Charles Kesler’S review [“All against All,” Aug. 18] is a not very subtle attack on the whole conservative tradition that derives from Burke, as set forth by Russell Kirk in The Conservative Mind and elaborated by many writers since then. Kesler’s main purpose is to dismiss traditional conservatism, centered in its principles and values in the Judaeo-Christian religious order of Western civilization, to deny its paramount place in the mainstream of American life, and to replace it with the essentially secular and rationalist political philosophy of Leo Strauss.
Kesler’s entire essay is on such a high level of abstraction that it may obscure for some readers the virulence of his attack on traditional conservatism. Kesler deals wholly in generalized categories, which he then treats as though they were facts of history or possessed philosophical reality. In forty years of teaching humanities and political philosophy, I have had to flunk many undergraduates for this crude technique.
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