The founding of this magazine, 60 years ago, marked the emergence of a distinctly American conservatism. William Buckley and National Review posed two questions, fundamental and connected, that conservatives have grappled with ever since. The first is about conservatism’s ends, its mission. What, exactly, are conservatives dedicated to conserving, and why do the things they wish to conserve warrant and require it? The second is about means. In our republic, how can conservatives induce citizens to wield their sovereign power so that self-government sustains rather than threatens the inheritance conservatism defends?
Among the challenges that arise from these questions, two are especially formidable. First, because it has proven difficult to achieve clarity and consensus about what conservatism is for, the easier and less contentious course is to define conservatism by what it’s against. Buckley’s famous declaration in NR’s mission statement was that in a world where liberal ideologues run “just about everything,” his publication would accept the risk of being “superfluous” by standing “athwart history, yelling Stop.” The ensuing 60 years have shown that history, more often than not, blithely or disdainfully ignores those who yell at it. And when it does listen, conservatism will indeed prove superfluous — yelling for the sake of yelling, rather than for the sake of change — without a clear, compelling account of where history should go after abandoning the path it has been following.
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