The Right Political Tradition

Recently, David Frum&mdashthe wordsmith behind the axis of evil locution—described war as the “great clarifier.” Yet, just as often, war is the source of great confusion. Many major wars of the twentieth century illustrate this rule. For example, the Great War thrust Europe into an existential crisis and Vietnam crippled America’s confidence as the leader of the free world. Likewise, the war on terrorism and its constituent conflicts will alter America and its relationship to the international community. What we do will determine who we are and how we appear to others. As the United States succeeds Great Britain as the imperial power of the Middle East, a great debate is raging over the future of America: republic or empire? This war is being waged primarily within the conservative movement. On the side of empire are the ubiquitous neoconservatives—a group of liberal intellectuals who migrated to the right during the Reagan Era. Although they professed their allegiance to conservatism, many neoconservatives retained vestiges of their New Deal liberalism. The republican cause is championed by the paleoconservatives—traditional conservatives who resent the influence of the neoconservatives.

As the West continues to clash with Islam, many in the media and the academy correctly argue for a deeper understanding of the Muslim world. However, it is equally important that we understand each other and the philosophical presuppositions that undergird our political persuasions.

Too often the liberal establishment has reserved only contempt and condescension for their conservative counterparts. As our front cover demonstrates, conservatives are often the victims of potent stereotypes. The best example of this attitude is a statement in 1950 by one of the greatest literary critics of the 20th century—Lionel Trilling. In The Liberal Imagination, Trilling delivered a devastating dismissal of American conservatism:

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction…. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but in only in action or irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

Half a century later—after William F. Buckley’s National Review, Russell Kirk’s anthology of conservative thought, and the neoconservative movement—conservatism has entered mainstream American political culture, yet it is still excluded from serious academic consideration. Columbia professor Alan Brinkley reports in the April 1994 issue of the American Historical Review that the American Right has not received the” amount of attention from historians that its role in twentieth century politics and culture suggests it should.” The problem is especially acute at Brown, in which conservative ideas are not merely in the minority—often they are nonexistent.

We present this issue as both an introduction to the uninitiated and an exercise in political philosophy for those who consider themselves familiar with the conservative tradition.