ABSTRACT
Most American conservatives have at least paid lip-service to these ideas. American conservatives participated in a revolution in part because the policy of the British government violated the traditional conception Americans held of the British Constitution. Conservative spirit in America is thus never simply a defense of things as they are, for at the height it seeks to blend the fading past and the emerging future into an imaginative present. American conservatism has been Protestant, and the defense of a Protestant culture may still be regarded as a conservative drive. In the intellectual and moral realm, American conservative thought has reaffirmed the historic foundations of culture, whatever it may have thought of the immediate conditions in America. But the details of the conservative task change from generation to generation, and its techniques especially may vary while its ultimate ends remain grounded in the memory and tradition of Western civilization.
