The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, by George Nash. New York: Basic Books.
George Nash has written a masterful book. He writes with extraordinary facility and clarity, and he has produced a work that all persons identifying with the “conservative movement” in America since 1945 must read. Encyclopedic in scope, this book reflects a prodigious research effort. Yet, the end result is a highly readable work in which this talented historian leads the reader with remarkable dexterity through the complex strands and nuances of conservative thought. Nash’s work initially took form as a doctoral dissertation in the Department of History at Harvard; he ultimately refined it into this definitive work on the conservative movement. Nash writes with deep affection for American conservative thought; however, he analyzes with the detachment and sophistication of the scholar, and the end result is an extraordinary account of a movement which, as Nash views it, possesses genuine and impressive intellectual substance.
“In 1945,” Nash observes, “no articulate, coordinated, self-consciously conservative intellectual force existed in the United States.” In a relatively brief span of time that situation changed dramatically. There emerged two fairly distinct forms of allegedly “conservative” thought: the libertarians and the traditionalists. Those of libertarian bent, such as Friedrich A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, feared principally the growth of collectivism and the omnicompetent state. They presented the case, Nash explains, “for strictly limited government, a free market, the impersonal rule of law, and social development by spontaneous growth rather than conscious planning and coercion,” and their “enemies were coercion, arbitrariness, discrimination, and the omnivorous administrative discretionary state that tried to design progress rather than allow societies to grow under the impersonal rule of law.”
The traditionalist label encompasses such diverse figures as Richard Weaver, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Russell Kirk, and Willmoore Kendall. In spite of their considerable differences in analysis and emphasis, the traditionalists were united in their opposition to “philosophical nihilism, totalitarianism, and the disturbing emergence of the mass man.” They were “appalled by the erosion of values and the emergence of a secular, rootless, mass society.” To stem the decay and disintegration, they became primarily “defenders of order, consensus, morality, ‘right reason,’ religion, truth, [and] virtue.”
In addition to the libertarians and traditionalists, there emerged the “disillusioned ex-radicals and their allies, alarmed by international communism.” Whittaker Chambers and James Burnhan would symbolize the central figures in this grouping. In Cold Friday Chambers placed his finger on the raw nerve: “If they [the statist liberals] could have communism without the brutalities of ruling that the Russian experience bred, they have only marginal objections. Why should they object? What else is socialism but communism with the claws retracted.”
Regarding the libertarian, traditionalist, and an anti-Communist strands of conservative thought, Nash explains, “No rigid barriers separated the three groups.” Nevertheless, there were the divisions, sometimes subtle, sometimes pronounced. The libertarians stressed freedom; the traditionalists were preoccupied with order and value; while the anti-Communists were caught up in opposing the great villainy of totalitarianism. Thus the groping for identity through consensus and unity was a continuing and illusive concern for the conservative movement.
Frank S. Meyer and William F. Buckley, Jr. personified those who labored to produce a conservative consensus—sometimes called “fusion-ism.” Meyer insisted, Nash relates, “that conservatives must absorb the best of both branches of the divided conservative mainstream. This was the true heritage of the West—‘reason operating within tradition.’” Similarly, Buckley was hospitable to libertarians and traditionalists in National Review. Moreover, he gave generous coverage to the anti-Communist Right. In Buckley’s hands conservatism was broad-based, eclectic, and viable; its traditional, libertarian, and anti-Communist strains became symbiotic, not antagonistic. After all, Nash instructs, “It was part of the wisdom and genius of conservatism that it not try to encapsulate all its beliefs in a handbook of doctrines.” The conservative movement was “cosmopolitan”; it thrived on diversity and “heterogeneity.” In sum, Nash queries, “What was so strange about simultaneously opposing centralized government, supporting a nonsocialist economy and adhering to traditional morality?” Nash concludes there is a “working conservative consensus,” and his assessment appears undeniably valid.
This consensus is based not merely upon convenience; it is rooted in agreement upon fundamental theoretical premises. All strains of conservative thought are anti-gnostic; they all agree that man lacks the wisdom and capacity to collectively perfect his earthly condition. There is the acceptance of an order of things, of a “constitution of being,” not produced by the mind and hands of man. The mystery of creation has not been solved. Piety, not pride, is in order. The proper mood is reverence and awe, not arrogance and chauvinism. There is an ordained framework of the given, and the task of man is to learn about it, to respect it, and to attune himself accordingly—above all, he is not to defile that which he has not created. The role of defiler and corrupter has fallen to the gnostics, those fanatical utopians who rail against the nature of things, engage in mindless rebellion, and in the process deny the dignity of man.
By acknowledging the order of things, all strains of conservative thought are affirming the dignity of man. As is the case with creation generally, mankind is not self-produced, gnostic thought to the contrary notwithstanding. Man is part of a given order, and his dignity arises out of his uniqueness in that established order. In the quest for fulfillment, the uniqueness of each man should be respected—indeed, revered. Under the broad label of conservative, there is unity of principle in opposition to the demeaning of man by modern gnostics. Totalitarian gnostics demean man by denying his humanity and manhandling him in a fashion befitting only brick and steel. Similarly, liberal statist gnostics seek to mold man in their image; as Whittaker Chambers had instructed, their only quarrel with totalitarian gnostics is over the matter of gentility of method. Finally, there are those gnostics who preach the doctrine of nihilism wherein man, in effect, is implored to destroy himself to escape his self-inflicted alienation and despair. In all cases, then, gnostics assault the dignity of man, and conservatives are united in resisting and overcoming this degradation.
Significantly, in all phases of conservative thought there is what Leo Strauss termed the “character of ascent.” That is, in spite of the imperfections and limitations of man’s predicament, existence in general and human life in particular are considered good things. Thus there is the spirit of affirmation, not negation. More specifically, physical, intellectual, and spiritual life within the Western experience is to be treasured; consequently, there is cause for confidence and hope, for out of this mood of affirmation springs the will to persist and ultimately to prevail. To many observers these were powerful tenets upon which to build an enduring and humane philosophy—and society.
