ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the task on a serious endeavor to fulfill the growth to maturity of the American conservative movement. It is concerned with conservatism as a political, social, and intellectual movement—not as a cast of mind or a temperamental inclination. The traditionalist and the libertarian within the contemporary American conservative movement are not heirs of European conservatism and European liberalism because they draw from a common source in the American constitutional consensus. Both in fundamental thought and in practical programmatics, the present need of the American conservative movement is to intensify its development. Its essential principles are clear; they constitute a doctrine that is truly conservative in that it is directed towards the recovery of the civilizational tradition. The chapter also discusses the problems of the American conservative movement. In any era the problem of conservatism is to find the way to restore the tradition of the civilization and apply it in a new situation.
