Alienated from Liberal Democracy

...For conservatives appear to be fundamentally alienated from liberal democracy...

...Most libertarians, for example, willingly gave government a temporary dispensation to fight the archenemy of liberty...

...They remain primarily concerned with finding the best means of making liberal democracy work, even if they axe willing to employ what are thought of as conservative social policies where necessary...

...Since Nash is studying a political movement, it is reasonable that he should emphasize this practical harmony...

...But his explanation of the phenomenon is not wholly satisfactory...

...It would be a mistake to assume, however, that conservatism as we now know it consists of nothing more than a series of changing responses to advancing liberalism, that it does not retain an identity distinctly its own...

...In addition, by focusing on practice Nash leaves the reader wondering what role, if any, philosophy plays...

...Still, the theme is triumphal as he recounts how the Right remnant rallied its forces after 1945 and has now emerged "as a credible competitor for national leadership...

...The divided movement has managed to come so far, argues Nash, because in practice, both wings tend to back a fairly consistent set of policies that has at its core support for private property rights, traditional morality and anti-Communism...

...First, at least since the demise of Fascism, the Left—albeit erratic and self-contradictory—has set the terms of political debate...

...Reviewed by Fred Baumann One group described in this book believes individual freedom is the highest good and government its sworn enemy...

...Second, a fair number of Rightists, notably the libertarians, came over from the other side ready to do battle with their former cohorts...

...Only in America could these divergent views be considered "conservative...

...In their attacks on Leftist orthodoxy, the right liberals—no matter how polemical or pessimistic—are never so plangent or apocalyptic...

...And there, I think, is the clue to what separates the Right from the rest of die political spectrum...

...All his traditionalists (including Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver) are made to sound like dogmatists who appeal to some already articulated set of truths, such as "the natural law" or the "Greco-Judeo-Christian" tradition...

...Nor does he sufficiently demonstrate why libertarian anarchists, pious Catholics, Anglophile Whigs and philosophical Platonists join on many issues...

...He does not adequately account for the fact that so few people follow Murray Rothbard, an extreme individualist, or L. Brent Bozell, a traditionalist admirer of Franco's Spain...

...his critique of modem liberalism's tenets has been successful in good measure because of its radicalism...

...now they accuse the Left of elitism...

...The author correctly points out that the skepticism of men like Kristol and Daniel P. Moynihan about government's ability to solve social problems represents a shift toward a conservative stance...

...But on the whole their preoccupation—and unifying force—has been reaction to what they perceive as an ever more extreme Left...

...There would appear to be two reasons for this...

...Another holds that order is the highest good and individual freedom its enemy...

...The "strong Presidency" argument, for instance, depends on who won the last election...

...now it makes common cause with the heirs of Dean Acheson...

...now they call environ-mentalism a threat to progress...

...Similarly, in 1957, the National Review was not ashamed to grant the white race in the South the right "to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically" on the grounds that "for the time being it is the advanced race...

...Yet Leo Strauss, mentioned in the group, is clearly anti-dogmatic...

...Moreover, according to George Nash, both are part of a single movement —a largely accurate observation whose perplexity he attempts to resolve...

...The current election campaign, with its bipartisan eulogies to limited government, seems to bear him out...

...And Nash himself reports that although most conservatives supported Senator Joseph McCarthy, individuals like Peter Viereck and Kirk attacked the Wisconsin Senator as a populist demagogue...

...Calling the two main factions of American conservatism "libertarian" and "traditionalist," the writer dwells at sometimes tedious length on their battles and the hapless efforts of the "fusionists" to bridge the gulf...

...While anti-Communism has undoubtedly been a cementing force, the Right has not held a monopoly on it...

...now "the imperial Presidency" is a liberal catch phrase and conservatives oppose Congressional attempts to limit Presidential prerogatives...

...No, the explanation would appear to lie elsewhere, and I would suggest that much of the Right's current posture has been shaped by its reaction to liberalism...

...Of course, other factors enter into conservative calculations, too...

...But the conservative rhetoric that Nash gives us in abundance resounds with calls to battle, to "standing athwart history," to turning tides and mustering ranks...

...Conservatives once found consolation in seeing themselves as a doomed but superior elite...

...It is true as well that the isolationism of the Left and Leftist revolutionary violence on campuses has appalled right liberals and conservatives alike...

...The Right originally denounced the policy of containment as appeasement...

...Personalities also play a unifying role, and the author justifiably stresses William F. Buckley Jr.'s influence in holding the pieces together...

...To begin with, despite being generally careful about reporting disputes, the author sometimes blurs distinctions between the various doctrines...

...In any event, one need only look at the Right's well-known reversals of position during the last 30 years to realize that its policies have to a very significant extent been determined by the Left...

...This explains the move from "rollback" to containment of international Communism...

...This becomes clear in the course of reading Nash's chapter on the post-Vietnam rapprochement between National Review conservatives and those he describes as "right liberals," among them Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and the circle around their magazine, the Public Interest...

...Conservatives used to urge a revival of Congressional power, while liberals praised the strong Presidency...

...the element in liberalism that looks to the good of the community found an echo in the conservative teachings of public virtue...

...Today, with supporters of racial quotas like Archibald Cox of Harvard adopting positions resembling those taken by lawyers for Southern school boards, Senator James Buckley of New York attacks preferential treatment by race and sex as immoral and unconstitutional...

...Confronted by what they believed was the spread of a rootless, democratic society, conservatives supported conservation...