Cultural Conservatism: Toward a New National Agenda.A Cultural Conservative Manifesto The Conservative Manifesto was a position statement drafted in 1937 by a bi-partisan group of New Deal critics. Those involved in its creation included opponents of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal as well as erstwhile supporters who had come to believe its programs were A NEW BOOK has been causing a considerable stir in conservative circles and in the press, Cultural Conservatism Cultural conservatism is conservatism with respect to culture. This term is increasingly used in political debate, but is rather ill-defined. It is often confused with social conservatism, which is a school of thought that may overlap to a degree as far as its adherents : Toward a New National Agenda, produced under the auspices of Paul Weyrich's Institute for Cultural Conservatism and written by William Lind and William Marshner William Harry Marshner, S.T.D. is a prominent convert, an eminent Thomistic theologian, ethicist, and a founding professor at Christendom College in Front Royal, VA where he has served as the head of the theology department in the early days of the college. (reviewed in NR, Feb. 19, 1988). The book is intellectually and politically challenging, a welcome contribution to the discussion of the post-Reagan future of American conservatism. No attempt will be made here to summarize Cultural Conservatism, for the book fairly bristles with ideas within an overarching conceptual framework For the concept in aesthetics and art criticism, see . A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to a system analysis project. . The book begins with the authors assuring us that the socialist/market-place argument is virtually over. Socialism is dead intellectually. But they argue that our system, and the West, is in deep trouble because it lacks the traditional moral imperatives of self-restraint and delayed gratification, lacks the cultural content of conservatism without which all economic theory is vain. We have non-competitive shoddy workmanship, an underclass locked in dependency, and widespread cultural vulgarity. What is striking in the authors' very specific proposals is their willingness to use the Federal Government as well as local government for cultural-conservative ends. They are forced to do this, as a kind of pis aller pis al·ler n. The final recourse or expedient; the last resort. [French : pis, worse + aller, to go.] Noun 1. , because the institutions that should be transmitting the culture--the mainline mainline Drug slang verb To inject a drug churches and the universities--have almost entirely gone over to liberationism and are the enemy. The authors argue that welfare, for example, should be contracted out to intermediate organizations like churches, those at least that promote traditional morality. They think colleges receiving federal aid should be required to have a serious civilizational core curriculum. And more, much more, along these lines. Understandably, the book has gone against the grain of limited-government conservatives. Welfarist wel·far·ism n. The set of policies, practices, and social attitudes associated with a welfare state. wel  far·ist n. liberals are no friends of
any churches, except maybe Bishop Moore's and Bishop
Hunthausen's. And should the Feds get their hands on any college
curriculum? Yet Secretary Bennett has written that "This is a book
that deserves to be read widely, taken seriously, and thought through
seriously." As usual, Mr. Bennett is right.
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