In the mid-1950s, the danger of an ever-expanding state was clear, but conservatives could not agree on an appropriate response, including whether the greater danger lay at home or abroad. The three main branches of conservatism traditional conservatives appalled by secular mass society, libertarians repelled by the Leviathan state, and ex-Leftists alarmed by international Communism led by the Soviet Union remained divided. Noting that “The few spasmodic victories conservatives are winning are aimless, uncoordinated, and inconclusive…because many years have gone by since the philosophy of freedom has been expounded systematically, brilliantly, and resourcefully,” William F. Buckley Jr. resolved to change that. His vision of ordered liberty shaped and guided American conservatism from its infancy to its maturity, from a cramped suite of offices on Manhattan’s East Side to the Oval Office of the White House, from a set of “irritable mental gestures” to a political force that
With some of the leading National Conservative intellectuals especially Yoram Hazony casting shade on the imputed Lockeanism of the American Founding, it is worth recurring to just one of Willmoore Kendall s fertile provocations about this point from more than 50 years ago: The emphasis of Locke s political theory is, ultimately, egalitarian, since if the consent of all is necessary for the compact, then each man s consent is as good as any other
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Frank Meyer’s attempt to codify a conservative consensus must be understood in the context of his day, when remnants of the Old Right were marginalized and conservatism was dominated by anti-Communism.