Jeffrey Hart offers a compelling assessment of modern conservativism in a Russel Kirkian vein. (Anyone familiar with Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind” will appreciate the piece. Those unaware of Kirk will appreciate the introduction to him here .)
One area where Hart fails in his assessment of abortion. He does not see, it appears to me, that abortion is both a religious and political issue, or at least who politics and religion meet in any discussion of abortion, no matter what side of the question a person holds or what his religious ideas and beliefs might be.
The Wall Street Journal Jeffrey Hart December 30, 2005
Prudence, skepticism and “unbought grace.”
In “The Conservative Mind” (1953), a founding document of the American conservative movement, Russell Kirk assembled an array of major thinkers beginning with Edmund Burke and made a major statement. He proved that conservative thought in America existed, and even that such thought was highly intelligent–a demonstration very much needed at the time.
Today we are in a very different and more complicated situation. Nevertheless, a synthesis is possible, based on what American conservatism has achieved and left unachieved since Kirk’s volume. Any political position is only as important as the thought by which it is derived; the political philosopher presiding will be Burke, but a Burke interpreted for a new constitutional republic and for modern life. Here, then, is my assessment of the ideas held in balance in the American Conservative Mind today.
