Books, Arts & Manners: A Guide for the Seventies

Four Reforms—A Guide for the Seventies By William F. Buckley Jr. Putnam, 128 pp., $4.95

The charge is fairly brought that conservatives, by and large, are a passive lot. We are not much for innovation. A part of this instinctive antipathy to change may be credited to ancestor worship, to the respect we accord tradition, or to an abiding reverence for the past. All of these are well known marks of the conservative breed. And a part of the antipathy may be put down to a lively skepticism: things may be bad, a conservative tends to feel, but change is likely to make them worse. It is the liberal who flies to evils that he knows not of, the conservative who finds it better to bear the ills we have.

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James Jackson Kilpatrick

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Four Reforms—A Guide for the Seventies By William F. Buckley Jr. Putnam, 128 pp., $4.95

The charge is fairly brought that conservatives, by and large, are a passive lot. We are not much for innovation. A part of this instinctive antipathy to change may be credited to ancestor worship, to the respect we accord tradition, or to an abiding reverence for the past. All of these are well known marks of the conservative breed. And a part of the antipathy may be put down to a lively skepticism: things may be bad, a conservative tends to feel, but change is likely to make them worse. It is the liberal who flies to evils that he knows not of, the conservative who finds it better to bear the ills we have.