Traditionalist Conservatism - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

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Traditionalist Conservatism, also known as
Part of a series on
Traditional Conservatism, Traditionalism,
Conservatism
Classical Conservatism and (in the United

Kingdom and Canada) Toryism, is a political
philosophy emphasizing the need for the
principles of natural law and transcendent moral
Print/export
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order, tradition, hierarchy and organic unity,
Download as PDF
agrarianism, classicism and high culture, and the
Variants
[show]
Printable version
intersecting spheres of loyalty.[1] Some
Concepts
[show]
traditionalists have embraced the labels
People
[show]
Organizations
[show]
Religious
[show]
National variants
[show]
Related topics
[show]
Languages
"reactionary" and "counterrevolutionary", defying
Catal
Espaol
the stigma that has attached to these terms since
Galego
the Enlightenment.
Italiano
Traditionalism developed in 18th-century Europe

(particularly in response to the English Civil War
Nederlands
and the French Revolution).

In the middle of the
Norsk bokml
Portugus
20th century it started to organize itself in earnest
Slovenina
modern expression of traditionalist conservatism
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V T E
as an intellectual and political force. This more

began among a group of U.S. university professors (labeled the "New Conservatives" by the
popular press) who rejected the notions of individualism, liberalism, egalitarianism, modernity,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_conservatism[18.03.2016 0:37:55]
and social progress, promoted cultural and educational renewal,[2] and revived interest in the
Church, the family, the state, local community, etc.
Contents
[hide]
1 Key principles
1.1 Natural law and transcendent moral order
1.2 Tradition and custom
1.3 Hierarchy and organic unity
1.4 Agrarianism
1.5 Classicism and high culture
1.6 Patriotism, localism, and regionalism
2 Intellectual inheritance
2.1 British influences
2.1.1 Late 18th century
2.1.1.1 Joseph de Maistre
2.1.1.2 Edmund Burke
2.1.2 19th century
2.1.2.1 Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, and the "critics of material progress"
2.1.2.2 Arnold and Ruskin: cultural and artistic criticism
2.1.2.3 Benjamin Disraeli and "one-nation conservatism"
2.1.3 20th century
2.1.3.1 The distributists
2.1.3.2 T. S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson
2.2 American influences
2.2.1 Late 18th and early 19th centuries
2.2.1.1 The Federalists
2.2.2 Early 19th century through late 19th century
2.2.2.1 Webster, Choate, and the Whigs
2.2.2.2 George Ticknor and Edward Everett: the "guardians of civilization"
2.2.2.3 Orestes Brownson
2.2.3 Early 20th to mid-20th century
2.2.3.1 The Bookman and The American Review
2.2.3.2 The New Humanists
2.2.3.3 The Southern Agrarians
2.2.3.4 Other influences
3 Traditionalism in the United States
3.1 Revival of conservative cultural criticism
3.1.1 The new conservatives
3.1.1.1 Weaver, Viereck and the emergence of traditionalism
3.1.1.2 Russell Kirk
3.1.1.3 Pantheon of thinkers from the "conservative mind"
3.2 A traditionalist counter-establishment
3.2.1 The Intercollegiate Studies Institute
3.2.2 Modern Age: A Quarterly Review
3.2.3 The University Bookman
3.2.4 The Philadelphia Society
3.3 Renewal and consolidation
3.3.1 The second generation: the "conservators"

3.3.1.1 Carey, McClellan and The Political Science Reviewer
3.3.1.2 Boyd, The Chesterton Review and the G. K. Chesterton Institute
3.3.1.3 Intercollegiate Review Symposium
3.3.1.4 Ryn, The National Humanities Institute and Humanitas
3.3.1.5 The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
3.4 The torch is passed
3.4.1 The third generation: the "counter-revolutionaries"
3.4.1.1 Kushiner and Touchstone Magazine
3.4.1.2 Wolfe and Image Journal
3.4.1.3 Carlson and The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society
3.5 The restoration of tradition and community in the 21st century
3.5.1 The fourth generation: the "neo-traditionalists"
4 Other traditionalist organizations
5 Literary traditionalists
6 British and European connections
6.1 British philosophers
6.1.1 Alasdair MacIntyre
6.1.2 Roger Scruton
6.1.3 Phillip Blond
6.2 British publications
6.2.1 The Salisbury Review
6.3 British political organizations
6.3.1 The Cornerstone Group
6.4 European educational organizations
6.4.1 The Edmund Burke Foundation
6.4.2 The Center for European Renewal
7 Traditionalist conservatism and politics
7.1 The Goldwater movement
7.1.1 Bozell, Kirk and the campaigns of 1960 and 1964
7.2 Traditionalists in the Reagan era
7.3 Leading contemporary traditionalist statesmen
8 Traditionalism in higher education
9 Traditionalist conferences
9.1 2007
9.1.1 Russell Kirk Conference
9.2 2009
9.2.1 U.K. distributist conference
9.2.2 Edmund Burke revival conference
9.3 2010
9.3.1 Phillip Blond's visit to America
10 Related political philosophies
11 Related institutions and publications
11.1 Institutions
11.2 Publications
12 Noted figures
12.1 Statesmen
12.1.1 American statesmen

12.1.2 Australian statesmen
12.1.3 British statesmen
12.1.4 Canadian statesmen
12.2 Philosophers and scholars
12.3 Literary figures
12.4 Religious figures
12.5 Journalists and commentators
13 See also
14 Notes
15 Further reading
15.1 Articles
15.2 General reference
15.3 By the "New Conservatives"
15.4 By other traditionalist conservatives
15.5 About traditionalist conservatives
Key principles
[ edit ]
Natural law and transcendent moral order
[ edit ]
Belief in natural law and transcendent moral order lay the foundation for traditionalist
conservative thought. Reason and Divine Revelation inform natural law
and the universal truths
of faith. It is through these universal truths
of faith that man orders himself and the world around
him. Mankind organized society on the basis of these universal truths of faith. The traditionalist
holds axiomatic the belief that religion precedes civilization (vide, T. S. Eliot's essays
Christianity and Culture). Most traditionalist conservatives embrace High Church Christianity
(e.g. T. S. Eliot, an Anglo-Catholic; Russell Kirk, a Roman Catholic; and Rod Dreher, an
Eastern Orthodox Christian). Not all traditionalists, however, are High Church Christians. Other
traditionalists whose faith traditions are notable include Caleb Stegall, who is an evangelical
Protestant. Many conservative mainline Protestants are also traditionalist conservatives,
including some of writers for Touchstone Magazine. Many traditionalists are Jewish, such as the
late Will Herberg, Irving Louis Horowitz, Mordecai Roshwald, and Paul Gottfried.
Tradition and custom
[ edit ]
As the name suggests, traditionalists believe that tradition and custom

guide man and his
worldview. Each generation inherits the experience and culture of its ancestors and through
convention and precedence man is able to pass it down to his descendants. To paraphrase
Edmund Burke, often regarded as the father of modern conservatism: "The individual is foolish,
but the species is wise."
Hierarchy and organic unity
[ edit ]
Traditionalist conservatives believe that human society is essentially hierarchical

(i.e., it always
involves various interdependent inequalities, degrees,
and classes and that political structures
that recognize this fact prove the most just, thriving, and generally beneficial). Hierarchy allows
for the preservation of the whole community simultaneously, instead of protecting one part at
the expense of the others.
Agrarianism
[ edit ]
While most traditionalist conservatives are cosmopolitan[citation needed]

and many live in urban
centers, the countryside and the values of rural
life are prized highly (sometimes even being
romanticized, as in pastoral poetry). The principles of agrarianism
(i.e., preserving the small
family farm, open land, the conservation of
natural resource, and stewardship of the land) are
central to a traditionalist's understanding of rural life.
Classicism and high culture
[ edit ]
Traditionalists defend classical Western civilization, and value an education informed by the
texts of the Hebraic, Greek, Roman, and Medieval eras. Similarly, traditionalists are classicists
who revere high culture in all of its manifestations (e.g., literature, music, architecture, art,
theater).
Patriotism, localism, and regionalism
[ edit ]
Unlike nationalists, who esteem the role of the State or nation over the local or regional
community, traditionalists hold up patriotism
as a key principle. Traditionalist conservatives think
that loyalty to a
locality or region is more central than any commitment to a larger political entity.
Traditionalists also welcome the value of subsidiarity and the intimacy of one's community,
preferring the Civil Society of Burke's "little platoons" over the expanded State. Nationalism,
alternately, leads to jingoism
and views the state as abstract from the local community and
family structure rather than as an outgrowth of these local realities.
Intellectual inheritance
British influences
[ edit ]
[ edit ]
Late 18th century [ edit ]

Joseph de Maistre [ edit ]
Edmund Burke [ edit ]
Traditionalist conservatism began with the thought of
Anglo-Irish Whig statesman and philosopher Edmund
Burke,
whose political principles were rooted in moral
natural law and the Western tradition. Burke believed in
prescriptive rights and that those rights were "Godgiven". He also defended what he referred to as
"ordered liberty" (best reflected in the unwritten law of

the British constitutional monarchy). Burke also
advocated for those transcendent values that found
support in such institutions as the church, the family,
and the state.[3] He was a fierce critic of the principles
behind the French Revolution, and in 1790 his

observations on its excesses and radicalism were
Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke
collected in Reflections on the Revolution in France. In

Reflections
he called for the constitutional enactment of
specific, concrete rights
and warned that abstract rights could be easily abused to justify
tyranny. American social critic and historian Russell Kirk wrote that, "The Reflections
burns with
all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of
civil society dissolving before his eyes."[4]
Burke's influence extended to later thinkers and writers both in his native Britain and in
Continental Europe. Among those influenced by his thought were the English Romantic poets
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey, Scottish Romantic author
Sir Walter Scott,[5] and the counter-revolutionaries writers, the French Franois-Ren de
Chateaubriand and Louis de Bonald, and the Savoyard Joseph de Maistre.[6] In the United
States the Federalist Party and its leaders, such as President John Adams and Secretary of the
Treasury Alexander Hamilton, best represented Burke's legacy.[7]
19th century [ edit ]
Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, and the "critics of material progress" [ edit ]
Burke's traditionalist conservatism found its fiercest defenders in three "cultural conservatives"
and "critics of material progress": Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, and John Henry
Newman.
According to traditionalist scholar Peter Viereck, Coleridge and his associate and fellow poet
William Wordsworth began as supporters of the French Revolution and the radical utopianism it
spawned. But by 1798 their collection of poems, Lyrical Ballads had rejected the Enlightenment
thesis of reason over faith and tradition. Coleridge's later writings, including Lay Sermons
(1816), Biographia Literaria (1817), and Aids to Reflection
(1825) justified traditional
conservative positions on hierarchy and organic society, criticism of materialism and the
merchant class, the need for "inner growth" that is rooted in a traditional and religious culture.
Coleridge was a firm believer in social institutions and a harsh critic of Jeremy Bentham and his
Utilitarian philosophy.[8]
Writer, historian, and essayist Thomas Carlyle
was also an early traditionalist thinker, defending
medieval notions such as aristocracy, hierarchy, organic society, and class unity over socialism
and the "cash nexus" of laissez-faire capitalism.

According to Carlyle, the "cash nexus" was
when social relationships were merely reduced to economic gain. A champion of the poor,
Carlyle believed that the fabric of British society was being threatened by mobs, plutocrats,
socialists, and others who wanted to exploit them and perpetuate class resentment. A devotee
of Germanic culture and Romanticism, Carlyle is most known for his writings Sartor Resartus
(18331834) and Past and Present (1843).[9]
In the mid-19th century the Church of England experienced a "catholic revival" in the form of the
Oxford Movement, a religious movement designed to restore the Catholic nature of
Anglicanism. Led by John Keble, Edward Pusey, and John Henry Newman, the Tractarians (so
called for the publication of their Tracts for the Times)
condemned religious liberalism while
defending "dogma, ritual, poetry, [and] tradition". Like Coleridge and Carlyle, Newman (who
became a Roman
Catholic in 1845 and eventually a Cardinal in the Church) and the Tractarians
were critical of material progress, or the notion that wealth, prosperity, and economic gain were
the sum of human existence.[10]
Arnold and Ruskin: cultural and artistic criticism [ edit ]
Culture and the arts were also important to British traditionalist conservatives and two of the
most prominent defenders of tradition in culture and the arts were Matthew Arnold and John
Ruskin.
Matthew Arnold, a poet and cultural critic, is best known for his poetry and literary, social, and
religious criticism. His book Culture and Anarchy
(1869) took on the middle-class Victorian
values of the day (Arnold viewed middle class tastes in literature as "philistinism") and argued
for a return to the classical literature of the past. Arnold also viewed
with skepticism the
plutocratic grasping in socioeconomic affairs which
Coleridge, Carlyle, and the Oxford
Movement criticized.[11]
One of the themes that traditionalist conservatives have consistently
reiterated has been the
theme that industrial capitalism is as questionable as the classical liberalism which spawned it.
Carrying on in this tradition was cultural and artistic critic John Ruskin,
a medievalist who called
himself a "Christian socialist" and cared much
for standards in culture, the arts, and society. For
Ruskin (as with all the 19th-century cultural conservatives), the Industrial Revolution had
fomented dislocation, rootlessness, and the mass urbanization of the poor. In his art criticism he
wrote The Stones of Venice (18511853), which took on the Classical tradition while defending
Gothic art and architecture. His other works included The Seven Lamps of Architecture and
Unto This Last (1860).[12]
Benjamin Disraeli and "one-nation conservatism" [ edit ]
In politics the ideas of Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, Newman, and other
traditionalist conservatives
were distilled into the policies and philosophy of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
Disraeli in his younger years was an opponent of middle class capitalism and the industrial
policies that were promoted by the "Manchester liberals" (The Reform Bill and the Corn Laws).
Seeking a way
to alleviate the suffering of the urban poor in the wake of the Industrial
Revolution, Disraeli sought out to unify the nation by way of
"One Nation Conservatism," where
a coalition of aristocrats and the common working man would unite to stave off the influences of
the liberal middle class. This new coalition would serve as a way to work with the enfranchised
masses while grounding them in "ancient conservative traditions". Disraeli's ideas (including his
criticism of Utilitarianism) found fruit in the "Young England" movement and in writings such as
"Vindication of the English Constitution" (1835), "The Radical Tory" (1837), and his "social
novels" Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845).[13] A few years later his "One Nation Conservatism"
found new life in the "Tory Democracy" of Lord Randolph Churchill and in the early 21st century
in the "Progressive Conservatism" of the Red Tory thesis of British philosopher Phillip Blond.
20th century [ edit ]
The distributists [ edit ]
In the early 20th century traditionalist conservatism found its defenders through the efforts of
Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton and other proponents of the socioeconomic system they
advocated: distributism. Originating in the papal encyclical Rerum novarum, distributism
employed the concept of subsidiarity
as a "third way" solution to the twin "evils" of socialism and
capitalism. It favors local economies, small business, the agrarian way of life, and craftsmen
and artists. In such books as Belloc's The Servile State (1912), Economics for Helen (1924),
and An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936) and Chesterton's The Outline of Sanity
(1926), traditional communities that echoed those found in the Middle Ages were advocated
and big business and big government condemned. In the United States distributist ideas were
embraced by the journalist Herbert Agar, Catholic activist Dorothy Day, and through the
influence of the German-born British economist E. F. Schumacher and were comparable to the
work of Wilhelm Roepke.[14]
T. S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson [ edit ]
A champion of the Western tradition and orthodox Christian culture, T. S. Eliot was also arguably
the "last great poet of the English language." Known for his poem "The Waste Land", Eliot was
a political reactionary who used modernist literary means for traditionalist ends. His After
Strange Gods (1934) and Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948) align with the grand
tradition of Christian humanism extending back to Edmund Burke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, G. K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc. Educated by Irving Babbitt
and George Santayana at Harvard University, Eliot was friends with Allen Tate and Russell
Kirk.[15]
Praised by T. S. Eliot as the most powerful intellectual influence in Britain, historian Christopher
Dawson
is a key figure in 20th-century traditionalism. Central to his work was
the idea that
religion was at the heart of every culture, especially Western culture, and his writings, including
The Age of Gods (1928), Religion and Culture (1948), and Religion and the Rise of Western
Culture (1950), reflected this view. A contributor to Eliot's Criterion, Dawson believed that after
World War II, religion and culture were central to rebuilding the West in the wake of fascism and
the rise of communism.[16]
American influences
[ edit ]
Late 18th and early 19th centuries [ edit ]

The Federalists [ edit ]
Burkean traditionalism was transported to the American colonies through the policies and
principles of the Federalist Party and its leadership as embodied by John Adams and Alexander
Hamilton.
Federalists opposed the French Revolution, defended traditional Christian morality,
and supported a new "natural aristocracy" based on "property, education, family status, and
sense of ethical responsibility."[17]
Former U.S. President John Adams was probably one of the earliest defenders of a traditional
social order in Revolutionary America. In his Defence of the Constitution (1787) Adams
attacked the ideas of radicals like Thomas Paine, who advocated for a unicameral legislature
(Adams deemed it too democratic). His translation of Discourses on Davila
(1790), which also
contained his own commentary, was an examination of "human motivation in politics". Adams
believed that human motivation inevitably led to dangerous impulses where the government
would need to sometimes intervene.[18]
The leader of the Federalist Party was Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury
and co-author of The Federalist Papers
(17871788) which was a series of newspaper tracts
designed to influence the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Hamilton was critical of
both
Jeffersonian classical liberalism and the radical ideas coming out
of the French Revolution. He
rejected laissez-faire economics and favored a strong central government.[19]
Early 19th century through late 19th century [ edit ]
Webster, Choate, and the Whigs [ edit ]
In the era after the Revolutionary Generation, the Whig Party
(successors to the Federalists)
came to represent Burkean conservatism in America. Whig statesmen led the charge for
tradition and custom against the prevailing democratic ethos of the Jacksonian Era. Standing
for hierarchy and organic society, in many ways their concepts of the Union paralleled Benjamin
Disraeli's "One Nation Conservatism".
For many the most noteworthy Whig statesman (aside from Henry Clay) was New England
politician, lawyer, and orator Daniel Webster.
A firm Unionist, his most famous speech was his
"Second Reply to Hayne"
(1829) where he criticized the argument from Southerners such as
John C. Calhoun that the states had a right to nullify the Constitution and therefore were more
important than the federal republic as a whole.[20]
Webster's intellectual and political heir was Rufus Choate, another Whig statesman who was
also an ardent disciple of Edmund Burke. Choate was a part of the emerging legal culture in
New England, centered on the newly formed Harvard Law School.
He believed that lawyers
were preservers and conservers of the Constitution and that it was the duty of the educated to
govern political institutions. Choate's most famous address was "The Position and Functions of
the American Bar, as an Element of Conservatism in the State" (1845).[21]
George Ticknor and Edward Everett: the "guardians of civilization" [ edit ]
Two figures in the Northern antebellum period were what Emory University professor Patrick
Allitt referred to as the "Guardians of Civilization": George Ticknor and Edward Everett.
George Ticknor, a Dartmouth-educated academic at Harvard, was the chief purveyor of humane
learning in the Boston area. A founder of the Boston Public Library
and the scion of an old
Federalist family, Ticknor educated his students in Romance languages and the works of Dante
and Cervantes at home while promoting America abroad to his many international friends,
including Lord Byron and Talleyrand.[22]

Edward Everett,
like Ticknor, was educated at the same German university (Goettigen). He
advocated for the U.S. to follow same virtues as the ancient Greeks and eventually went into
politics as a Whig. A firm Unionist (like his friend Daniel Webster),
Everett deplored the
Jacksonian Democracy that swept the nation. A famed orator in his own right, he supported
Lincoln against Southern secession.[23]
Orestes Brownson [ edit ]
American Catholic journalist and political theorist (and former political and religious radical)
Orestes Brownson is best known for writing The American Republic,
an 1865 treatise examining
how America fulfills Catholic tradition and Western Civilization. Brownson was critical of both
the Northern abolitionists and the Southern secessionists and was himself a solid Unionist.[24]
Early 20th to mid-20th century [ edit ]
The Bookman and The American Review [ edit ]
In the 20th century traditionalist conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic centered on two
publications: The Bookman and its successor, The American Review. Owned and edited by the
eccentric Seward Collins, these journals published the writings of the British Distributists, the
New Humanists, the Southern Agrarians, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Dawson,
et al. Eventually,
Collins drifted towards support of fascism, and as a
result lost the support of many of his
traditionalist backers. Despite the decline of the journal due to Collins' increasingly radical
political views, the The American Review left a profound mark on the history of traditionalist
conservatism.[25]
The New Humanists [ edit ]
Another intellectual branch of early-20th-century traditionalist conservatism was known as the
New Humanism. Led by Harvard University professor Irving Babbitt and Princeton University
professor Paul Elmer More, the New Humanism was a literary and social criticism movement
that opposed both romanticism
and naturalism. Beginning in the late 19th century, the New
Humanism defended artistic standards and "first principles" (Babbitt's phrase). Reaching an
apogee in 1930, Babbitt and More published a variety of books including Babbitt's Literature
and the American College (1908), Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), and Democracy and
Leadership (1924) and More's Shelburne Essays (19041921).[26]
The Southern Agrarians [ edit ]
One other group of traditionalist conservatives were the Southern Agrarians. Originally a group
of Vanderbilt University poets and writers known as "the Fugitives", they included John Crowe
Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren. Adhering to strict literary
standards (Warren and traditionalist scholar Cleanth Brooks
later formulated a form of literary
criticism known as the New Criticism), in 1930 some of the Fugitives joined other traditionalist
Southern writers to publish I'll Take My Stand, which applied standards sympathetic to local
particularism and the agrarian way of life to politics and economics. Condemning northern
industrialism and commercialism, the "twelve southerners" who contributed to the book echoed
earlier arguments made by the distributists. A few years after the publication of I'll Take My
Stand, some of the Southern Agrarians were joined by Hilaire Belloc and Herbert Agar in the
publication of a new collection of essays entitled Who Owns America: A New Declaration of
Independence.
The Southern Agrarians had a great influence on New Conservative scholar Richard M. Weaver
and writer-farmer Wendell Berry.[27]
Other influences [ edit ]
Other traditionalist conservative influences on those who emerged in the 1940s and 1950s as
"the New Conservatives" included Bernard Iddings Bell, Gordon Keith Chalmers, Grenville
Clark, Peter Drucker, Will Herberg, and Ross J. S. Hoffman.[28]
Traditionalism in the United States

Revival of conservative cultural criticism
[ edit ]
[ edit ]
The new conservatives [ edit ]

Weaver, Viereck and the emergence of traditionalism [ edit ]
After the Second World War the first stirrings of a "traditionalist movement" took place. Among
those who launched this movement (and in effect the larger Conservative Movement in
America) was University of Chicago professor Richard M. Weaver. Weaver's Ideas Have
Consequences (1948) chronicled the steady erosion of Western cultural values since the Middle
Ages.[29] In 1949, another professor, Peter Viereck echoed the writings of Weaver with his
Conservatism Revisited, which examined the conservative thought of Prince Klemens
Metternich.
After Weaver and Viereck a flowering of conservative scholarship occurred starting with the
publication of 1953's The New Science of Politics by Eric Voegelin, 1953's The Quest for
Community by Robert A. Nisbet, and 1955's Conservatism in America by Clinton Rossiter.
However, the book that defined the traditionalist school was 1953's The Conservative Mind:
From Burke to Eliot, written by Russell Kirk, which gave a detailed analysis of the intellectual
pedigree of Anglo-American traditionalist conservatism.[30]
When these thinkers appeared on the academic scene they became known for rebuking the
progressive worldview inherent in an America comfortable with New Deal
economics, a
burgeoning military-industrial complex, and a consumerist and commercialized citizenry. These
conservative scholars and writers garnered the attention of the popular press of the time and
before long they were collectively referred to as "the New Conservatives". Among this group
were not only Weaver, Viereck, Voegelin, Nisbet, Rossiter, and Kirk but other lesser known
thinkers such as John Blum, Daniel Boorstin,
McGeorge Bundy, Thomas Cook, Raymond
English, John Hallowell, Anthony Harrigan, August Heckscher, Milton Hindus, Klemens von
Klemperer, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Richard Leopold, S. A. Lukacs, Malcolm Moos, Eliseo
Vivas, Geoffrey Wagner, Chad Walsh, and Francis Wilson[31] as well as Arthur Bestor, Mel
Bradford, C. P. Ives, Stanley Jaki, John Lukacs, Forrest McDonald, Thomas Molnar, Gerhard
Neimeyer, James V. Schall, S.J., Peter J. Stanlis, Stephen J. Tonsor, and Frederick
Wilhelmsen.[32]
Russell Kirk [ edit ]
The acknowledged leader of the New Conservatives was
independent scholar, writer, critic, and man of letters Russell Kirk.
Kirk was a key figure of the conservative movement: he was a friend
to William F. Buckley, Jr., a columnist for National Review, an editor
and a syndicated columnist, and a historian and horror fiction writer.
His most famous work was 1953's The Conservative Mind: From
Burke to Santayana (later republished as The Conservative Mind:
From Burke to Eliot). Kirk's writings and legacy are interwoven with
the history of traditionalist conservatism, with his influence felt at the
Heritage Foundation, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and other
Russell Kirk
conservative think tanks (most especially the Russell Kirk Center for
Cultural Renewal).
The Conservative Mind was written by Kirk as a doctoral dissertation while he was a student at
the St. Andrews University in Scotland. Previously the author of a biography of American
conservative John Randolph of Roanoke, Kirk's The Conservative Mind had laid out six "canons
of conservative thought" in the book, including:
1. Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience... Political problems, at
bottom, are religious and moral problems.
2. Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as distinguished from
the narrowing uniformity and egalitarian and
utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
3. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes...
4. Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic
leveling is not economic progress...
5. Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters and calculators." Man must put a control
upon his will and his appetite.... Tradition and sound prejudice provide checks upon
man's anarchic impulse.
6. Recognition that change and reform are not identical...[33]
Pantheon of thinkers from the "conservative mind" [ edit ]
Kirk goes on to examine the thought of a wide array of conservative thinkers, including AngloIrish statesman Edmund Burke, American Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton,
British literati Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, Southern conservatives John
Randolph of Roanoke and John Calhoun, American Catholic political thinker Orestes Brownson,
New England writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, British
Catholic John Henry Newman, American historian Henry Adams, scholars Irving Babbitt, Paul
Elmer More, and George Santayana, and Anglo-American poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot.
A traditionalist counter-establishment
[ edit ]
The New Conservatives also contributed to the emerging conservative movement and formed a
traditionalist counter-establishment, creating and

expanding traditionalist organizations and
forming new journals and publications. Many traditionalists were contributors to William F.
Buckley's National Review, including Russell Kirk and others. The

1950s and early 1960s
resulted in a traditionalist "renaissance" and laid the foundation for future traditionalist efforts to
succeed.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute [ edit ]
Among the organizations formed in the wake of traditionalist scholarship and public activity was
Frank Chodorov's libertarian-leaning
student organization, the Intercollegiate Society of
Individualists. The organization, formed in 1953, quickly changed philosophy from being an
academic organization based in individualist principles to one of a more traditionalist bent,
largely due to the efforts of E. Victor Milione. Eventually the organization changed its name to
the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and "educated for liberty" via the thought of such
traditionalists as Richard M. Weaver and Russell Kirk.
Through Kirk's influence (as well as other
well known conservatives) it
has been a center for traditionalist students, hosting lectures,
symposiums, conferences, and debates and publishing journals such as Modern Age
(periodical), The Intercollegiate Review, The Chesterton Review and The University Bookman
as well as a variety of books by traditionalist scholars through its imprint, ISI Books. The
president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute was for many years T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr..[34]
Modern Age: A Quarterly Review [ edit ]
In 1957 Russell Kirk co-founded (with publisher Henry Regnery) Modern Age,
a conservative
academic quarterly which for over fifty years has remained traditionalist in scope and has
published various thinkers, such as Max Picard, Andrew Lytle, Richard M. Weaver, Robert A.
Nisbet, C. P. Ives, Ross Hoffman, and others.[35] Historian George H. Nash has referred to
Modern Age
as "the principal quarterly of the intellectual right." Current Associate Editors
include George W. Carey, Jude P. Dougherty, Jeffrey Hart, Thomas Molnar, Marion
Montgomery, Mordecai Roshwald, Peter J. Stanlis, and Stephen J. Tonsor. Russell Kirk
was its
editor for its first two years and from 1984 to 2007 its editor
was literary critic George A.
Panichas. The journal is now edited by R. V. Young, who also serves as a contributor to
another traditionalist publication, Touchstone Magazine.
The University Bookman [ edit ]
In 1960 Kirk founded the oldest continuously published conservative review of books: The
University Bookman.
It is published by Annette Y. Kirk and Dr. Jeffrey O. Nelson and is edited
by New York attorney Gerald J. Russello, who is a Kirk biographer
and a Fellow at the G. K.
Chesterton Institute. Its Board of Advisors include H. Lee Cheek, Jr., Vice President for College
Advancement and Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at BrewtonParker College;
Dr. William Edmund Fahey, the President of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts; Bruce
Frohnen, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University, Pettit College of Law and
Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center; and Gary L. Gregg, Mitch McConnell Chair in
Leadership at the University of Louisville and director of the McConnell Center.
The Philadelphia Society [ edit ]
Another traditionalist organization to appear was an intellectual forum called the Philadelphia
Society. Similar in scope to the libertarian Mont Pelerin Society,
the Philadelphia Society
organized conferences where leading traditionalists could gather, exchange ideas and lecture
on topics and issues vital to the preservation of the American Republic and the conservative
movement. To this day it is the leading intellectual organization of the traditionalist Right.
Renewal and consolidation
[ edit ]
After the intellectual pioneering of the New Conservatives and the creation of the conservative
counter-establishment, younger scholars and
academics came to the fore, expanding and
consolidating the traditionalist presence in the larger conservative movement and contributing to
the further renewal of traditionalist scholarship. These
scholars and academics could be
deemed the "Conservators", or the keepers of the flame of conservatism as the upheaval of the
1960s and 1970s approached.
The second generation: the "conservators" [ edit ]
This second generation appeared at a time when American society was experiencing the
change and tumult of the "60's": the rising counterculture and the New Left, the emergence of
the protest movement and race riots, the war in Vietnam, and then the crisis of Nixon and
Watergate and the "malaise" of Jimmy Carter's presidency. These "conservators" contributed in
turn to preserving culture and educational
renewal while simultaneously creating organizations
and journals which would further the cause of traditionalist conservatism. Writers and thinkers of
this caliber included political scientist George W. Carey, moralist and literary critic George A.
Panichas, Swedish-American thinker Claes G. Ryn, Catholic Chestertonian Fr. Ian Boyd,
C.S.B., historian Forrest McDonald, and others. These new thinkers would join the New
Conservatives and the first generation of traditionalists in leading the charge against radicalism
and defend American institutions into the Reagan Era.
Carey, McClellan and The Political Science Reviewer [ edit ]
In 1973 political scientist George W. Carey and James McClellan created "an annual review of
books in the field of political science" entitled The Political Science Reviewer. Its current editor
is Bruce Frohnen and it is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.[36]
Boyd, The Chesterton Review and the G. K. Chesterton Institute [ edit ]
In 1974 Canadian Catholic priest Rev. Ian Boyd, C.S.B. created a quarterly journal for the
International Chesterton Society. Called The Chesterton Review,
the publication "is dedicated to
the exploration of the life and works of G.K. Chesterton and other writers who share a
commitment to Chestertonian principles".[37] The Review originally was based out of a
Canadian college and then transferred to Seton Hall University,
where it came under the aegis
of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for the
Study for Faith and Culture. Among those who were the
co-founders of the Institute were historian Dermot Quinn, editor and author Stratford Caldecott,
and then ISI vice president Jeffrey O. Nelson.[38]
Intercollegiate Review Symposium [ edit ]
1986 brought traditionalist reaction to Reagan Era conservatism in the form of a symposium in
The Intercollegiate Review. Referred to as "the state of conservatism", the symposium featured
traditionalist scholars such as Mel Bradford, Paul Gottfried, Clyde Wilson, George A. Panichas,
Gregory Wolfe, Russell Kirk,
Gerhart Niemeyer, and George W. Carey. The symposium looked
at the rise
of neoconservatives in the conservative movement and the centralization
of
Republican power in Washington in the Reagan Era.[39]
Ryn, The National Humanities Institute and Humanitas [ edit ]
In the 1980s traditionalist scholar Claes G. Ryn and Joseph Baldacchino founded the National
Humanities Institute,[40] a center for the study of the humanities from the conservative
perspective which also publishes a bi-annual journal Humanitas.
Noted traditionalist scholars
who serve on NHI's Academic Board include
George W. Carey, Jude P. Dougherty, and Peter
J. Stanlis. The National Humanities Institute also operates the Center for Constitutional Studies
and the Irving Babbitt Project.
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal [ edit ]
In the mid-1990s, after the death of Russell Kirk, the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
was founded by Kirk's widow, Annette Y. Kirk, and son-in-law, Dr. Jeffrey O. Nelson, to carry on
his legacy.[41]
The Center offers seminars and residential fellowships and have a publishing
arm. The Center also has an affiliate, the Edmund Burke Society of America, whose director is
Dr. Ian Crowe.
The torch is passed
[ edit ]
In the 1980s and 1990s a new generation came on the political scene to continue the
traditionalist conservatives' work. As New Conservative scholars such as Russell Kirk and
Robert Nisbet
began to pass on, and the second generation of "conservators" came to the fore
the torch was also passed to members of the Baby Boom. This third generation, which could be
referred to as the "Counter-Revolutionaries" fought to renew education and culture as the
Culture Wars heated up and political correctness and multiculturalism emerged as new threats
to conservative principles.
The third generation: the "counter-revolutionaries" [ edit ]
Of the same generation as those Baby Boomers who protested and radicalized American
society in the 1960s and 1970s, the third generation of traditionalists brought with them insight
into the arts, in revitalizing Christianity, and opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. Like
their predecessors, these counter-revolutionary traditionalists sought to engage society through
the creation of new organizations and publications and roll back the "revolution" that their
more
radical generational peers had wrought. Such scholars and thinkers
as James Kushiner,
Gregory Wolfe, Allan C. Carlson, H. Lee Cheek, Jr., W. Wesley McDonald and others
represented this next generation of traditionalists.
Kushiner and Touchstone Magazine [ edit ]
Beginning as a newsletter in the Chicago area in 1986, Touchstone Magazine
was founded by
James Kushiner as a publication to unite Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic traditionalists. The
journal received specific support from traditionalist icon Russell Kirk in the early 1990s.[42]
Contributors include Rod Dreher, R. V. Young, Allan C. Carlson, and Anthony Esolen.
Wolfe and Image Journal [ edit ]
In 1989 former Intercollegiate Review editor and Kirk assistant Gregory Wolfe founded Image: A
Journal of the Arts and Religion.[43] Image is published by Wolfe's Center for Religious
Humanism.
Carlson and The Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society [ edit ]
A few years later the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, a socially conservative
advocacy organization, was created by John Howard and Allan C. Carlson. Howard was the
founder of the paleoconservative Rockford Institute and Carlson was its former president.[44]
The restoration of tradition and community in the 21st century
[ edit ]
As the conservative movement consolidated itself in the 1980s under the Reagan presidency,
found itself in healthy opposition to the Bush and Clinton Eras, and came into the presidency of
George W. Bush, a new crop of traditionalists, who could be labeled the "neo-traditionalists"
appeared. With the advent of the 9/11 attacks and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
commenced, the Old Guard traditionalists came to criticize the larger conservative movement
for its populism and nationalism and were joined in these sentiments by the neo-traditionalists
who also, in essence, sought the restoration of tradition and community in the 21st century.
The fourth generation: the "neo-traditionalists" [ edit ]
Echoing the sentiments of the older generation of traditionalists, the fourth generation would also
expand the traditionalist arguments into the digital era, taking to blogs and websites to get their
message out, a message of communitarian and family-centered values, of limits on
government
power, and of the necessity of organic society and a sense of roots and of place. Consisting of
such figures as Dr. James Matthew Wilson, Jeremy Beer, Mike C. Harmer, Jeffrey O. Nelson,
Mark C. Henrie, Caleb Stegall, Rod Dreher,
Daniel Larison, and others, these traditionlists,
largely from Generation X, proved to be a vanguard against both the progressives and the
mainstream conservatives who were dominated by the neoconservatives and the Religious
Right.
Other traditionalist organizations
[ edit ]
Other traditionalist organizations include the Trinity Forum, Ellis Sandoz's

Eric Voegelin Institute
and the Eric Voegelin Society, the New Centurion Program of the Conservative Institute, the T.
S. Eliot Society, the Malcolm Muggeridge Society, and the Free Enterprise Institute's Center for
the American Idea. A major funder of traditionalist programs, especially the Russell Kirk Center,
is the Wilbur Foundation.
Literary traditionalists
[ edit ]
Literary traditionalist are often linked with political conservatives and the right-wing, while
contrasted with experimental works and the avant-garde, which in turn are often linked with
progressives and the left-wing. Postmodern writer and literary theorist John Barth,
said "I
confess to missing, in apprentice seminars in the later 1970s and the 1980s, that lively Make-ItNew spirit of the Buffalo Sixties. A roomful of young traditionalists can be as depressing as a
roomful of young Republicans."[45]
There are numerous literary figures featured in Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind (1953),
including James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, W. H. Mallock,
Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot. In Kirk's The Conservative Reader (1982) the writings of Rudyard
Kipling and Phyllis McGinley
are featured as examples of literary traditionalism. Russell Kirk
was also known himself as a writer of supernatural and suspense fiction with
a distinct Gothic
flair. Novels such as Old House of Fear, A Creature of the Twilight, and Lord of the Hollow Dark
and short stories such as "Lex Talionis", "Lost Lake", "Beyond the Stumps", "Ex Tenebris", and
"Fate's Purse" gained praise from fiction writers such as Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.
Kirk was also good friends with many literary figures of the 20th century: T. S. Eliot, Roy
Campbell, Wyndham Lewis, Ray Bradbury, Madeleine L'Engle, and Flannery O'Connor, most of
whom could be labeled traditionalist in their poetry or fiction.
The British novelist and traditionalist Catholic Evelyn Waugh is often considered a traditionalist
conservative.
British and European connections

British philosophers
[ edit ]
[ edit ]
Alasdair MacIntyre [ edit ]

Although not a conservative, many traditionalist conservatives embrace the virtue-centered
philosophy of British Roman Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who is noted for his many
books, including After Virtue (1981).
Roger Scruton [ edit ]
Another British philosopher, Roger Scruton,
is a self-described traditionalist conservative.
Known for writing on such topics as foreign policy, animal rights, arts and culture, and
philosophy, one of his most noted books is The Meaning of Conservatism (1980). Scruton is
affiliated with the Center for European Renewal, the Trinity Forum, the Institute for the
Psychological Sciences, and the American Enterprise Institute. He writes for such publications
as Modern Age (periodical), National Review, The American Spectator, The New Criterion, and
City Journal.
Phillip Blond [ edit ]
Recently British philosopher Phillip Blond has risen to prominence as an exponent of
traditionalist philosophy, more specifically progressive conservatism, or Red Toryism. In Blond's
view, Red Toryism would combine civic communitarianism with localism and traditional values
as a way to revitalize British conservatism and British society. He has formed a think tank, Res
Publica .
British publications
[ edit ]
The Salisbury Review [ edit ]

The oldest traditionalist conservative publication in the United Kingdom is the Salisbury Review,
which was founded by British philosopher Roger Scruton. The Salisbury Review's current
managing editor is Merrie Cave.
British political organizations
[ edit ]
The Cornerstone Group [ edit ]

Within the British Conservative Party there is a faction of traditionalist MPs which formed in 2005
who are collectively known as the Cornerstone Group. The Cornerstone Group stands for
traditional values and represents "faith, flag, and family". Prominent members include Edward
Leigh and John Henry Hayes.
European educational organizations
[ edit ]
The Edmund Burke Foundation [ edit ]

The Edmund Burke Foundation is an educational foundation based out of the Netherlands which
is traditionalist and is modeled after the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Originally a think tank, it
was founded by such traditionalists as scholar Andreas Kinneging and journalist Bart Jan
Spruyt. It is affiliated with The Center for European Renewal.
The Center for European Renewal [ edit ]
In 2007 a number of leading traditionalist scholars from Europe as well as representatives of the
Edmund Burke Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute created the Center for
European Renewal. The Center is designed to be the European version of the Intercollegiate
Studies Institute.
Traditionalist conservatism and politics

The Goldwater movement
[ edit ]
Bozell, Kirk and the campaigns of 1960 and 1964 [ edit ]

In 1964 conservatives around the nation, especially the
New Right gathered around National Review were
united behind the U.S. presidential campaign of
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater had first
come to the attention of the public by way of The
Conscience of a Conservative, a ghostwritten
conservative classic written for him by William F.
Buckley, Jr.'s Catholic traditionalist brother-in-law L.
Brent Bozell Jr. The book, which advocated a
conservative vision in keeping with Buckley's National
Review propelled Goldwater to unsuccessfully
challenge Vice President Richard Nixon for the 1960
Republican presidential nomination.[46]
[ edit ]
In 1964 Goldwater returned to challenge the Eastern
Former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater
Establishment which since the 1930s had controlled the

Republican Party.
In a brutal campaign where he was
maligned by his liberal Republican primary rivals (Rockefeller, Romney, Scranton, etc.), the
press, the Democrats, and President Lyndon B. Johnson, Goldwater once again found allies
among conservatives, including the traditionalists. Russell Kirk
championed Goldwater's cause
as the maturation of the New Right in American politics. In his syndicated columns Kirk
advocated for Goldwater and would also campaign for him in the primaries.[47] Goldwater's
subsequent defeat would result in the New Right regrouping and finding a new figurehead in the
late 1970s: Ronald Reagan.
Traditionalists in the Reagan era
[ edit ]
Most traditionalists were enthusiastic supporters of former California Governor Ronald Reagan
when he became president, even when he
appointed William J. Bennett over Mel Bradford for a
National Endowment for the Humanities post.
T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr., who was for many years the president of the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute,
was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration,
serving as President Reagans top advisor on domestic matters. Earlier in the administration he
held the position of Counselor to the Attorney General.
Traditionalist scholar Russell Kirk was given the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989.
Leading contemporary traditionalist statesmen
[ edit ]
Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham was influenced by Russell Kirk.
Former Tennessee Republican Senator Fred Thompson, former Michigan Republican Senator
Spencer Abraham, and former Illinois Democratic Senator Paul Simon have all been influenced
by traditionalist conservative Russell Kirk.[48] Thompson gave an interview about Kirk's
influence on the Russell Kirk Center's blog.[49]
Among the U.S. Congressmen influenced by Kirk are former Illinois Republican Congressman
Henry Hyde[48] and Michigan Republican Congressmen Thaddeus McCotter and Dave Camp,
the latter two of whom visited the Russell Kirk Center in 2009. In 2010 Indiana Congressman
Mike Pence acknowledged Russell Kirk as a major influence.[50]
Former Michigan Republican Governor John Engler is a close personal friend of the Russell Kirk
family[48] and also serves as a trustee of the Wilbur Foundation,[51] which funds programs at the
Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
in Mecosta, Michigan. Engler gave a speech at the
Heritage Foundation on Kirk which is available from the Russell Kirk Center's blog.[52]
Traditionalism in higher education
[ edit ]
This section is empty. You can help

by adding to it. (March 2013)
Traditionalist conferences
2007
[ edit ]
[ edit ]
Russell Kirk Conference [ edit ]

On April 14, 2007 the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
hosted a National Leadership Conference
entitled "Russell Kirk and the Prospects for American Conservatism". The event was held at the
Columbia
Club in Indianapolis, Indiana and featured such speakers as Ted V. McAllister,
Michael P. Federici, George H. Nash, Dermot Quinn, and Rod Dreher.
2009
[ edit ]
U.K. distributist conference [ edit ]

On July 11, 2009 a conference on the "distributist view of the global
economic crisis" sponsored
by the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture was held in the United Kingdom at Oxford
University featuring an international panel, including Red Tory theorist Phillip Blond and
American author and scholar Allan C. Carlson.
It marked a milestone for traditionalism since it
was the first public forum for Blond to connect his progressive conservative/Red Tory
philosophy with other traditionalists who favored the communitarianism that the distributists
advocated.[53]
Edmund Burke revival conference [ edit ]
In the wake of the defeat of the Republican Party in the 2008 U.S. election by Barack Obama
and the Democratic Party
the conservative movement has undergone some self-examination as
to its
future direction. Part of that self-examination has included a revival of the principles of
conservative founding father Edmund Burke. In late October 2009 the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute hosted an Edmund Burke Revival Conference at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural
Renewal which included such speakers as Dr. George H. Nash, Dr. Peter J. Stanlis, and Dr. Ian
Crowe.
2010
[ edit ]
Phillip Blond's visit to America [ edit ]
In March 2010 British Red Tory philosopher and Res Publica think tank director Phillip Blond
came to the United States at the invitation of the American traditionalist blog, Front Porch
Republic. Blond first lectured and attended a round table discussion at Georgetown University's
Tocqueville Forum, where he was introduced by the Forum's Dr. Patrick Deneen, a Front Porch
Republic contributor. The round table discussion included comments from traditionalist
journalists Ross Douthat of the New York Times and Daniel McCarthy of The American
Conservative, as well as the Templeton Foundation's Rod Dreher, and others. Deneen
moderated the round table.[54]
From the Georgetown event Blond attended another event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This
was the first formal event in the United States between Blond, a British traditionalist who is an
advisor to British MP David Cameron, and the leading public figures of the growing American
"neo-traditionalist" movement.
Related political philosophies
[ edit ]
This section is empty. You can help

by adding to it. (March 2015)
Related institutions and publications

Institutions
[ edit ]
Center for European Renewal

Center for the American Idea
Cornerstone Group
Edmund Burke Foundation
Family Research Council[55]
Hillsdale College
Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
McConnell Center
National Humanities Institute
Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
Trinity Forum
George Mason University
Brigham Young University
Publications
[ edit ]
The American Conservative

The Chesterton Review
First Things
Humanitas
The Imaginative Conservative
Image
[ edit ]
Modern Age
Salisbury Review
Touchstone Magazine
Front Porch Republic
Noted figures
Statesmen
[ edit ]
[ edit ]
American statesmen [ edit ]

Spencer Abraham (b. 1952)
John Adams (17351826)
John Quincy Adams (17671848)
Fisher Ames (17581808)
John Calhoun (17821850)
Dave Camp (b. 1953)
John Engler (b. 1948)
Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 17571804)
Henry Hyde (19242007)
John Marshall (17551835)
John Randolph of Roanoke (17731833)
Paul Simon (politician) (19282003)
Caleb Stegall (b. 1971)
Daniel Webster (17821852)
Robert Winthrop (18091894)
Australian statesmen [ edit ]
Joh Bjelke-Petersen (19112005)
Cory Bernardi (b. 1969)
British statesmen [ edit ]
Julian Amery (19191996)
John Biggs-Davison (19181988)
Edmund Burke (17291797)
George Canning (17701827)
Alan Clark (19281999)
Benjamin Disraeli (18041881)
John Henry Hayes (b. 1958)
Edward Leigh (b. 1950)
Enoch Powell (19121998)
John Heydon Stokes (19172003)
Canadian statesmen [ edit ]
Perrin Beatty (b. 1950)
R. B. Bennett (18701947)
Sir Robert Borden (18541937)
Dalton Camp (19202002)
Bill Davis (b. 1929)
John Diefenbaker (18951979)
Maurice Duplessis (18901959)
John Farthing (18971954)
Davie Fulton (19162000)
Sir John A. Macdonald (18151891)
Hugh Segal (b. 1950)
Robert Stanfield (19142003)
Philosophers and scholars
[ edit ]
Irving Babbitt (18651933)

Andrew Bacevich (b. 1947)
Hilaire Belloc (18701953)
Daniel Boorstin (19142004)
Phillip Blond (b. 1966)
Mel Bradford (19341993)
Martin Buber (18781965)
Allan C. Carlson (b. 1949)
T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
Christopher Dawson (18891970)
Donald Davidson (18931968)
Francisco Elas de Tejada y Spnola (19171978)
Edward Feser
Bruce Frohnen
Rafael Gambra Ciudad (19202004)
Eugene Genovese (19302012)
Paul Gottfried (b. 1941)
Gary L. Gregg
Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)
Will Herberg (19011977)
Irving Louis Horowitz (19292012)
Carol Iannone
Stanley Jaki (19242009)
Bertrand de Jouvenel (190319
Andreas Kinneging (b. 1962)
Russell Kirk (19181994)
James Kurth
John Lukacs (b. 1924)
Andrew Lytle (19021995)
Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929)

W. Wesley McDonald
Forrest McDonald (b. 1927)
Thomas Molnar (19212010)
Marion Montgomery (1925,Thomaston, Georgia2011, Crawford, Georgia)
Paul Elmer More (18641937)
Robert A. Nisbet (19131996)
Max Picard (18881965)
Vctor Pradera Larumbe (18731936)
Mordecai Roshwald (b. 1921)
Clinton Rossiter (19171970)
Claes G. Ryn (b. 1943)
Ellis Sandoz
Roger Scruton (b. 1944)
James Seaton
David Stove (19271994)
R. J. Stove (b. 1961)
Bruce Thornton
Juan Vzquez de Mella (18611926)
Eric Voegelin (19011985)
Peter Viereck (19162006)
Austin Warren (18991986)
Richard M. Weaver (19101963)
Frederick Wilhelmsen (19231996)
R. V. Young (b. 1947)
Literary figures
[ edit ]
Matthew Arnold (18221888)

Ray Bradbury (19202012)
Roy Campbell (19011957)
Thomas Carlyle (17951881)
G. K. Chesterton (18741936)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834)
James Fenimore Cooper (17891851)
T. S. Eliot (18881965)
Robert Frost (18741963)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864)
Florence King (b. 1936)
Rudyard Kipling (18651936)
Russell Kirk (19181994)
Madeleine L'Engle (19182007)
Percy Wyndham Lewis (18821957)
James Russell Lowell (18191891)

W. H. Mallock (18491923)
Phyllis McGinley (19051978)
Flannery O'Connor (19251964)
John Ruskin (18191900)
J.R.R. Tolkien (18921973)
Evelyn Waugh (19031966)
William Wordsworth (17701850)
Religious figures
[ edit ]
C. S. Lewis (18981963)
John Henry Newman (18011890)
Richard John Neuhaus (19362009)
Journalists and commentators
[ edit ]
Lawrence Auster (19492013)

Patrick J. Buchanan (b. 1938)
William F. Buckley (19252008)
Ross Douthat (b. 1979)
Rod Dreher (b. 1967)
Mary Eberstadt
Thomas Fleming (b. 1945)
John T. Flynn (18821964)
Peter Hitchens (b. 1951)
Bill Kauffman (b. 1959)
John Pepall
Bart Jan Spruyt (b. 1964)
George Will (b. 1941)
See also
[ edit ]
Alt-right
Communitarianism
Conservatism
Conservatism in the United States
Distributism
High Tories
Localism (politics)
Monarchism
New Humanism
Paleoconservatism
Red Tory
Regionalism
conservatism portal
Tory
Tory (political faction)
Notes
[ edit ]
1. ^ Frohnen, Bruce, Jeremy Beer, and
28. ^ Viereck,Peter (1956, 2006) Conservative
Jeffrey O. Nelson, ed. (2006) American
Thinkers from John Adams to Winston
Conservatism: An Encyclopedia
Churchill. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, pp. 870875.
Publishers, p. 107.
29. ^ Nash, George H. (1976, 2006)The
Jeffrey O. Nelson, ed. (2006) American
Conservative Intellectual Movement in
Conservatism: An Encyclopedia
America since 1945. Wilmington, DE: ISI
Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, p. 870.
Books, pp. 3036.
30. ^ Dunn, Charles W. (2003)The
Jeffrey O. Nelson (2006) American
Conservative Tradition in America,
Conservatism: An Encyclopedia.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 10.

4. ^ Kirk, Russell (1967, 1997) Edmund
31. ^ Viereck, Peter (1956, 2006) Conservative

Burke: A Genius Reconsidered.
Publishing, p. 107.
5. ^ Kirk, Russell (1976, 1997) Edmund
32. ^ Nash, George H. (1976, 2006) The
Burke: A Genius Reconsidered.
Conservative Intellectual Movement in
Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, p. 155
America since 1945. Wilmington, DE: ISI
6. ^ Blum, Christopher Olaf, ed. (2004)Critics

of the Enlightenment, Wilington, DE: ISI
Books, pp. xvxxxv.
7. ^ Viereck, Peter (1956, 2006)Conservative
Books, pp. 5055, 6873.

33. ^ Kirk, Russell (1953)The Conservative
Mind: From Burke to Eliot. Washington,
D.C.:Regnery, pp. 78.
Publishers, pp. 8795.
8. ^ Viereck,
Peter (1956, 2006)Conservative

9. ^ Viereck,

10. ^ Viereck,

11. ^ Viereck,

Publishers, p. 40.
12. ^ Viereck,
Peter (1956, 2006) Conservative

39. ^ First Principles


13. ^ Viereck, pp. 4245.
14. ^ Frohnen,Bruce, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey
O. Nelson (2006) American Conservatism:
An Encyclopedia. Wilmington, DE: ISI
Books, pp. 235236.


Books, pp. 263266.


Books, pp. 219220.
17. ^ Viereck, p. 89
18. ^ Allitt,
Patrick. (2009) The Conservatives:

Ideas and Personalities Throughout
American History. New Haven: Yale
University Press, p. 12
19. ^ Frohnen, pp. 369370.

20. ^ Frohnen, pp. 906908.
21. ^ Muller,
Jerry Z., ed. (1997)Conservatism:
45. ^ John Barth (1984) intro to The Literature

of Exhaustion, in The Friday Book.
46. ^ Allitt, Patrick. (2009) The Conservatives:
An Anthology of Social and Political
Thought from David Hume to the Present
American History. New Haven, CT: Yale
Princeton: Princeton University, pp. 152
University Press, p. 188.
166.
22. ^ Allitt,
47. ^ Kirk, Russell. (1995) The Sword of

Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of
Literary Conflict. Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., pp.
University Press, pp. 6263.
285288.
23. ^ Allitt,
48. ^ a b c Person, James E., Jr. Russell Kirk: A
Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind.
Lanham, MD: Madison Books, p. 217.

24. ^ Allitt,
49. ^ Senator Fred Thompson Russell Kirk,

man of letters
50. ^
http://www.kirkcenter.org/images/uploads/
Kirk_Newsletter_Spring_2010.pdf

51. ^ the grant foundation grants org at

wilburfoundation.org
52. ^ Michigan Governor John Engler speaks
at the Heritage Foundation Russell Kirk,
man of letters
53. ^ http://www.shu.edu/catholicmission/upload/07112009ConferenceSche
dule.pdf
54. ^ Upcoming Events Tocqueville Forum,
Georgetown University
55. ^ Ellen Grigsby (2009). Analyzing Politics:
An Introduction to Political Science
Cengage Learning. ISBN9780495501121.

Retrieved August 2, 2011.
Further reading
Articles
[ edit ]
[ edit ]
"Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism"
by Mark C. Henrie. The New Pantagruel,
formerly published in Varieties of Conservatism in America, Peter Berkowitz, Ed. (Hoover

Press, 2004) ISBN 978-0-8179-4572-5.
General reference
[ edit ]
Allitt, Patrick (2009) The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American
History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Critchlow, Donald T. (2007) The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made
Political History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dunn, Charles W., and J. David Woodard (2003) The Conservative Tradition in America.
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Edwards, Lee (2004) A Brief History of the Modern American Conservative Movement.
Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation.
Frohnen, Bruce, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson (2006) American Conservatism: An
Encyclopedia. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
Gottfried, Paul, and Thomas Fleming (1988) The Conservative Movement. Boston: Twayne
Publishers.
Nash, George H. (1976, 2006) The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since
1945. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
Nisbet, Robert (1986) Conservatism: Dream and Reality. Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press.
Regnery, Alfred S. (2008) Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism. New
York: Threshold Editions.
Viereck, Peter (1956, 2006) Conservative Thinkers from John Adams to Winston Churchill.
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
By the "New Conservatives"
[ edit ]
Bestor, Arthur (1953, 1988) Educational Wastelands: The Retreat from Learning in Our
Public Schools. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Boorstin, Daniel (1953) The Genius of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Chalmers, Gordon Keith (1952) The Republic and the Person: A Discussion of Necessities in
Modern American Education. Chicago: Regnery.
Hallowell, John (1954, 2007) The Moral Foundation of Democracy. Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund Inc.
Heckscher, August (1947) A Pattern of Politics. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock.
Kirk, Russell (1953, 2001) The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot. Washington, D.C.:
Regnery Publishing.
Kirk, Russell (1982) The Portable Conservative Reader. New York: Penguin.
Nisbet, Robert (1953, 1990) The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and
Freedom. San Francisco: ICS Press.
Smith, Mortimer (1949) And Madly Teach. Chicago:Henry Regnery Co.
Viereck, Peter (1949, 2006) Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology. New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Vivas, Eliseo (1950, 1983) The Moral Life and the Ethical Life. Lanham, MD: University
Press of America.
Voegelin, Eric (1952, 1987) The New Science of Politics: An Introduction. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Weaver, Richard (1948, 1984) Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Wilson, Francis G. (1951, 1990) The Case for Conservatism. New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers.
By other traditionalist conservatives
[ edit ]
Dreher, Rod (2006) Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-loving Organic
Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of
Countercultural Conservatives Plan to
Save America (or At Least the Republican Party).
New York: Crown Forum.
Frohnen, Bruce (1993) Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism: The Legacy of Burke and
Tocqueville. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Henrie, Mark C. (2008) Arguing Conservatism: Four Decades of the Intercollegiate Review.
Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
Kushiner, James M., Ed. (2003) Creed and Culture: A Touchstone Reader. Wilmington, DE:
ISI Books.
MacIntyre, Alaisdar (1981, 2007) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press.
Panichas, George A., Ed. (1988) Modern Age: The First Twenty-Five Years: A Selection.
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc.
Panichas, George A. (2008) Restoring the Meaning of Conservatism: Writings from Modern
Age. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
Scruton, Roger (1980, 2002) The Meaning of Conservatism. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's
Press.
About traditionalist conservatives
[ edit ]
Duffy, Bernard K. and Martin Jacobi (1993) The Politics of Rhetoric: Richard M. Weaver and
the Conservative Tradition. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press.
Federici, Michael P. (2002) Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order. Wilmington, DE: ISI
Books.
Gottfried, Paul (2009) Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and
Teachers. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books.
Kirk, Russell (1995) The Sword of Imagination: Memoirs of a Half-Century of Literary
Conflict. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman's Publishing Co.
Langdale, John., (2012) Superfluous Southerners: Cultural Conservatism and the South,
19201990. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
McDonald, W. Wesley (2004) Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology. Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press.
Person, James E., Jr. (1999) Russell Kirk: A Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind.
Lanham, MD: Madison Books.
Russello, Gerald J. (2007) The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk. Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press.
Scotchie, Joseph (1997) Barbarians in the Saddle: An Intellectual Biography of Richard M.
Weaver. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Scotchie, Joseph (1995) The Vision of Richard Weaver. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers.
Scruton, Roger (2005) Gentle Regrets: Thoughts From A Life London: Continuum.
Stone, Brad Lowell (2002) Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist. Wilmington, DE: ISI
Books.
Wilson, Clyde (1999) A Defender of Conservatism: M. E. Bradford and His Achievements.
Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
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Traditionalist Conservatism, also known as

Traditional Conservatism, Traditionalism,

Classical Conservatism and (in the United

order, tradition, hierarchy and organic unity,

agrarianism, classicism and high culture, and the

intersecting spheres of loyalty.[1] Some

traditionalists have embraced the labels

"reactionary" and "counterrevolutionary", defying

the stigma that has attached to these terms since

Traditionalism developed in 18th-century Europe

and the French Revolution).

20th century it started to organize itself in earnest

modern expression of traditionalist conservatism

as an intellectual and political force. This more