The Fights on the Right

Awell-known and recurring vice of conservatism is a bias toward a pessimism tinged with nostalgia. Think of Whittaker Chambers’s remark about leaving the winning side when he turned against communism, or about the most common understanding of National Review’s opening statement that it meant to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” Or think of Burke’s lament that “the age of chivalry is gone” and “the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”

And while Americans have a self-understanding as an optimistic people, we also have a tradition of deep worry about the republic’s future. Lincoln in 1838 spoke of “the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country.” The salutary civic memory of the revolution, he said, was inevitably “fading.” James Madison had the same concern as early as 1788, when he wrote that it was “too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting” the fundamental principles of the American Revolution — which presupposes that with time we would forget them. A little earlier still came Franklin’s famous remark that we had “a republic, if you can keep it.”

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Awell-known and recurring vice of conservatism is a bias toward a pessimism tinged with nostalgia. Think of Whittaker Chambers’s remark about leaving the winning side when he turned against communism, or about the most common understanding of National Review’s opening statement that it meant to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop.” Or think of Burke’s lament that “the age of chivalry is gone” and “the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”

And while Americans have a self-understanding as an optimistic people, we also have a tradition of deep worry about the republic’s future. Lincoln in 1838 spoke of “the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country.” The salutary civic memory of the revolution, he said, was inevitably “fading.” James Madison had the same concern as early as 1788, when he wrote that it was “too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting” the fundamental principles of the American Revolution — which presupposes that with time we would forget them. A little earlier still came Franklin’s famous remark that we had “a republic, if you can keep it.”