American Dilemma

NATIONAL REVIEW, at its founding in 1955, had as its mission stating and defending a conservative view in a nation that many believed had known only a liberal tradition. It was a difficult task, not only because of liberalism’s apparent supremacy, but because it was not easy to define a conservative alternative. Conservatism could mean free-market economics, the reassertion of a traditional morality, or the endorsement of a religious or classical basis for moral thought. In the spirited discussions that took place in this magazine and elsewhere, each of these views had its proponents, and-as they made quite clear-their views were often in conflict. Individualism and free-market economics could leave morality to personal and even aberrant judgments, but a revival of moral thought and a reassertion of its religious basis could easily suppress individual choice and impose regulatory restraints on the market.

The debate on the meaning of conservatism consumed many pages in NATIONAL REVIEW but apparently ended, by exhaustion if not agreement, in the fusionism of Frank Meyer, who said that conservatism was “reason operating within tradition”-a phrase he said implied that there was an objective moral order, the individual was superior to the state, state power should be limited, and Communism and the Soviet Union were deep threats that must be overcome.

JW

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James Q. Wilson

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NATIONAL REVIEW, at its founding in 1955, had as its mission stating and defending a conservative view in a nation that many believed had known only a liberal tradition. It was a difficult task, not only because of liberalism’s apparent supremacy, but because it was not easy to define a conservative alternative. Conservatism could mean free-market economics, the reassertion of a traditional morality, or the endorsement of a religious or classical basis for moral thought. In the spirited discussions that took place in this magazine and elsewhere, each of these views had its proponents, and-as they made quite clear-their views were often in conflict. Individualism and free-market economics could leave morality to personal and even aberrant judgments, but a revival of moral thought and a reassertion of its religious basis could easily suppress individual choice and impose regulatory restraints on the market.

The debate on the meaning of conservatism consumed many pages in NATIONAL REVIEW but apparently ended, by exhaustion if not agreement, in the fusionism of Frank Meyer, who said that conservatism was “reason operating within tradition”-a phrase he said implied that there was an objective moral order, the individual was superior to the state, state power should be limited, and Communism and the Soviet Union were deep threats that must be overcome.