Keeping the Tablets
Kesler, Charles R. & Buckley, William F. Jr.
T his is a revised edition of the collection William E Buckley, Jr. published in 1970 under the title American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century. (The trade edition bore the more...
...For contemporary evidence of what can result from Communism the world has only to look at Ethiopia...
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...These conservatives champion states' rights, are wary of the Fourteenth Amendment, and come close to endorsing pure majoritarianism...
...In one striking sentence, he makes the ultimately important point: "Solong as we are willing to include death among possible alternatives, we shall always be free to choose...
...These are eloquent reminders of the spiritual dimension of much conservative thought...
...Keeping the Tablets closes, as the earlier volume did, with essays by Whittaker Chambers and Albert Jay Nock on "The Spiritual Crisis...
...This is also a good time to be pondering the future of conservatism, and Keeping the Tablets is useful in this regard...
...Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit...
...I enclose my check for $ Made payable to The American Foundation for Resistance International and mail it to 6 East 39th St., Suite 1209, New York, NY 10016...
...This problem involves a complex of issues, including the roles of religion, family, and community...
...Foreword by Sidney Hook...
...In very clear disagreement with this group is another, represented here by Harry V. Jaffa (who appears twice in this volume), whose understanding of the American experiment is grounded in the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence...
...But whatever its character, it has provided conservatives with some degree of serenity in what Buckley calls "this dreadful century...
...15.95 paper Terry Eastland THE AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR RESISTANCE INTERNATIONAL 6 East 39th Street Suite 1209 New York, New York 10016 AFGHANISTAN THE TERRIBLE DECADE 1978 - 1988 Curtis Cate, Editor A TIMELY REFERENCE HANDBOOK An overview of the Soviet Union's failed conquest against a background of 20 centuries of Afghan history...
...Including Alexandre Bennigsen, Michael Barry, Rosanne Klass, Anthony Hyman, Rawan Farhadi, Chantal Lobato, Abdul Hakim Tabibi...
...This dimension has not, for all conservatives, been Christian, or even monotheistic...
...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1989 by Norman Podhoretz and Jeane Kirkpatrick...
...There are those who seek to discern the "original meaning" of the law...
...There is no substitute for the faith of our fathers," he writes...
...For these conservatives, the union preceded the states, the Fourteenth Amendment is hardly anathema, and pure majoritarianism is inconsistent with the very principles by which our political society has been organized...
...And Burnham's contribution, reprinted from the 1970 volume, wears well...
...Contributed by the world's leading experts...
...The essays collected here not only state first principles but also show that conservatives are seriously divided on some basic propositions...
...One of the best essays on the subject, incidentally, was Irving Kristol's "Republican Virtue vs...
...A concise chronology of the terrible decade with facts and dates...
...There is a group of conservatives, represented in this volume by Willmoore Kendall, who are not enthralled with the Declaration of Independence and its understanding that "all men are created equal...
...Walter Berns brilliantly demonstrates how Oliver Wendell Holmes provided the theoretical groundwork for judicial activism as well as for what Kesler calls "the positivist version of judicial restraint...
...The pieces by Gerhart Niemeyer and James Burnham are separated in time by at least fifteen years from those KEEPING THE TABLETS: MODERN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT Edited by William E Buckley, Jr...
...Should judges say the Constitution protects the right to life of the unborn even though the Constitution does not mention that...
...The differences between Kendall and Jaffa, Kesler's philosophical mentor, have appeared politically during the Reagan years, in personnel selections as well as policies...
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...As the title suggests, this is not a book about policy prescriptions but first principles—what you'd find engraved in stone...
...Published by THE 'AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR RESISTANCE INTERNATIONAL...
...If the Declaration of Independence is not American, then nothing is...
...Only 30 percent of the 1970 essays survive...
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...But as Kesler understands, conservatives face a choice in these matters...
...For example, conservatives divide on the question of whether judges should invoke "higher law limitations" that have not been expressed in positive law...
...He argues that the moment American conservatism fully embraces the political teaching of the Declaration it will be more able to speak "the vernacular of American politics...
...Finally, it's worth noting that Keeping the Tablets includes four essays on Communism that illustrate conservative unanimity on at least one matter...
...So too would have been at least one essay on the very difficult problems of cultivating virtue in a society that celebrates liberty and sometimes gets it confused with license...
...But there are related issues that neither he nor the contributors to Keeping the Tablets adequately explore...
...Despite apparent changes in the Soviet Union, the underlying reality of Soviet ideology remains the same...
...One is the role of the courts in our society...
...An essay on legal interpretation would also have been appropriate...
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...Short biographies of the leading personalities on both sides...
...But all of them are agreed on the evil of Communism...
...The trade edition bore the more intriguing title, Did You Ever See A Dream Walking...
...For example, there is the Law and Economics school, perhaps best represented by Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee on the U.S...
...The politics of the various resistance factions explained...
...These conservatives seem much more at ease with the American political tradition...
...This is not the place to advance the many reasons why Kesler is right, only to observe that his thinking has important practical consequences...
...This is an appropriate time for conservatives, as Kesler puts it in his introduction, to reacquaint themselves "with the paradigms of conservatism, to revisit the insights that first gave rise to the conservative movement and that have guided the rhetoric of the Reagan administration...
...These include such questions as the unjustness of progressive taxation, the danger to everyone's rights posed by quotas and other racial preferences, and the importance of the Strategic Defense Initiative as the only plausible means of fulfilling the constitutional responsibility to protect the nation...
...A must for the classroom...
...Servile Institutions," published in the February 1975 issue of The American Spectator...
...they are more conversant with Edmund Burke, for example, than with George Washington or James Madison...
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...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1989 47...
...Some of the conservatives in this group seem at times more English and European than American...
...He comes down, as I do, with Jaffa or, more precisely, with the Declaration of Independence and its teachings...
...Please send me copy(ies) of AFGHANISTAN - THE TERRIBLE DECADE 1978 - 1988...
...Buckley and his co-editor, Charles R. Kesler, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, deserve credit for bringing out this volume at the close of the Reagan era...
...ing the Tablets address the same matters, which preeminently include the limits of the state and the threat of Communism...
...But the twenty-six essays that make up KeepTerry Fastland is resident scholar at the National Legal Center for the Public Interest...
...A valuable resource tool for all concerned with public affairs and current history...
...It will thus begin to shed its status as a "movement" (which many conservatives are rightly proud of but whose persistence confirms its parochial character...
...and Charles R. Kesler Harper & Row/$29.95...
...The Declaration supplies the moral principles, he says, that prudence then may serve...
...Niemeyer's essay on the "Communist mind" is as cogent and insightful as you will find ("Communist totalitarianism springs from the arrogation of the role of God," he writes...
...Edited by Curtis Cate...
...Present and future outlook...
...And, he goes on to say, ifconservatism understands, as progressivism did at the turn of the last century, the importance of political parties, it will reconstitute the Republican party by having it raise "fundamental questions of justice and the common good that lie at the heart of politics...
...K esler's introductory essay should be read and reread...
...Meanwhile, conservatives of varying points of view are busy working out theories of legal interpretation...
...Kesler parenthetically explains this as "deference to legislative majorities without any higher law limitations," but more discussion of the deeper issues involved would have been fitting in this volume...
...Price $7.50 ea...
...In reminding us that this world is not all there is, Keeping the Tablets keeps the most important tablet of all...
...For postage & handling, add $1.50 for first copy and $0.50 for each additional copy...
Vol. 22 • January 1989 • No. 1
