Portland Declaration

A year or so ago, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Irving Kristol wrote that the conservative movement lacked, really, a spinal column of thought. The point was divisive: some said, as they have over the years, that conservatism is primarily an attitude, an approach. Others disagreed, some even insisting that the word “ideology” be rebaptized: or, if you like, merely baptized, An ideology, insisted Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, is a body of thought, and its use, or abuse, by Marx, or by fanatics, oughtn’t to deprive us of it.

During the same period other conservatives were agitating on the meaning and implications of modernism to conservative thought. If—as most agree—experience does and should influence thought, how is such experience assimilated by conservatism? Are some positions generally identified as “conservative” only presumptively that? Do they, indeed, deter others from finding the faith, or sticking to it?

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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A year or so ago, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Irving Kristol wrote that the conservative movement lacked, really, a spinal column of thought. The point was divisive: some said, as they have over the years, that conservatism is primarily an attitude, an approach. Others disagreed, some even insisting that the word “ideology” be rebaptized: or, if you like, merely baptized, An ideology, insisted Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, is a body of thought, and its use, or abuse, by Marx, or by fanatics, oughtn’t to deprive us of it.

During the same period other conservatives were agitating on the meaning and implications of modernism to conservative thought. If—as most agree—experience does and should influence thought, how is such experience assimilated by conservatism? Are some positions generally identified as “conservative” only presumptively that? Do they, indeed, deter others from finding the faith, or sticking to it?