What’s to Be Done

Tom Wolfe wrote a piece a few years ago identifying O’Hare Airport as the intellectual capital of the nation—the switchyard in which, on any given day, a majority of America’s idea-mongers could be found, waiting to fan out to the hinterlands to instruct the people on the awfulness of their society. On April 7, O’Hare played host to a different collection of thinkers, headed no farther than the Sheraton Plaza in Chicago—the members and guests of the Philadelphia Society.

The Philadelphia Society has been meeting since 1964, in ever-expanding numbers, to discuss the prospects and principles of “free and ordered” society; the topic of this year’s meeting—“What Is to Be Done?”—reflects the fact that since then, the situation has grown simultaneously worse and more hopeful: worse, in that the free society’s enemies—big government at home, and Communist governments abroad—have become more powerful; more hopeful, in that the bankruptcy of traditional liberal responses is more generally recognized—even by liberals themselves.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

Tom Wolfe wrote a piece a few years ago identifying O’Hare Airport as the intellectual capital of the nation—the switchyard in which, on any given day, a majority of America’s idea-mongers could be found, waiting to fan out to the hinterlands to instruct the people on the awfulness of their society. On April 7, O’Hare played host to a different collection of thinkers, headed no farther than the Sheraton Plaza in Chicago—the members and guests of the Philadelphia Society.

The Philadelphia Society has been meeting since 1964, in ever-expanding numbers, to discuss the prospects and principles of “free and ordered” society; the topic of this year’s meeting—“What Is to Be Done?”—reflects the fact that since then, the situation has grown simultaneously worse and more hopeful: worse, in that the free society’s enemies—big government at home, and Communist governments abroad—have become more powerful; more hopeful, in that the bankruptcy of traditional liberal responses is more generally recognized—even by liberals themselves.