ABSTRACT
Radicalism and revolt are just as valuable as conservatism so long as they really do correct social defects. Social democracy has an attractive social program for both the masses and the intellectuals. Conservatism is the rediscovery of tradition, the daring search for that lost Grail, the value code of Western man. In the Victorian and Coolidgean ages, civilization was stuffy and stodgy, conservatism at its worst. Unlike the ancient conservatism of Great Britain, the young American conservatism is still primarily a cultural, ethical, and educational movement, not primarily political. The proper start for a new American conservatism, aiming not at success but at truth, not at activism but at long-range education, is in the world of literature, the arts and sciences, intellectual history, the universities, the humanities. The new conservatism — meaning: a fresh and creative traditionalism — never admires the past passively in sterile escapism.
