ABSTRACT
A form of conservatism, what Huntington refers to as "situational conservatism", is simply a set of ideas designed to justify any particular status quo. It is widely recognized that much of the content of what Americans call conservative is deeply grounded in the liberal tradition. The first politically salient eruption of contemporary American conservatism came in the 1950s. The fusionist movement that coalesced around William Buckley and the National Review in the 1950s finally achieved power with the election of Ronald Reagan. The second stream of the modern fusionist consensus is libertarianism. In some respects the neoconservatives are a more interesting group, if only because they are much less likely than the libertarians to dwell in a world of economic abstractions. Whatever the virtues of capitalism as a way to produce goods, its roots lie deep in the liberal tradition and provide little support for a stable tradition.
