14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How I wish the Right would return to this kind of conservativism, October 26, 2008
This review is from: Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology (Paperback)
I am not a conservative. I believe society functions best when, as Herbert Croly put it in his great THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE, government pursues Hamiltonian methods (i.e., a strong federal government) to achieve Jeffersonian goals (the traditional liberal values in American life). I believe that Karl Marx's analysis of the weaknesses and dangers of capitalism (a word that Marx and not Adam Smith coined) is still far more valid and accurate than its fans trumpeting of its virtues, though I think his view of history was pure utopianism. I believe in a mixed economy. Nonetheless, I have read and enjoyed and profited from many traditional conservative writers. John Adams is one of my favorite political writers. I have profited from the works of Michael Oakshott. I like many things in the life and writings of Winston Churchill (who was also the primary force in prison reform in Britain and establishing the British health care system, and the father of the idea of the European Union, which shows that you can be a conservative and still believe that government can play a major role in affecting social life). I enjoy the work of people like Daniel Boorstin, Paul Johnson, and Roger Scruton. And I really, really like Peter Viereck.
I may disagree with these people, but they had serious ideas, cared deeply about the political order, and had the generosity of mind to acknowledge that their opponents, whether liberal or socialist, wanted much the same thing. I think John Adams would recoil in horror at the current Republican party. Viereck, along with conservative icon Russell Kirk, strongly disliked the rise of the Goldwater brand of politics in the sixties and even more strongly detested the influence of the Neocons.
The past few decades have seen the Right abandoning the kinds of ideas found in traditional conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke, Adams, Hobshouse, Russell Kirk, and Viereck (I omit Adam Smith because he was in fact a Lockean liberal). Instead, the Right and the GOP it has taken over has become mired in a combination of a narrow conception of values-politics and a brainless attachment to an overly simplistic dogma grounded in the belief of a self-regulating free market utopia. With the values-politics generating nothing but social conflict and political stalemate and the free market fantasy completely discredited by the almost 40 years of economic failure (economic policy that has resulted in a huge number of millionaires while weakening national production, creating massive inequality, dramatically increasing the number of people living below the poverty line, and created a winner-take-all mentality), the Right is suddenly intellectually and spiritually bankrupt. What is needed is a return to principles. What those on the right need are writers like Peter Viereck.
As a progressive, I admire and respect Viereck like I cannot Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. Unlike Coulter, I believe Viereck actually believes the things he writes. Unlike Coulter, Viereck likes and respects those he disagrees with. He dosen't ridicule and distort the views of his opponents. Indeed, does Viereck properly speaking have opponents? He does not in fact engage in confrontational attacks. He has a vision of political dialogue that is nonexistent in today's Right. In fact, he decried William F. Buckley's rise to a place of leadership within conservativism.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. I think America would be better off with an intellectually reinvigorated Right, instead of the intellectual dead zone that currently exists. In rebuilding the intellectual foundations of conservativism, those on the Right should reread Russell Kirk, read Peter Viereck, go back and study John Adams (who detested, for instance, those who claimed that America has any kind of special relationship with God), Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, and their ilk. Progressives and leftists should read Viereck to see how many shared goals thinking individuals of all political stripes have when the venom and diviseness and partisanship is laid to one side. I own a much older hardback copy of this book and therefore have not read the new essay that accompanies this new edition. But I am profoundly grateful that this great book is back in print. I don't agree with Viereck on the role government should play in American life, but I have better, more sharply defined reasons for holding what I believe for having read this fine book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well Worth Reading But to Some Extent Dated, February 18, 2011
This review is from: Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology (Paperback)
The first part of Viereck's book, which was published in 1949, I believe that I can recommend to anyone interested in Burkean conservatism. The second part ("The New Conservatism - What Went Wrong?"), from 1962, is more polemical, more concerned with the politics of the day and in my opinion less interesting today than the first book.
Sadly, this is a substandard edition. The proof-reading errors (e.g., "slays" instead of "slavs") are so numerous that I suspect that they may even have corrupted the original text to some little extent.
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