Paul Gottfried notes that while the canon of post-war conservative thinkers are valuable in their own right, that simply reading them will not likely revive that more authentic strain of conservatism:
The movement that some of our readers would like to revive is now on a life-support system. And those who may eventually succeed in redirecting the conservative movement would not likely be students of a “canon.” They would be people of action often driven by outrage, but in all likelihood not those devoted to the aesthetics of Russell Kirk. It is also an unfortunate fact that most of our canon writers who were then around did little or nothing to prevent the straying of their movement. And most of those who in the 1980s ran to collaborate with the neoconservatives claimed to be loyal disciples of the “great thinkers” of postwar conservatism.
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I’m afraid that Paul Gottfried is correct.
Political movements rise and fall; at times
they morph into new political movements.
I’ve ofen wondered if paleo-conservative or
paleo-libertarian ideals can gain traction
in our industrialized (post-industrial)
urban/suburban “modern” society.
How many of us actually are economically
free enough to live the life of self-
sufficiency of our immediate forefathers.
That is as “yeoman-farmers;” small
industrialists–locally owned; and the Mom
and Pop Main Street of (my) our youth?
I live (blissfully retired) in a small
town; located in the Finger Lakes area of
New York State. Many of our towns are
viable because of colleges (the huge
numbers of students from NYC and Long
Island). The surviving farms have become
huge, most of the industries have closed or
moved overseas and Main Street is almost
abandoned.