The American conservative movement: the philosophical founders.

The American Conservative Movement: The Philosophical Founders

JUST OUT is The American ConservativeMovement: The Philosophical Founders (Regnery Books, 950 North Shore Drive, Lake Bluff, Ill. 60044, and 1130 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; $18.95), the late Senator John P. East's only, posthumously published, book, the page proofs of which the senator had just finished correcting at the time of his death, on June 29, 1986. Typically, my reaction to the prospect of reviewing a book of this nature written (or "written') by a practicing politician resembles the initial one of Flannery O'Connor to the proposal, made her by the Sister Superior of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Free Cancer Home in Atlanta, that she write a memoir of an afflicted but spiritually gifted child, then deceased: "Not me, I said to myself.' But John East, before he was elected to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina in 1980, had been for 16 years a professor of political science at East Carolina University, and contributed scholarly articles to such periodicals as Modern Age. Furthermore, as senator, he had surrounded himself with top-flight aides and researchers, drawn from the best and the brightest among young conservative-intellectual circles. So, in the end, I picked it up, and took a cautious bite.

The American Conservative Movementis not a terribly ambitious book, but it is a very good one, written in a style that is clear and sophisticated throughout. It has its origins in a suggestion made by George W. Carey, editor of The Political Science Reviewer, that the author write a piece on the political thought of Willmoore Kendall. East did so, and went on to write similar essays on Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Frank Meyer, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and Ludwig von Mises, which appeared in Modern Age, and constitute the present work. "My purpose in this book,' East writes in a prefatory note, "is to show that the seven thinkers analyzed are the seminal theorists of the American conservative movement in the post-World War II era, which produced a conscious and principled conservatism in American thought.' Moreover: "There is one unifying theme underlying all seven of these writers: . . . the need to focus the attention of contemporary thought upon an ennobled conception of man and life. Modernism has degraded man' (from the Conclusion).

East's exegetical chapters are of unevenquality, however. The chapter on Russell Kirk tends to flatness; East's treatment of Leo Strauss works overhard to achieve hagiographical status; and the inclusion of Ludwig von Mises, of whom East admits that "von Mises wrote as an economist. He did not pretend to be doing more than that,' seems indefensible. East's von Mises is hardly more than a voice box spouting American Mercury editorials from the 1930s, which makes his presence among a gallery of men agonizing over how to rescue the classical and Biblical foundations of the West seem essentially a political inclusion, a nod to the economics department after the philosophers and political scientists have had their say. But the Weaver chapter is good, the Voegelin chapter of interest, and the Kendall and Meyer chapters superb.

"It is curious,' East remarks,

that among some observers Meyer shouldhave come to personify the pragmatic conservative, the "fusionist' who attempts to find a place for all in the house of conservatism. This is to misconstrue the essential Meyer. Careful analysis of his writings yields up a theoretical position that is unflinchingly principled. Meyer is not a "traditionalist' or a "libertarian,' nor is he a "fusionist': the essential Meyer is a Christian theorist. The Incarnation is the point of departure in all of his serious theoretical works . . . If the Incarnation has no validity, then no case can be made for the need of the limited state, wherein the free man can seek virtue.

As for Kendall, East concludes that his"conservatism . . . is grounded in the deliberative process, as expounded by Publius in the Federalist, and in that concept of a "virtuous people,' as articulated by Weaver in Visions of Order. . . . Kendall's conservatism . . . is an American conservatism, which Kendall contends is the American political tradition.' And yet, the lasting significance of Willmoore Kendall lies not, East argues, in his revisionist theories concerning the majoritarian conclusions of Locke, or the importance of the politeia to the survival of society, or the need for deliberation in place of debate in the resolution of the American polity. Rather, his "emphasis upon careful textual analysis and upon critical evaluation of method and value is the enduring contribution of Willmoore Kendall, a needed antidote to the intellectual climate of our time, which seems to have succumbed to the narrowness of positivism and the dogmatism of ideology.'

As I say, here is a highly readablebook, without much reach but with a firm grasp. It would make an ideal introduction to contemporary conservative theory for students, inside the academy and out, who would learn a great deal about an important but still vexed subject, very easily and very fast.