ideas and support traditionalist conservative causes such as cultural renewal and defending Western Civilization. Traditionalist conservatism, however, is older than paleoconservatism (which emerged in the late 1980s among traditionalist conservative academics and journalists in response to the growing influence of neoconservatism), and while many paleoconservatives (Claes G. Ryn
, Paul Gottfried
, Thomas Fleming) are also traditionalists, not all traditionalist conservatives are paleoconservatives.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
), "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law
Natural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
and transcendent moral order, tradition
Tradition
A tradition is a ritual, belief or object passed down within a society, still maintained in the present, with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes , but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings...
, hierarchy
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
and organic unity
Organic unity
Organic Unity is the idea that a thing is made up of interdependent parts. For example, a body is made up of its constituent organs, or a society is made up of its constituent social roles....
, agrarianism
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
, classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
and high culture
High culture
High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...
, and the intersecting spheres of loyalty. Some traditionalists have embraced the labels "reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
" and "counterrevolutionary", defying the stigma that has attached to these terms since the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. Having a hierarchical view of society, many traditionalist conservatives, including a few Americans, defend the monarchical
Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...
political structure as the most natural and beneficial social arrangement.
Traditionalism— not being an exact political model— has existed since the inception of civilization; its contemporary expression, however, developed in 18th century Europe (particularly in response to the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
and the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
). Not until the mid-20th century did traditionalist conservatism in the United States begin to organize itself in earnest as an intellectual and political force. This more modern expression of traditionalist conservatism began among a group of U.S. university professors (labeled the "New Conservatives" by the popular press) who rejected the notions of individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
, liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
, modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
, and social progress
Social progress
Social progress is the idea that societies can or do improve in terms of their social, political, and economic structures. This may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through social activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution...
, promoted cultural and educational renewal, and revived interest in the Church
Christian Church
The Christian Church is the assembly or association of followers of Jesus Christ. The Greek term ἐκκλησία that in its appearances in the New Testament is usually translated as "church" basically means "assembly"...
, the family, the state, local community, etc.
Natural law and transcendent moral order
Belief in natural lawNatural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
and transcendent moral order lay the foundation for traditionalist conservative thought. Reason and Divine Revelation inform natural law
Natural law
Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
and the universal truths of faith. It is through these universal truths of faith that man orders himself and the world around him. Mankind organized society on the basis of these universal truths of faith. The traditionalist holds axiomatic the belief that religion precedes civilization (vide, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's essays Christianity and Culture). Most traditionalist conservatives embrace High Church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
— e.g. T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, an Anglo-Catholic — and Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
— a Roman Catholic — and Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
— an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Not all traditionalists, however, are High Church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
Christians. Other traditionalists whose faith traditions are notable include Caleb Stegall
Caleb Stegall
Caleb Stegall is an attorney and writer residing in Perry, Kansas. He has served as the District attorney for Jefferson County, Kansas and is currently Chief Counsel to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback...
, who is an evangelical Protestant. Many conservative mainline Protestants are also traditionalist conservatives, including some of writers for Touchstone Magazine
Touchstone Magazine
Touchstone Magazine is a bimonthly publication of the Fellowship of St. James. It is subtitled A Journal of Mere Christianity, which replaced A Journal of Ecumenical Orthodoxy.-Biography:...
. Many traditionalists are Jewish, such as the late Will Herberg
Will Herberg
Will Herberg was an American Jewish writer, intellectual and scholar. He was known as a social philosopher and sociologist of religion, as well as a Jewish theologian.-Early life:...
, Irving Louis Horowitz
Irving Louis Horowitz
Irving Louis Horowitz is an American sociologist, author and college professor who has written and lectured extensively in his field.-Personal Life:Horowitz was born in New York City on September 25, 1929, to Louis and Esther Tepper Horowitz...
, Mordecai Roshwald
Mordecai Roshwald
Mordecai Roshwald is an American academic and writer. Born in Poland, he later emigrated to Israel. His most famous work is the novel Level 7, a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel...
, and Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried is Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient...
. A number of traditionalists are atheist.
Tradition and custom
As the name suggests, traditionalists believe that traditionTradition
A tradition is a ritual, belief or object passed down within a society, still maintained in the present, with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes , but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings...
and custom
Custom (law)
Custom in law is the established pattern of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting. A claim can be carried out in defense of "what has always been done and accepted by law." Customary law exists where:...
guide man and his worldview. Each generation inherits the experience and culture of its ancestors and through convention and precedence man is able to inherit the culture of his ancestors and pass it down to his descendants. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, often regarded as the father of modern conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
: "The individual is foolish, but the species is wise."
Hierarchy and organic unity
Traditionalist conservatives believe that human society is essentially hierarchicalHierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
(i.e., it always involves various interdependent inequalities, degrees, and classes and that political structures that recognize this fact prove the most just, thriving, and generally beneficial). Hierarchy allows for the preservation of the whole community simultaneously, instead of protecting one part at the expense of the others.
Agrarianism
While most traditionalist conservatives are cosmopolitan and many live in urban centers, the countryside and the values of rural life are prized highly (sometimes even being romanticized, as in pastoral poetry). The principles of agrarianismAgrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
(i.e., preserving the small family farm, open land, the conservation of natural resource, and stewardship of the land) are central to a traditionalist's understanding of rural life.
Classicism and high culture
Traditionalists are firm defenders of classical Western civilization, and value an education informed by the texts of the Hebraic, Greek, Roman, and Medieval eras. Similarly, traditionalists are classicistsClassicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
who revere high culture
High culture
High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...
in all of its manifestations (e.g., literature, music, architecture, art, theater). Likewise, traditionalists shun low culture
Low culture
Low culture is a term for some forms of popular culture. Its opposite is high culture. It has been said by culture theorists that both high culture and low culture are subcultures....
and popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
, as well as what they regard as distortions of high culture such as modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
.
Patriotism, localism, and regionalism
Unlike nationalists, who esteem the role of the State or nation over the localLocalism (politics)
Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity...
or regional
Regionalism (politics)
Regionalism is a term used in international relations. Regionalism also constitutes one of the three constituents of the international commercial system...
community, traditionalists hold up patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
as a key principle. Traditionalist conservatives think that loyalty to a locality or region is more central than any commitment to a larger political entity. Traditionalists also welcome the value of subsidiarity
Subsidiarity
Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which...
and the intimacy of one's community. Nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, alternately, leads to jingoism and views the state as abstract from the local community and family structure rather than as an outgrowth of these local realities.
Edmund Burke
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
, whose political principles were rooted in moral natural law and the Western tradition. Burke believed in prescriptive rights and that those rights were "God-given". He also defended what he referred to as "ordered liberty" (best reflected in the unwritten law of the British constitutional monarchy). Burke also advocated for those transcendent values that found support in such institutions as the church, the family, and the state. He was a fierce critic of the principles behind the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, and in 1790 his observations on its excesses and radicalism were collected in Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Reflections on the Revolution in France , by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution...
. In Reflections he took to task the radical innovations of the revolutionaries, such as the "Rights of Man". American social critic and historian Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
wrote that, "The Reflections burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes."
Burke's influence extended to later thinkers and writers both in his native Britain and in Continental Europe. Among those influenced by his thought were the English Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, and Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
, Scottish Romantic author Sir Walter Scott, and the counter-revolutionaries writers, the French François-René de Chateaubriand
François-René de Chateaubriand
François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand was a French writer, politician, diplomat and historian. He is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature.-Early life and exile:...
and Louis de Bonald, and the Savoyard Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre was a French-speaking Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He defended hierarchical societies and a monarchical State in the period immediately following the French Revolution...
. In the United States the Federalist Party and its leaders, such as President John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, best represented Burke's legacy.
Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, and the "Critics of Material Progress"
After Burke's traditionalist conservatism found its fiercest defenders in three "cultural conservatives" and "critics of material progress": Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
, and John Henry Newman.
According to traditionalist scholar Peter Viereck, Coleridge and his associate and fellow poet William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
began as supporters of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and the radical utopianism it spawned. But by 1798 their collection of poems, Lyrical Ballads had rejected the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
thesis of reason over faith and tradition. Coleridge's later writings, including Lay Sermons (1816), Biographia Literaria (1817), and Aids to Reflection (1825) justified traditional conservative positions on hierarchy and organic society, criticism of materialism and the merchant class, the need for "inner growth" that is rooted in a traditional and religious culture. Coleridge was a firm believer in social institutions and a harsh critic of Jeremy Bentham and his Utilitarian philosophy.
Writer, historian, and essayist Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
was also an early traditionalist thinker, defending medieval notions such as aristocracy, hierarchy, organic society, and class unity over socialism and the "cash nexus" of laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. According to Carlyle, the "cash nexus" was when social relationships were merely reduced to economic gain. A champion of the poor, Carlyle believed that the fabric of British society was being threatened by mobs, plutocrats, socialists, and others who wanted to exploit them and perpetuate class resentment. A devotee of Germanic culture and Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, Carlyle is most known for his writings Sartor Rasartus (1833–1834) and Past and Present (1843).
In the mid-19th century the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
experienced a "catholic revival" in the form of the Oxford Movement
Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose members were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy...
, a religious movement designed to restore the Catholic nature of Anglicanism. Led by John Keble
John Keble
John Keble was an English churchman and poet, one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, and gave his name to Keble College, Oxford.-Early life:...
, Edward Pusey, and John Henry Newman, the Tractarians (so called for the publication of their Tracts for the Times
Tracts for the Times
The Tracts for the Times were a series of 90 theological publications, varying in length from a few pages to book-length, produced by members of the English Oxford Movement, an Anglo-Catholic revival group, from 1833 to 1841...
) condemned religious liberalism while defending "dogma, ritual, poetry, [and] tradition". Like Coleridge and Carlyle, Newman (who became a Roman Catholic in 1845 and eventually a Cardinal in the Church) and the Tractarians were critical of material progress, or the notion that wealth, prosperity, and economic gain were the sum of human existence.
Arnold and Ruskin: Cultural and Artistic Criticism
Culture and the arts were also important to British traditionalist conservatives and two of the most prominent defenders of tradition in culture and the arts were Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
and John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
.
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
, a poet and cultural critic, is best known for his poetry and literary, social, and religious criticism. His book Culture and Anarchy (1869) took on the middle-class Victorian values of the day (Arnold viewed middle class tastes in literature as "philistinism")and argued for a return to the classical literature of the past. Arnold also viewed with skepticism the plutocratic grasping in socioeconomic affairs which Coleridge, Carlyle, and the Oxford Movement
Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose members were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy...
criticized.
One of the themes that traditionalist conservatives have consistently reiterated has been the theme that industrial capitalism is as questionable as the classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
which spawned it. Carrying on in this tradition was cultural and artistic critic John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, a medievalist who called himself a "Christian socialist" and cared much for standards in culture, the arts, and society. For Ruskin (as with all the 19th century cultural conservatives), the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
had fomented dislocation, rootlessness, and the mass urbanization of the poor. In his art criticism he wrote The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), which took on the Classical tradition while defending Gothic art and architecture. His other works included The Seven Lamps of Architecture and Unto This Last (1860).
Benjamin Disraeli and "One Nation Conservatism"
In politics the ideas of Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, and other traditionalist conservatives were distilled into the policies and philosophy of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli in his younger years was an opponent of middle class capitalism and the industrial policies that were promoted by the "Manchester liberals" (The Reform Bill and the Corn Laws). Seeking a way to alleviate the suffering of the urban poor in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Disraeli sought out to unify the nation by way of "One Nation Conservatism," where a coalition of aristocrats and the common working man would unite to stave off the influences of the liberal middle class. This new coalition would serve as a way to work with the enfranchised masses while grounding them in "ancient conservative traditions". Disraeli's ideas (including his criticism of Utilitarianism) found fruit in the "Young England" movement and in writings such as "Vindication of the English Constitution" (1835), "The Radical Tory" (1837), and his "social novels" Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845). A few years later his "One Nation Conservatism" found new life in the "Tory Democracy" of Lord Randolph Churchill
Lord Randolph Churchill
Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill MP was a British statesman. He was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and his wife Lady Frances Anne Emily Vane , daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry...
and in the early 21st century in the "Progressive Conservatism" of the Red Tory
Red Tory
A red Tory is an adherent of a particular political philosophy, tradition, and disposition in Canada somewhat similar to the High Tory tradition in the United Kingdom; it is contrasted with "blue Tory". In Canada, the phenomenon of "red toryism" has fundamentally, if not exclusively, been found in...
thesis of British philosopher Phillip Blond
Phillip Blond
Phillip Blond is an English political thinker, Anglican and theologian, and director of the think tank ResPublica.He gained prominence from a cover story in Prospect magazine in the February 2009 edition with his essay on Red Toryism, which proposed a radical communitarian traditionalist...
.
The distributists
In the early 20th century traditionalist conservatism found its defenders through the efforts of Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
, G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
and other proponents of the socioeconomic system they advocated: distributism
Distributism
Distributism is a third-way economic philosophy formulated by such Catholic thinkers as G. K...
. Originating in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum
Rerum Novarum
Rerum Novarum is an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII on May 15, 1891. It was an open letter, passed to all Catholic bishops, that addressed the condition of the working classes. The encyclical is entitled: “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour”...
, distributism employed the concept of subsidiarity
Subsidiarity
Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which...
as a "third way" solution to the twin "evils" of socialism and capitalism. It favors local economies, small business, the agrarian way of life, and craftsmen and artists. In such books as Belloc's The Servile State (1912), Economics for Helen (1924), and An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936) and Chesterton's The Outline of Sanity (1926), traditional communities that echoed those found in the Middle Ages were advocated and big business and big government condemned. In the United States distributist ideas were embraced by the journalist Herbert Agar
Herbert Agar
Herbert Sebastian Agar was an American journalist and an editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1934 for his book The People's Choice, a critical look at the American presidency...
, Catholic activist Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert; she advocated the Catholic economic theory of Distributism. She was also considered to be an anarchist, and did not hesitate to use the term...
, economist E. F. Schumacher
E. F. Schumacher
Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularized in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s...
and were comparable to the work of Wilhelm Roepke.
T. S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson
A champion of the Western tradition and orthodox Christian culture, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
was also arguably the "last great poet of the English language." Known for his poem "The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
", Eliot was a political reactionary who used modernist literary means for traditionalist ends. His After Strange Gods (1934) and Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948) align with the grand tradition of Christian humanism extending back to Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
, Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
, John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
, and Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
. Educated by Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 to 1930...
and George Santayana
George Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
at Harvard University, Eliot was friends with Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
and Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
.
Praised by T. S. Eliot as the most powerful intellectual influence in Britain, historian Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Henry Dawson was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Christopher H. Dawson has been called "the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century".-Life:...
is a key figure in 20th century traditionalism. Central to his work was the idea that religion was at the heart of every culture, especially Western culture, and his writings, including The Age of Gods (1928), Religion and Culture (1948), and Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (1950), reflected this view. A contributor to Eliot's Criterion
The Criterion (magazine)
The Criterion was a British literary magazine published from October 1922 to January 1939. The Criterion was, for most of its run, a quarterly journal, although for a period in 1927-28 it was published monthly. It was created by the poet, dramatist, and literary critic T. S...
, Dawson believed that after World War II, religion and culture were central to rebuilding the West in the wake of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and the rise of communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
The Federalists
Burkean traditionalism was transported to the American colonies through the policies and principles of the Federalist Party and its leadership as embodied by John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
and Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
. Federalists opposed the French Revolution, defended traditional Christian morality, and supported a new "natural aristocracy" based on "property, education, family status, and sense of ethical responsibility."
Former U.S. President John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
was probably one of the earliest defenders of a traditional social order in Revolutionary America. In his Defence of the Constitution (1787) Adams attacked the ideas of radicals like Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...
, who advocated for a unicameral legislature (Adams deemed it too democratic). His translation of Discourses on Davila (1790), which also contained his own commentary, was an examination of "human motivation in politics". Adams believed that that human motivation inevitably led to dangerous impulses where the government would need to sometimes intervene.
The leader of the Federalist Party was Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, former Secretary of the Treasury and co-author of The Federalist Papers (1787–1788), a series of newspaper tracts designed to influence the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Hamilton was critical of both Jeffersonian classical liberalism and the radical ideas coming out of the French Revolution. He rejected laissez-faire economics, favored a strong central government, and like Adams, opposed slavery.
Webster, Choate and the Whigs
In the era after the Revolutionary Generation, the Whig Party
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...
(successors to the Federalists) came to represent Burkean conservatism in America. Whig statesmen led the charge for tradition and custom against the prevailing democratic ethos of the Jacksonian Era. Standing for hierarchy and organic society, in many ways their concepts of the Union paralleled Benjamin Disraeli's "One Nation Conservatism".
For many the most noteworthy Whig statesman (aside from Henry Clay
Henry Clay
Henry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...
) was New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
politician, lawyer, and orator Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster was a leading American statesman and senator from Massachusetts during the period leading up to the Civil War. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests...
. A firm Unionist, his most famous speech was his "Second Reply to Hayne" (1829) where he criticized the argument from Southerners such as John C. Calhoun
John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun was a leading politician and political theorist from South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century. Calhoun eloquently spoke out on every issue of his day, but often changed positions. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent...
that the states had a right to nullify the Constitution and therefore were more important than the federal republic as a whole.
Webster's intellectual and political heir was Rufus Choate
Rufus Choate
Rufus Choate , American lawyer and orator, was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a descendant of an English family which settled in Massachusetts in 1643. His first cousin, physician George Choate, was the father of George C. S. Choate and Joseph Hodges Choate...
, another Whig statesman who was also an ardent disciple of Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
. Choate was a part of the emerging legal culture in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, centered around the newly formed Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
. He believed that lawyers were preservers and conservers of the Constitution and that it was the duty of the educated to govern political institutions. Choate's most famous address was "The Position and Functions of the American Bar, as an Element of Conservatism in the State" (1845).
George Ticknor and Edward Everett: the "Guardians of Civilization"
Two figures in the Northern antebellum period were what Emory University
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
professor Patrick Allitt referred to as the "Guardians of Civilization": George Ticknor
George Ticknor
George Ticknor was an American academician and Hispanist, specializing in the subject areas of languages and literature. He is known for his scholarly work on the history and criticism of Spanish literature....
and Edward Everett
Edward Everett
Edward Everett was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State...
.
George Ticknor
George Ticknor
George Ticknor was an American academician and Hispanist, specializing in the subject areas of languages and literature. He is known for his scholarly work on the history and criticism of Spanish literature....
, a Dartmouth
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
-educated academic at Harvard, was the chief purveyor of humane learning in the Boston area. A founder of the Boston Public Library
Boston Public Library
The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to...
and the scion of an old Federalist family, Ticknor educated his students in Romance languages and the works of Dante and Cervantes at home while promoting America abroad to his many international friends, including Lord Byron and Talleyrand.
Edward Everett
Edward Everett
Edward Everett was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State...
, like Ticknor, was educated at the same German university (Goettigen). He advocated for the U.S. to follow same virtues as the ancient Greeks and eventually went into politics as a Whig. A firm Unionist (like his friend Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster was a leading American statesman and senator from Massachusetts during the period leading up to the Civil War. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests...
), Everett deplored the Jacksonian Democracy that swept the nation. A famed orator in his own right, he supported Lincoln against Southern secession.
Orestes Brownson
American Catholic journalist and political theorist (and former political and religious radical) Orestes Brownson is best known for writing The American Republic, a treatise examining how America fulfills Catholic tradition and Western Civilization. Brownson was critical of both the Northern abolitionists and the Southern secessionists and was himself a solid Unionist.
The Bookman and The American Review
In the 20th century traditionalist conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic centered around two publications: the Bookman
Bookman
Bookman may refer to:* Bookman , a character in the manga series D.Gray-man* Bookman , a person who engages in bookselling* Bookman , a person who loves books...
and the American Review. Owned and edited by the eccentric Seward Collins
Seward Collins
Seward Bishop Collins was an American New York socialite and publisher. By the end of the 1920s, he was a self-described "fascist".-Biography:...
, these journals published the writings of the British Distributists, the New Humanists, the Southern Agrarians, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Christopher Dawson
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Henry Dawson was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Christopher H. Dawson has been called "the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century".-Life:...
, et al. Eventually, Collins drifted towards support of fascism, and as a result lost the support of many of his traditionalist backers. Despite the decline of the journal due to Collins' increasingly radical political views, the American Review left a profound mark on the history of traditionalist conservatism.
The New Humanists
Another intellectual branch of early 20th century traditionalist conservatism was known as the New Humanism
New Humanism
New Humanism or neohumanism were terms applied to a theory of literary criticism, together with its consequences for culture and political thought, developed around 1900 by the American scholar Irving Babbitt, and the scholar and journalist Paul Elmer More...
. Led by Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
professor Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 to 1930...
and Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
professor Paul Elmer More
Paul Elmer More
Paul Elmer More was an American journalist, critic, essayist and Christian apologist.-Biography:More was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University...
, the New Humanism
New Humanism
New Humanism or neohumanism were terms applied to a theory of literary criticism, together with its consequences for culture and political thought, developed around 1900 by the American scholar Irving Babbitt, and the scholar and journalist Paul Elmer More...
was a literary and social criticism movement that opposed both romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and naturalism. Beginning in the late 19th century, the New Humanism
New Humanism
New Humanism or neohumanism were terms applied to a theory of literary criticism, together with its consequences for culture and political thought, developed around 1900 by the American scholar Irving Babbitt, and the scholar and journalist Paul Elmer More...
defended artistic standards and "first principles" (Babbitt's phrase). Reaching an apogee in 1930, Babbitt and More published a variety of books including Babbitt's Literature and the American College (1908), Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), and Democracy and Leadership (1924) and More's Shelburne Essays (1904–1921).
The Southern Agrarians
One other group of traditionalist conservatives were the Southern Agrarians
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
. Originally a group of Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
poets and writers known as "the Fugitives" they included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
, Donald Davidson
Donald Davidson (poet)
Donald Grady Davidson was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author...
, and Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
. Adhering to strict literary standards (Warren and traditionalist scholar Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
later formulated a form of literary criticism known as the New Criticism), in 1930 some of the Fugitives joined other traditionalist Southern writers to publish I'll Take My Stand, which applied standards sympathetic to local particularism and the agrarian way of life to politics and economics. Condemning northern industrialism and commercialism, the "twelve southerners" who contributed to the book echoed earlier arguments made by the distributists. A few years after the publication of I'll Take My Stand, some of the Southern Agrarians
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
were joined by Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
and Herbert Agar
Herbert Agar
Herbert Sebastian Agar was an American journalist and an editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1934 for his book The People's Choice, a critical look at the American presidency...
in the publication of a new collection of essays entitled Who Owns America: A New Declaration of Independence.
The Southern Agrarians
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
had a great influence on New Conservative scholar Richard M. Weaver
Richard M. Weaver
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid- 20th century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric...
and writer-farmer Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...
.
Other influences
Other traditionalist conservative influences on the those who emerged in the 1940s and 1950s as "the New Conservatives" included Bernard Iddings Bell, Gordon Keith Chalmers, Grenville Clark, Peter Drucker, Will Herberg, and Ross J. S. Hoffman.
Weaver, Viereck and the emergence of traditionalism
After the Second World War the first stirrings of a "traditionalist movement" took place. Among those who launched this movement (and in effect the larger Conservative Movement in America) was University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
professor Richard M. Weaver
Richard M. Weaver
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid- 20th century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric...
. Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences
Ideas Have Consequences
Ideas Have Consequences is a philosophical work by Richard M. Weaver, published in 1948. The book is largely a treatise on the harmful effects of nominalism on Western Civilization since this doctrine gained prominence in the High Middle Ages, followed by a prescription of a course of action...
(1948) chronicled the steady erosion of Western cultural values since the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
. In 1949, another professor, Peter Viereck
Peter Viereck
Peter Robert Edwin Viereck , was an American poet and political thinker, as well as a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College for five decades.-Background:...
echoed the writings of Weaver with his Conservatism Revisited, which examined the conservative thought of Prince Klemens Metternich.
After Weaver and Viereck a flowering of conservative scholarship occurred starting with the publication of 1953's The New Science of Politics by Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin, born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin, was a German-born American political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, then Imperial Germany, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna. He became a teacher and then an associate professor of political science at the...
, 1953's The Quest for Community by Robert A. Nisbet, and 1955's Conservatism in America by Clinton Rossiter
Clinton Rossiter
Clinton Rossiter was a historian and political scientist who taught at Cornell University from 1946 until his suicide in 1970. He wrote The American Presidency along with 20 other books on American institutions, the United States Constitution, and history...
. However, the book that defined the traditionalist school was 1953's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, written by Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
, which gave a detailed analysis of the intellectual pedigree of Anglo-American traditionalist conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
.
When these thinkers appeared on the academic scene they became known for rebuking the progressive worldview inherent in an America comfortable with New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
economics, a burgeoning military-industrial complex, and a consumerist and commercialized citizenry. These conservative scholars and writers garnered the attention of the popular press of the time and before long they were collectively referred to as "the New Conservatives". Among this group were not only Weaver, Viereck, Voegelin, Nisbet, Rossiter, and Kirk but other lesser known thinkers such as John Blum, Daniel Boorstin, McGeorge Bundy, Thomas Cook, Raymond English, John Hallowell, Anthony Harrigan, August Heckscher, Milton Hindus, Klemens von Klemperer, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn was an Austrian Catholic nobleman and socio-political theorist...
, Richard Leopold, S. A. Lukacs, Malcolm Moos, Eliseo Vivas, Geoffrey Wagner, Chad Walsh, and Francis Wilson as well as Arthur Bestor, Mel Bradford
Mel Bradford
Melvin E. "Mel" Bradford was a conservative political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas....
, C. P. Ives, Stanley Jaki
Stanley Jaki
Stanley L. Jaki, OSB was a Benedictine priest and Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey since 1975...
, John Lukacs
John Lukacs
John Adalbert Lukacs is a Hungarian-born American historian who has written more than thirty books, including Five Days in London, May 1940 and A New Republic...
, Forrest McDonald
Forrest McDonald
Forrest McDonald , is an American historian who has written extensively on the early national period, on republicanism, and on the presidency. He is widely considered one of the foremost historians of the Constitution and of the early national period.- Life :McDonald was born in Orange, Texas. He...
, Thomas Molnar
Thomas Molnar
Molnár Tamás, Thomas Molnar or Molnar, Thomas Steven was a Catholic philosopher, historian and political theorist.- Life :...
, Gerhard Neimeyer, James V. Schall, S.J., Peter J. Stanlis, Stephen J. Tonsor, and Frederick Wilhelmsen.
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
. Kirk was a key figure of the conservative movement: he was a friend to William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, a columnist for National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, an editor and a syndicated columnist, and a historian and horror fiction writer. His most famous work was 1953's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (later republished as The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot). Kirk's writings and legacy are interwoven with the history of traditionalist conservatism, with his influence felt at the Heritage Foundation
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
, and other conservative think tanks (most especially the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational organization based out of Mecosta, Michigan. It was founded in order to continue the legacy of Dr. Russell Kirk, an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author...
).
The six canons of conservatism
The Conservative Mind was written by Kirk as a doctoral dissertation while he was a student at the St. Andrews University in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. Previously the author of a biography of American conservative John Randolph of Roanoke
John Randolph of Roanoke
John Randolph , known as John Randolph of Roanoke, was a planter and a Congressman from Virginia, serving in the House of Representatives , the Senate , and also as Minister to Russia...
, Kirk's The Conservative Mind had laid out six "canons of conservative thought" in the book, including:
- Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience... Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.
- Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and egalitarian and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
- Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes...
- Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic leveling is not economic progress...
- Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters and calculators." Man must put a control upon his will and his appetite.... Tradition and sound prejudice provide checks upon man's anarchic impulse.
- Recognition that change and reform are not identical...
Pantheon of thinkers from the "Conservative Mind"
Kirk goes on to examine the thought of a wide array of conservative thinkers, including Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
, American Federalists John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
and Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, British literati Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
and Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
, Southern conservatives John Randolph of Roanoke
John Randolph of Roanoke
John Randolph , known as John Randolph of Roanoke, was a planter and a Congressman from Virginia, serving in the House of Representatives , the Senate , and also as Minister to Russia...
and John Calhoun
John Calhoun
John Calhoun may refer to:*John C. Calhoun, seventh Vice President of the United States, U.S. Senator*John Calhoun , American computer programmer*John B...
, American Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
political thinker Orestes Brownson
Orestes Brownson
Orestes Augustus Brownson was a New England intellectual and activist, preacher, labor organizer, and noted Catholic convert and writer...
, New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
writer Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, British Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
John Henry Newman, American historian Henry Adams, scholars Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt
Irving Babbitt was an American academic and literary critic, noted for his founding role in a movement that became known as the New Humanism, a significant influence on literary discussion and conservative thought in the period between 1910 to 1930...
, Paul Elmer More
Paul Elmer More
Paul Elmer More was an American journalist, critic, essayist and Christian apologist.-Biography:More was educated at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University...
, and George Santayana
George Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
, and Anglo-American poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
.
A Traditionalist Counter-Establishment
The New Conservatives also contributed to the emerging conservative movement and formed a traditionalist counter-establishment, creating and expanding traditionalist organizations and forming new journals and publications. Many traditionalists were contributors to William F. Buckley's National Review, including Russell Kirk and others. The 1950s and early 1960s resulted in a traditionalist "renaissance" and laid the foundation for future traditionalist efforts to succeed.The Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Among the organizations formed in the wake of traditionalist scholarship and public activity was Frank Chodorov's libertarian-leaning student organization, the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. The organization, formed in 1953, quickly changed philosophy from being an academic organization based in individualist principles to one of a more traditionalist bent, largely due to the efforts of E. Victor Milione. Eventually the organization changed its name to the Intercollegiate Studies InstituteIntercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
and "educated for liberty" via the thought of such traditionalists as Richard M. Weaver
Richard M. Weaver
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid- 20th century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric...
and Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
. Through Kirk's influence (as well as other well known conservatives) it has been a center for traditionalist students, hosting lectures, symposiums, conferences, and debates and publishing journals such as Modern Age (periodical), The Intercollegiate Review, The Chesterton Review and The University Bookman as well as a variety of books by traditionalist scholars through its imprint, ISI Books. The president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
is T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr..
Modern Age: A Quarterly Review
In 1957 Russell KirkRussell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
co-founded (with publisher Henry Regnery
Henry Regnery
-Biography:Regnery was born to a textile manufacturer on January 12, 1912 in Hinsdale, Illinois. He obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1934, and an M.A. from Harvard University, where he worked with Joseph Schumpeter. He also studied at Armour Institute of Technology, and from...
) Modern Age, a conservative academic quarterly which for over fifty years has remained traditionalist in scope and has published various thinkers, such as Max Picard, Andrew Lytle, Richard M. Weaver
Richard M. Weaver
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid- 20th century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric...
, Robert A. Nisbet, C. P. Ives, Ross Hoffman, and others. Historian George H. Nash has referred to Modern Age as "the principal quarterly of the intellectual right." Current Associate Editors include George W. Carey, Jude P. Dougherty, Jeffrey Hart, Thomas Molnar
Thomas Molnar
Molnár Tamás, Thomas Molnar or Molnar, Thomas Steven was a Catholic philosopher, historian and political theorist.- Life :...
, Marion Montgomery, Mordecai Roshwald
Mordecai Roshwald
Mordecai Roshwald is an American academic and writer. Born in Poland, he later emigrated to Israel. His most famous work is the novel Level 7, a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel...
, Peter J. Stanlis, and Stephen J. Tonsor. Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
was its editor for its first two years and from 1984 to 2007 its editor was literary critic George A. Panichas. The journal is now edited by R. V. Young
R. V. Young
Robert V. Young, Jr. is a professor of Renaissance Literature and Literary Criticism in the English Department of North Carolina State University, co-founder and co-editor of the John Donne Journal, and author of multiple books and articles primarily related to the study of literature...
, who also serves as a contributor to another traditionalist publication, Touchstone Magazine
Touchstone Magazine
Touchstone Magazine is a bimonthly publication of the Fellowship of St. James. It is subtitled A Journal of Mere Christianity, which replaced A Journal of Ecumenical Orthodoxy.-Biography:...
.
The University Bookman
In 1960 Kirk founded the oldest continuously published conservative review of books: The University Bookman. It is published by Annette Y. Kirk and Dr. Jeffrey O. Nelson and is edited by New York attorney Gerald J. Russello, who is a Kirk biographer and a Fellow at the G. K. Chesterton Institute. Its Board of Advisors include H. Lee Cheek, Jr.H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
H. Lee Cheek, Jr. , is the Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science and Religion at Gainesville State College in Gainesville, Georgia...
, Vice President for College Advancement and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Brewton-Parker College
Brewton-Parker College
Brewton–Parker College is a private, Christian, coeducational college whose main campus is located in Mount Vernon, Georgia, USA. Brewton-Parker is affiliated with the Georgia Baptist Convention and celebrated their centennial in 2004.-Organization:...
; Dr. William Edmund Fahey, the President of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts is located in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The college emphasizes classical education in the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition and is named after Thomas More. The school has approximately 100 students.-Founding:...
; Bruce Frohnen
Bruce Frohnen
Bruce P. Frohnen is an Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University, Pettit College of Law. Prior to this he taught at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition he is a Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal....
, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University, Pettit College of Law
Ohio Northern University, Pettit College of Law
Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law, commonly referred to as ONU Law, is a private, non-profit law school located in Ada, Ohio. Also known as the Claude W...
and Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center; and Gary L. Gregg
Gary L. Gregg
Gary L. Gregg II, Ph.D holds the Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville and is director of the McConnell Center. He is the author or editor of six books including The Presidential Republic, Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition, and...
, Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville is a public university in Louisville, Kentucky. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of the first universities chartered west of the Allegheny Mountains. The university is mandated by the Kentucky General...
and director of the McConnell Center
McConnell Center
The McConnell Center is an endowed institution created in 1991 by U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, and the University of Louisville.The McConnell Center's mission includes four major components:* The McConnell Scholars Program*Public Lecture Series...
.
The Philadelphia Society
Another traditionalist organization to appear was an intellectual forum called the Philadelphia Society. Similar in scope to the libertarian Mont Pelerin Society, the Philadelphia Society organized conferences where leading traditionalists could gather, exchange ideas and lecture on topics and issues vital to the preservation of the American Republic and the conservative movement. To this day it is the leading intellectual organization of the traditionalist Right.Renewal and Consolidation
After the intellectual pioneering of the New Conservatives and the creation of the conservative counter-establishment, younger scholars and academics came to the fore, expanding and consolidating the traditionalist presence in the larger conservative movement and contributing to the further renewal of traditionalist scholarship. These scholars and academics could be deemed the "Conservators", or the keepers of the flame of conservatism as the upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s approached.The Second Generation: "The Conservators"
This second generation appeared at a time when American society was experiencing the change and tumult of the "60's": the rising counterculture and the New Left, the emergence of the protest movement and race riots, the war in Vietnam, and then the crisis of Nixon and Watergate and the "malaise" of Jimmy Carter's presidency. These "conservators" contributed in turn to preserving culture and educational renewal while simultaneously creating organizations and journals which would further the cause of traditionalist conservatism. Writers and thinkers of this caliber included political scientist George W. Carey, moralist and literary critic George A. Panichas, Swedish-American thinker Claes G. Ryn, Catholic Chestertonian Fr. Ian Boyd, C.S.B., historian Forrest McDonald, and others. These new thinkers would join the New Conservatives and the first generation of traditionalists in leading the charge against radicalism and defend American institutions into the Reagan Era.Carey, McClellan and The Political Science Reviewer
In 1973 political scientist George W. Carey and James McClellan created "an annual review of books in the field of political science" entitled The Political Science Reviewer. Its current editor is Bruce Frohnen
Bruce Frohnen
Bruce P. Frohnen is an Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University, Pettit College of Law. Prior to this he taught at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition he is a Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal....
and it is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
.
Boyd, The Chesterton Review and the G. K. Chesterton Institute
In 1974 Canadian Catholic priest Rev. Ian Boyd, C.S.B. created a quarterly journal for the International Chesterton Society. Called The Chesterton Review
The Chesterton Review
The Chesterton Review is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture based at Seton Hall University. It was founded in 1974 to promote an interest in all aspects of G. K. Chesterton’s life, work, art and ideas, including his Christian apologetics...
, the publication "is dedicated to the exploration of the life and works of G.K. Chesterton and other writers who share a commitment to Chestertonian principles". The Review originally was based out of a Canadian college and then transferred to Seton Hall University
Seton Hall University
Seton Hall University is a private Roman Catholic university in South Orange, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1856 by Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley, Seton Hall is the oldest diocesan university in the United States. Seton Hall is also the oldest and largest Catholic university in the...
, where it came under the aegis of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for the Study for Faith and Culture. Among those who were the co-founders of the Institute were historian Dermot Quinn, editor and author Stratford Caldecott, and then ISI vice president Jeffrey O. Nelson.
Intercollegiate Review Symposium
1986 brought traditionalist reaction to Reagan Era
Reagan Era
The Reagan Era or Age of Reagan is a periodization of recent American history used by historians and political observers to emphasize that the conservative "Reagan Revolution" led by President Ronald Reagan in domestic and foreign policy had a permanent impact...
conservatism in the form of a symposium in The Intercollegiate Review. Referred to as "the state of conservatism", the symposium featured traditionalist scholars such as Mel Bradford
Mel Bradford
Melvin E. "Mel" Bradford was a conservative political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas....
, Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried is Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient...
, Clyde Wilson, George A. Panichas, Gregory Wolfe, Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
, Gerhart Niemeyer, and George W. Carey. The symposium looked at the rise of neoconservatives in the conservative movement and the centralization of Republican power in Washington in the Reagan Era.
Ryn, The National Humanities Institute and Humanitas
In the 1980s traditionalist scholar Claes G. Ryn
Claes G. Ryn
Dr. Claes Gösta Ryn is a Swedish-born, American academic and educator.-Background:Ryn was born and raised in Norrköping in Sweden. He attended the Latin Gymnasium, Norrköpings Högre Allmänna Läroverk' . He was an undergraduate and a doctoral student at Uppsala University...
and Joseph Baldacchino founded the National Humanities Institute
National Humanities Institute
The National Humanities Institute is a nonprofit interdisciplinary educational organization founded in 1984. It is known to be affiliated with traditionalist conservatism.It publishes Humanitas and the Epistulae Occasional Papers....
, a center for the study of the humanities from the conservative perspective which also publishes a bi-annual journal Humanitas
Humanitas
The word humanitas was used by Cicero to describe the formation of an ideal speaker who he believed should be educated to possess a collection of virtues of character suitable for an active life of public service; these would include a fund of learning acquired from the study of bonae litterae ,...
. Noted traditionalist scholars who serve on NHI's Academic Board include George W. Carey, Jude P. Dougherty, and Peter J. Stanlis. The National Humanities Institute
National Humanities Institute
The National Humanities Institute is a nonprofit interdisciplinary educational organization founded in 1984. It is known to be affiliated with traditionalist conservatism.It publishes Humanitas and the Epistulae Occasional Papers....
also operates the Center for Constitutional Studies and the Irving Babbitt Project.
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
In the mid-1990s, after the death of Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
, the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational organization based out of Mecosta, Michigan. It was founded in order to continue the legacy of Dr. Russell Kirk, an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author...
was founded by Kirk's widow, Annette Y. Kirk, and son-in-law, Dr. Jeffrey O. Nelson, to carry on his legacy. The Center offers seminars and residential fellowships and have a publishing arm. The Center also has an affiliate, the Edmund Burke Society of America, whose director is Dr. Ian Crowe.
The Torch is Passed
In the 1980s and 1990s a new generation came on the political scene to continue the traditionalist conservatives' work. As New Conservative scholars such as Russell KirkRussell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
and Robert Nisbet
Robert Nisbet
Robert Alexander Nisbet was an American sociologist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Vice-Chancellor at the University of California, Riverside and as the Albert Schweitzer Professor at Columbia University.-Life:Nisbet was born in Los Angeles in 1913 and raised in the small...
began to pass on, and the second generation of "conservators" came to the fore the torch was also passed to members of the Baby Boom. This third generation, which could be referred to as the "Counter-Revolutionaries" fought to renew education and culture as the Culture Wars heated up and political correctness and multiculturalism emerged as new threats to conservative principles.
The Third Generation: "The Counter-Revolutionaries"
Of the same generation as those Baby Boomers who protested and radicalized American society in the 1960s and 1970s, the third generation of traditionalists brought with them insight into the arts, in revitalizing Christianity, and opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. Like their predecessors, these counter-revolutionary traditionalists sought to engage society through the creation of new organizations and publications and roll back the "revolution" that their more radical generional peers had wrought. Such scholars and thinkers as James Kushiner, Gregory Wolfe, Allan C. Carlson, H. Lee Cheek, Jr.H. Lee Cheek, Jr.
H. Lee Cheek, Jr. , is the Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science and Religion at Gainesville State College in Gainesville, Georgia...
, W. Wesley McDonald
W. Wesley McDonald
- Career :His most recent and notable work is Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology which was published in 2004. The book explores the political and philosophical ideas of the conservative intellectual Russell Kirk and his impact on conservatism in the 1940s and 50s...
and others represented this next generation of traditionalists.
Kushiner and Touchstone Magazine
Beginning as a newsletter in the Chicago area in 1986, Touchstone Magazine
Touchstone Magazine
Touchstone Magazine is a bimonthly publication of the Fellowship of St. James. It is subtitled A Journal of Mere Christianity, which replaced A Journal of Ecumenical Orthodoxy.-Biography:...
was founded by James Kushiner as a publication to unite Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic traditionalists. The journal received specific support from traditionalist icon Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
in the early 1990s. Contributors include Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
, R. V. Young
R. V. Young
Robert V. Young, Jr. is a professor of Renaissance Literature and Literary Criticism in the English Department of North Carolina State University, co-founder and co-editor of the John Donne Journal, and author of multiple books and articles primarily related to the study of literature...
, Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson is a scholar and professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is the president of the Howard Center, a director of the Family in America Studies Center, the International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and editor of the Family in America...
, and Anthony Esolen.
Wolfe and Image Journal
In 1989 former Intercollegiate Review editor and Kirk assistant Gregory Wolfe founded Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion. Image
Image (journal)
Image is an American quarterly literary journal that explores the relationship between Judeo-Christian tradition and contemporary art and literature. The journal's motto is "Art, Faith, Mystery," and its articles and glossy photos explore contemporary spirituality by featuring provocative art...
is published by Wolfe's Center for Religious Humanism.
Carlson and The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society
A few years later the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society
Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society
The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society is an organizations that promotes research that attempts to demonstrate the alleged importance of a mother and father with a family consisting of their own biological children as the basic unit of society....
, a socially conservative advocacy organization, was created by John Howard and Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson is a scholar and professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is the president of the Howard Center, a director of the Family in America Studies Center, the International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and editor of the Family in America...
. Howard was the founder of the paleoconservative Rockford Institute and Carlson was its former president.
The Restoration of Tradition and Community in the 21st Century
As the conservative movement consolidated itself in the 1980s under the Reagan presidency, found itself in healthy opposition to the Bush and Clinton Eras, and came into the presidency of George W. Bush, a new crop of traditionalists, who could be labeled the "neo-traditionalists" appeared. With the advent of the 9/11 attacks and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan commenced, the Old Guard traditionalists came to criticize the larger conservative movement for its populism and nationalism and were joined in these sentiments by the neo-traditionalists who also, in essence, sought the restoration of tradition and community in the 21st Century.The Fourth Generation: "The Neo-Traditionalists"
Echoing the sentiments of the older generation of traditionalists, the fourth generation would also expand the traditionalist arguments into the digital era, taking to blogs and websites to get their message out, a message of communitarian and family-centered values, of limits on government power, and of the necessity of organic society and a sense of roots and of place. Consisting of such figures as Dr. James Matthew Wilson, Jeremy Beer, Dr. Jeffrey O. Nelson, Mark C. Henrie, Caleb StegallCaleb Stegall
Caleb Stegall is an attorney and writer residing in Perry, Kansas. He has served as the District attorney for Jefferson County, Kansas and is currently Chief Counsel to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback...
, Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
, Daniel Larison, and others, these traditionlists, largely from Generation X, proved to be a vanguard against both the progressives and the mainstream conservatives who were dominated by the neoconservatives and the Religious Right.
Other traditionalist organizations
Other traditionalist organizations include the Trinity ForumTrinity Forum
The Trinity Forum is a Christian non-profit organization founded in 1991 that fosters the development of networks of leaders who share its commitment to cultural renewal. The organization conducts seminars and retreats for leaders to discuss issues involving faith and culture, including private...
, Ellis Sandoz
Ellis Sandoz
Ellis Sandoz is the Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies...
's Eric Voegelin Institute and the Eric Voegelin Society, the New Centurion Program of the Conservative Institute, the Wilberforce Center for Colorado Statesmanship, the T. S. Eliot Society, the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, and the Free Enterprise Institute's Center for the American Idea
Center for the American Idea
The Center for the American Idea is the leading program of the Free Enterprise Institute, a Houston-based think tank, founded in 1976 by Rolland Storey to advance the principles of liberty and free enterprise through continuing education programs for teachers....
. A major funder of traditionalist programs, especially the Russell Kirk Center, is the Wilbur Foundation.
Literary Traditionalists
Literary traditionalist are often linked with political conservatives and the right-wing, while contasted with experimental worksExperimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
and the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, which in turn are often linked with progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
s and the left-wing. Postmodern writer and literary teorist John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...
, said "I confess to missing, in apprentice seminars in the later 1970s and the 1980s, that lively Make-It-New spirit of the Buffalo Sixties. A roomful of young traditionalists can be as depressing as a roomful of young Republicans."
Figures from "The Conservative Mind" and "The Conservative Reader"
There are numerous literary figures featured in Russell KirkRussell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
's The Conservative Mind (1953), including James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...
, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
, James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets...
, W. H. Mallock, Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
.
In Kirk's The Conservative Reader (1982) the writings of Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
and Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinley
Phyllis McGinley was an American writer of children's books and poet about the positive aspects of suburban life.McGinley was born in Ontario, Oregon...
are featured as examples of literary traditionalism.
The Fiction of Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was also known himself as a writer of supernatural and suspense fiction with a distinct Gothic flair. Novels such as Old House of Fear, A Creature of the Twilight, and Lord of the Hollow Dark and short stories such as "Lex Talionis", "Lost Lake", "Beyond the Stumps", "Ex Tenebris", and "Fate's Purse" gained praise from fiction writers such as Ray BradburyRay Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
and Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time...
.
Russell Kirk's Literary Friends
Kirk was also good friends with many literary figures of the 20th century: T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Roy Campbell
Roy Campbell
Roy Campbell is the name of:* Roy Campbell , South African poet* Roy Campbell, Jr., jazz musician* Colonel Roy Campbell, character in the Metal Gear series of video games...
, Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
, Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time...
, and Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
, most of whom could be labeled traditionalist in their poetry or fiction.
Evelyn Waugh
The British novelist and traditionalist CatholicTraditionalist Catholic
Traditionalist Catholics are Roman Catholics who believe that there should be a restoration of many or all of the liturgical forms, public and private devotions and presentations of Catholic teachings which prevailed in the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council...
Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
is often considered a traditionalist conservative.
Alasdair MacIntyre
Many traditionalist conservatives embrace the virtue-centered philosophy of British Roman Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyreAlasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre is a British philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy but known also for his work in history of philosophy and theology...
, who is noted for his many books, including After Virtue (1981).
Roger Scruton
Another British philosopher, Roger ScrutonRoger Scruton
Roger Vernon Scruton is a conservative English philosopher and writer. He is the author of over 30 books, including Art and Imagination , Sexual Desire , The Aesthetics of Music , and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism...
, is a self-described traditionalist conservative. Known for writing on such topics as foreign policy, animal rights, arts and culture, and philosophy, one of his most noted books is The Meaning of Conservatism (1980). Scruton is affiliated with the Center for European Renewal
Center for European Renewal
The Center for European Renewal is a pan-European conservative group based in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Center for European Renewal was founded in the fall of 2007 by a group of mainly European conservatives, including Dutch law professor Andreas Kinneging, the Czech think-tank director Roman...
, the Trinity Forum
Trinity Forum
The Trinity Forum is a Christian non-profit organization founded in 1991 that fosters the development of networks of leaders who share its commitment to cultural renewal. The organization conducts seminars and retreats for leaders to discuss issues involving faith and culture, including private...
, the Institute for the Psychological Sciences
Institute for the Psychological Sciences
The Institute for the Psychological Sciences is a graduate school affiliated with the Legion of Christ, a Catholic religious congregation.The school offers masters and doctoral degrees in psychology and clinical psychology. Its stated goal is to provide instruction that is consistent with the...
, and the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
. He writes for such publications as Modern Age (periodical), National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, The American Spectator, The New Criterion, and City Journal.
Phillip Blond
Recently British philosopher Phillip BlondPhillip Blond
Phillip Blond is an English political thinker, Anglican and theologian, and director of the think tank ResPublica.He gained prominence from a cover story in Prospect magazine in the February 2009 edition with his essay on Red Toryism, which proposed a radical communitarian traditionalist...
has risen to prominence as an exponent of traditionalist philosophy, more specifically progressive conservatism, or Red Tory
Red Tory
A red Tory is an adherent of a particular political philosophy, tradition, and disposition in Canada somewhat similar to the High Tory tradition in the United Kingdom; it is contrasted with "blue Tory". In Canada, the phenomenon of "red toryism" has fundamentally, if not exclusively, been found in...
ism. In Blond's view, Red Tory
Red Tory
A red Tory is an adherent of a particular political philosophy, tradition, and disposition in Canada somewhat similar to the High Tory tradition in the United Kingdom; it is contrasted with "blue Tory". In Canada, the phenomenon of "red toryism" has fundamentally, if not exclusively, been found in...
ism would combine civic communitarianism
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
with localism
Localism
Localism may refer to:*Localism *Localism in Thailand, sustainability, moderation and broad-based development*Surf localism, conflicts for large waves...
and traditional values as a way to revitalize British conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
and British society. He has formed a think tank, Res Publica.
The Salisbury Review
The oldest traditionalist conservative publication in the United Kingdom is the Salisbury ReviewSalisbury Review
The Salisbury Review is a British conservative magazine, published quarterly and founded in 1982. Roger Scruton was its chief editor for eighteen years and published it through his Claridge Press. It was named after Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the British Prime Minister at the...
, which was founded by British philosopher Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
Roger Vernon Scruton is a conservative English philosopher and writer. He is the author of over 30 books, including Art and Imagination , Sexual Desire , The Aesthetics of Music , and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism...
. The Salisbury Review
Salisbury Review
The Salisbury Review is a British conservative magazine, published quarterly and founded in 1982. Roger Scruton was its chief editor for eighteen years and published it through his Claridge Press. It was named after Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the British Prime Minister at the...
s current managing editor is Merrie Cave.
The Cornerstone Group
Within the British Conservative Party there is a faction of traditionalist MPs which formed in 2005 who are collectively known as the Cornerstone GroupCornerstone Group
The Cornerstone Group is a socially conservative or traditional conservative political organisation within the British Conservative Party. The group emphasises traditional values, exemplified by the motto: Faith, Flag, and Family. It consists of Members of Parliament with a traditionalist stance,...
. The Cornerstone Group stands for traditional values and represents "faith, flag, and family". Prominent members include Edward Leigh
Edward Leigh
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh is a British Conservative politician. He has sat in the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Gainsborough in Lincolnshire since 1997, and for its predecessor constituency of Gainsborough and Horncastle between 1983 and 1997...
and John Henry Hayes
John Henry Hayes
John Henry Hayes FRSA is a British Conservative Party politician. He is the Member of Parliament for South Holland and The Deepings, and a member of the socially conservative Cornerstone Group...
.
The Edmund Burke Foundation
The Edmund Burke Foundation is an educational foundation based out of the Netherlands which is traditionalist and is modeled after the Intercollegiate Studies InstituteIntercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
. Originally a think tank, it was founded by such traditionalists as scholar Andreas Kinneging
Andreas Kinneging
Andreas A.M. Kinneging is professor of legal philosophy at the University of Leiden, and a prominent conservative philosopher in The Netherlands.-Background:...
and journalist Bart Jan Spruyt
Bart Jan Spruyt
Dr. Bastian Jan Spruyt is a Dutch historian, journalist and conservative writer.-Academic background:...
. It is affiliated with The Center for European Renewal
Center for European Renewal
The Center for European Renewal is a pan-European conservative group based in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Center for European Renewal was founded in the fall of 2007 by a group of mainly European conservatives, including Dutch law professor Andreas Kinneging, the Czech think-tank director Roman...
.
The Center for European Renewal
In 2007 a number of leading traditionalist scholars from Europe as well as representatives of the Edmund Burke Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies InstituteIntercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
created the Center for European Renewal
Center for European Renewal
The Center for European Renewal is a pan-European conservative group based in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Center for European Renewal was founded in the fall of 2007 by a group of mainly European conservatives, including Dutch law professor Andreas Kinneging, the Czech think-tank director Roman...
. The Center is designed to be the European version of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
.
Bozell, Kirk and the Campaigns of 1960 and 1964
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
were united behind the U.S. presidential campaign of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
. Goldwater had first come to the attention of the public by way of The Conscience of a Conservative, a ghostwritten conservative classic written for him by William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
's Catholic traditionalist brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell Jr.
L. Brent Bozell Jr.
Leo Brent Bozell, Jr. was an American conservative activist and Catholic writer.-Family:His father was Leo B. Bozell the co-founder of Bozell Worldwide. His wife was Patricia Lee Buckley, sister of William F. Buckley, and their 10 children include L...
The book, which advocated a conservative vision in keeping with Buckley's National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
propelled Goldwater to unsuccessfully challenge Vice President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
for the 1960 Republican presidential nomination.
In 1964 Goldwater returned to challenge the Eastern Establishment which since the 1930s had controlled the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
. In a brutal campaign where he was maligned by his liberal Republican primary rivals (Rockefeller, Romney, Scranton, etc.), the press, the Democrats, and President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
, Goldwater once again found allies among conservatives, including the traditionalists. Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
championed Goldwater's cause as the maturation of the New Right in American politics. In his syndicated columns Kirk advocated for Goldwater and would also campaign for him in the primaries. Goldwater's subsequent defeat would result in the New Right regrouping and finding a new figurehead in the late 1970s: Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
.
Bradford and the NEH
Most traditionalists were enthusiastic supporters of former California Governor Ronald Reagan when he became president, even when he appointed William J. Bennett over Mel Bradford for a National Endowment for the Humanities post.T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., the current president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration, serving as President Reagan’s top advisor on domestic matters. Earlier in the administration he held the position of Counselor to the Attorney General.Russell Kirk and the Presidential Citizens Medal
Traditionalist scholar Russell KirkRussell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
was given the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989.
Spencer Abraham, U.S. Secretary of Energy
Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer AbrahamSpencer Abraham
Edmund Spencer Abraham is a former United States Senator from Michigan. He served as the tenth United States Secretary of Energy, serving under President George W. Bush. Abraham is one of the founders of the Federalist Society....
was influenced by Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
.
Thompson, Abraham, Simon: U.S. Senators
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
Republican Senator Fred Thompson, former Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
Republican Senator Spencer Abraham
Spencer Abraham
Edmund Spencer Abraham is a former United States Senator from Michigan. He served as the tenth United States Secretary of Energy, serving under President George W. Bush. Abraham is one of the founders of the Federalist Society....
, and former Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
Democratic Senator Paul Simon
Paul Simon (politician)
Paul Martin Simon was an American politician from Illinois. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1985 and United States Senate from 1985 to 1997. He was a member of the Democratic Party...
have all been influenced by traditionalist conservative Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
. Thompson gave an interview about Kirk's influence on the Russell Kirk Center's blog.
Hyde, McCotter, Camp, and Pence: U.S. Congressmen
Among the U.S. Congressmen influenced by traditionalist Russell Kirk are former IllinoisIllinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
Republican Congressman Henry Hyde
Henry Hyde
Henry John Hyde , an American politician, was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 2007, representing the 6th District of Illinois, an area of Chicago's northwestern suburbs which included O'Hare International Airport...
and Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
Republican Congressmen Thaddeus McCotter and Dave Camp, the latter two of whom visited the Russell Kirk Center in 2009. In 2010 Indiana Congressman Mike Pence acknowledged Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk
Russell Kirk was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement...
as a major influence.
John Engler, Governor of Michigan
Former MichiganMichigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
Republican Governor John Engler
John Engler
John Mathias Engler is an American politician and a member of the Republican Party. He served as the 46th Governor of Michigan from 1991 to 2003....
is a close personal friend of the Russell Kirk family and also serves as a trustee of the Wilbur Foundation, which funds programs at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational organization based out of Mecosta, Michigan. It was founded in order to continue the legacy of Dr. Russell Kirk, an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author...
in Mecosta, Michigan. Engler gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Kirk which is available from the Russell Kirk Center's blog.
Russell Kirk Conference
On April 14, 2007 the Intercollegiate Studies InstituteIntercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
hosted a National Leadership Conference entitled "Russell Kirk and the Prospects for American Conservatism". The event was held at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis, Indiana and featured such speakers as Ted V. McAllister, Michael P. Federici, George H. Nash, Dermot Quinn, and Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
.
U.K. Distributist Conference
On July 11, 2009 a conference on the "distributist view of the global economic crisis" sponsored by the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture was held in the United Kingdom at Oxford University featuring an international panel, including Red ToryRed Tory
A red Tory is an adherent of a particular political philosophy, tradition, and disposition in Canada somewhat similar to the High Tory tradition in the United Kingdom; it is contrasted with "blue Tory". In Canada, the phenomenon of "red toryism" has fundamentally, if not exclusively, been found in...
theorist Phillip Blond
Phillip Blond
Phillip Blond is an English political thinker, Anglican and theologian, and director of the think tank ResPublica.He gained prominence from a cover story in Prospect magazine in the February 2009 edition with his essay on Red Toryism, which proposed a radical communitarian traditionalist...
and American author and scholar Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson is a scholar and professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is the president of the Howard Center, a director of the Family in America Studies Center, the International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and editor of the Family in America...
. It marked a milestone for traditionalism since it was the first public forum for Blond to connect his progressive conservative/Red Tory
Red Tory
A red Tory is an adherent of a particular political philosophy, tradition, and disposition in Canada somewhat similar to the High Tory tradition in the United Kingdom; it is contrasted with "blue Tory". In Canada, the phenomenon of "red toryism" has fundamentally, if not exclusively, been found in...
philosophy with other traditionalists who favored the communitarianism
Communitarianism
Communitarianism is an ideology that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. That community may be the family unit, but it can also be understood in a far wider sense of personal interaction, of geographical location, or of shared history.-Terminology:Though the term...
that the distributists advocated.
Edmund Burke Revival Conference
In the wake of the defeat of the Republican Party in the 2008 U.S. election by Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
and the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
the conservative movement has undergone some self-examination as to its future direction. Part of that self-examination has included a revival of the principles of conservative founding father Edmund Burke. In late October 2009 the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
hosted a Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
Revival Conference at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational organization based out of Mecosta, Michigan. It was founded in order to continue the legacy of Dr. Russell Kirk, an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author...
which included such speakers as Dr. George H. Nash, Dr. Peter J. Stanlis, and Dr. Ian Crowe. The Burke Society of the University of Virginia, among others, was in attendance.
Phillip Blond's Visit to America
In March 2010 British Red ToryRed Tory
A red Tory is an adherent of a particular political philosophy, tradition, and disposition in Canada somewhat similar to the High Tory tradition in the United Kingdom; it is contrasted with "blue Tory". In Canada, the phenomenon of "red toryism" has fundamentally, if not exclusively, been found in...
philosopher and Res Publica think tank director Phillip Blond
Phillip Blond
Phillip Blond is an English political thinker, Anglican and theologian, and director of the think tank ResPublica.He gained prominence from a cover story in Prospect magazine in the February 2009 edition with his essay on Red Toryism, which proposed a radical communitarian traditionalist...
came to the United States at the invitation of the American traditionalist blog, Front Porch Republic. Blond first lectured and attended a round table discussion at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
's Tocqueville Forum, where he was introduced by the Forum's Dr. Patrick Deneen, a Front Porch Republic contributor. The round table discussion included comments from traditionalist journalists Ross Douthat
Ross Douthat
Ross Gregory Douthat is a conservative American author, blogger and New York Times columnist. He was a senior editor at The Atlantic and is author of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class and, with Reihan Salam, Grand New Party , which David Brooks called the "best single...
of the New York Times and Daniel McCarthy of The American Conservative
The American Conservative
The American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
, as well as the Templeton Foundation's Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
, and others. Deneen moderated the round table.
From the Georgetown event Blond attended another event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
.
This was the first formal event in the United States between Blond, a British traditionalist who is an advisor to British MP David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
, and the leading public figures of the growing American "neo-traditionalist" movement.
Traditionalism and paleoconservatism
There is some confusion over whether American traditionalist conservatism and paleoconservatismPaleoconservatism
Paleoconservatism is a term for a conservative political philosophy found primarily in the United States stressing tradition, limited government, civil society, anti-colonialism, anti-corporatism and anti-federalism, along with religious, regional, national and Western identity. Chilton...
are one and the same political philosophy. While there is some overlap concerning principles and even policy prescriptions, traditionalist conservatism differs from paleoconservatism in that the former emphasizes culture while the latter emphasizes reactionary political action. Paleoconservatism is also somewhat more influenced by Old Right
Old Right (United States)
The Old Right was a conservative faction in the United States that opposed both New Deal domestic programs and U.S. entry into World War II. Many members of this faction were associated with the Republicans of the interwar years led by Robert Taft, but some were Democrats...
and anti-immigrant politics. Paleoconservatism also is generally understood to be more ideological in nature and more militant in its approach to other conservative political philosophies, including neoconservatism
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....
.
It may be ventured that paleoconservatism is possibly the political expression of traditionalist conservatism, especially as many paleoconservatives such as former presidential candidate and journalist Patrick J. Buchanan express traditionalist conservative ideas and support traditionalist conservative causes such as cultural renewal and defending Western Civilization. Traditionalist conservatism, however, is older than paleoconservatism (which emerged in the late 1980s among traditionalist conservative academics and journalists in response to the growing influence of neoconservatism), and while many paleoconservatives (Claes G. Ryn
Claes G. Ryn
Dr. Claes Gösta Ryn is a Swedish-born, American academic and educator.-Background:Ryn was born and raised in Norrköping in Sweden. He attended the Latin Gymnasium, Norrköpings Högre Allmänna Läroverk' . He was an undergraduate and a doctoral student at Uppsala University...
, Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried is Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient...
, Thomas Fleming) are also traditionalists, not all traditionalist conservatives are paleoconservatives.
Institutions
- Center for European RenewalCenter for European RenewalThe Center for European Renewal is a pan-European conservative group based in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Center for European Renewal was founded in the fall of 2007 by a group of mainly European conservatives, including Dutch law professor Andreas Kinneging, the Czech think-tank director Roman...
- Center for the American IdeaCenter for the American IdeaThe Center for the American Idea is the leading program of the Free Enterprise Institute, a Houston-based think tank, founded in 1976 by Rolland Storey to advance the principles of liberty and free enterprise through continuing education programs for teachers....
- Cornerstone GroupCornerstone GroupThe Cornerstone Group is a socially conservative or traditional conservative political organisation within the British Conservative Party. The group emphasises traditional values, exemplified by the motto: Faith, Flag, and Family. It consists of Members of Parliament with a traditionalist stance,...
- Edmund Burke Foundation
- Family Research CouncilFamily Research CouncilThe Family Research Council is a conservative or right-wing Christian group and lobbying organization formed in the United States in 1981 by James Dobson. It was fully incorporated in 1983...
- Howard Center for Family, Religion and SocietyHoward Center for Family, Religion and SocietyThe Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society is an organizations that promotes research that attempts to demonstrate the alleged importance of a mother and father with a family consisting of their own biological children as the basic unit of society....
- Intercollegiate Studies InstituteIntercollegiate Studies InstituteThe Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
- McConnell CenterMcConnell CenterThe McConnell Center is an endowed institution created in 1991 by U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, and the University of Louisville.The McConnell Center's mission includes four major components:* The McConnell Scholars Program*Public Lecture Series...
- National Humanities InstituteNational Humanities InstituteThe National Humanities Institute is a nonprofit interdisciplinary educational organization founded in 1984. It is known to be affiliated with traditionalist conservatism.It publishes Humanitas and the Epistulae Occasional Papers....
- Russell Kirk Center for Cultural RenewalRussell Kirk Center for Cultural RenewalThe Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational organization based out of Mecosta, Michigan. It was founded in order to continue the legacy of Dr. Russell Kirk, an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author...
- Thomas More College of Liberal ArtsThomas More College of Liberal ArtsThe Thomas More College of Liberal Arts is located in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The college emphasizes classical education in the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition and is named after Thomas More. The school has approximately 100 students.-Founding:...
- Trinity ForumTrinity ForumThe Trinity Forum is a Christian non-profit organization founded in 1991 that fosters the development of networks of leaders who share its commitment to cultural renewal. The organization conducts seminars and retreats for leaders to discuss issues involving faith and culture, including private...
Publications
- The American ConservativeThe American ConservativeThe American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
- The Chesterton ReviewThe Chesterton ReviewThe Chesterton Review is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture based at Seton Hall University. It was founded in 1974 to promote an interest in all aspects of G. K. Chesterton’s life, work, art and ideas, including his Christian apologetics...
- HumanitasHumanitas (journal)Humanitas is an interdisciplinary journal published by the National Humanities Institute. It is known for its affiliation with traditionalist conservatism....
- ImageImage (journal)Image is an American quarterly literary journal that explores the relationship between Judeo-Christian tradition and contemporary art and literature. The journal's motto is "Art, Faith, Mystery," and its articles and glossy photos explore contemporary spirituality by featuring provocative art...
- Modern Age
- Salisbury ReviewSalisbury ReviewThe Salisbury Review is a British conservative magazine, published quarterly and founded in 1982. Roger Scruton was its chief editor for eighteen years and published it through his Claridge Press. It was named after Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the British Prime Minister at the...
- Touchstone MagazineTouchstone MagazineTouchstone Magazine is a bimonthly publication of the Fellowship of St. James. It is subtitled A Journal of Mere Christianity, which replaced A Journal of Ecumenical Orthodoxy.-Biography:...
Articles
- "Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism" by Mark C. Henrie. The New Pantagruel, formerly published in Varieties of Conservatism in America, Peter Berkowitz, Ed. (Hoover Press, 2004) ISBN 4572-5.
General reference
- Allitt, Patrick (2009) The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- Critchlow, Donald T. (2007) The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Dunn, Charles W., and J. David Woodard (2003) The Conservative Tradition in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
- Edwards, Lee (2004) A Brief History of the Modern American Conservative Movement. Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation.
- Frohnen, Bruce, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson (2006) American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- Gottfried, Paul, and Thomas Fleming (1988) The Conservative Movement. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
- Nash, George H. (1976, 2006) The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- Nisbet, Robert (1986) Conservatism: Dream and Reality. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
- Regnery, Alfred S. (2008) Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism. New York: Threshold Editions.
- Viereck, Peter (1956, 2006) Conservative Thinkers from John Adams to Winston Churchill. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
By the "New Conservatives"
- Bestor, Arthur (1953, 1988) Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our Public Schools. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
- Boorstin, Daniel (1953) The Genius of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Chalmers, Gordon Keith (1952) The Republic and the Person: A Discussion of Necessities in Modern American Education. Chicago: Regnery.
- Hallowell, John (1954, 2007) The Moral Foundation of Democracy. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Inc.
- Heckscher, August (1947) A Pattern of Politics. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock.
- Kirk, Russell (1953, 2001) The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing.
- Kirk, Russell (1982) The Portable Conservative Reader. New York: Penguin.
- Nisbet, Robert (1953, 1990) The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom. San Francisco: ICS Press.
- Smith, Mortimer (1949) And Madly Teach. Chicago:Henry Regnery Co.
- Viereck, Peter (1949, 2006) Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
- Vivas, Eliseo (1950, 1983) The Moral Life and the Ethical Life. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
- Voegelin, Eric (1952, 1987) The New Science of Politics: An Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Weaver, Richard (1948, 1984) Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Wilson, Francis G. (1951, 1990) The Case for Conservatism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
By other traditionalist conservatives
- Dreher, Rod (2006) Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-loving Organic Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party). New York: Crown Forum.
- Frohnen, Bruce (1993) Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism: The Legacy of Burke and Tocqueville. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
- Henrie, Mark C. (2008) Arguing Conservatism: Four Decades of the Intercollegiate Review. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- Kushiner, James M., Ed. (2003) Creed and Culture: A Touchstone Reader. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- MacIntyre, Alaisdar (1981, 2007) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
- Panichas, George A., Ed. (1988) Modern Age: The First Twenty-Five Years: A Selection. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc.
- Panichas, George A. (2008) Restoring the Meaning of Conservatism: Writings from Modern Age. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- Scruton, Roger (1980, 2002) The Meaning of Conservatism. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press.
About traditionalist conservatives
- Duffy, Bernard K. and Martin Jacobi (1993) The Politics of Rhetoric: Richard M. Weaver and the Conservative Tradition. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press.
- Federici, Michael P. (2002) Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- Gottfried, Paul (2009) Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- Kirk, Russell (1995) The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of Literary Conflict. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman's Publishing Co.
- McDonald, W. Wesley (2004) Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
- Person, James E., Jr. (1999) Russell Kirk: A Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind. Lanham, MD: Madison Books.
- Russello, Gerald J. (2007) The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
- Scotchie, Joseph (1997) Barbarians in the Saddle: An Intellectual Biography of Richard M. Weaver. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
- Scotchie, Joseph (1995) The Vision of Richard Weaver. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
- Scruton, Roger (2005) Gentle Regrets: Thoughts From A Life London: Continuum.
- Stone, Brad Lowell (2002) Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
- Wilson, Clyde (1999) A Defender of Conservatism: M. E. Bradford and His Achievements. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.