Like Groucho Marx, Russell Kirk shunned joining any club, movement, or “ism” that would have him as a member. It is significant that Kirk entitled his great book not The Conservative Movement, not Conservatism, but The Conservative Mind.
The Buckley-Goldwater-Reagan conservative-libertarian coalition, or movement, of the late 20th century, is shattered and obsolete. Of course any movement, even when it produces boons as big as the Reagan era’s accomplishments—greater freedom, security, and prosperity—is not a Permanent Thing.
“Conservatism” as an “ism” was incapable of squaring the circle, of bringing about “fusion” of factional contradictions into a coherent intellectual whole. But the nonideological conservative mind, seeking not power but truth, is alive and well. The conservative mind and soul gravitate toward natural law, piety, and the other permanent things.
Mr. Tanenhaus presents very little that was not discussed more searchingly in 1986 by contributors to the Intercollegiate Review symposium “The State of Conservatism”—which Russell Kirk warned was “enfeebled, intellectually and in backing, at the very hour of its popular ascendancy.”
At the same time, despite the superficial similarity of some phrases in the two presidents’ speeches, Mr. Tanenhaus is wrong to equate Reagan’s foreign policy with that of the junior Bush. Read young Bush’s two jejune, utopian National Security Strategy documents and compare them with the sober, realistic National Security Strategy Reagan promulgated in 1988.
