
Frank Meyer provided the basic elements of what he described as the American Conservative Position. These shared principles are:
Though these principles were often stated differently, Meyer accurately described these principles as a “consensus among divergence.” The divergences among those on the right are little more than differences in the emphasis placed on particular principles, according to Meyer. .... [more]
- Belief in objective moral order
- Acknowledgment of the individual “as the necessary center of political and social thought”
- Rejection of the use of the State to impose uniform ideology
- Rejection of collectivism and central planning
- Support for the Constitution, and by extension, the limitation of government power
- Strong defense of Western civilization against Communism
These debates in the pages of National Review were my introduction to political theory, led me to books providing a more in depth understanding, and finally to a subject that has occupied much of both my formal education and subsequent reading.
The book What Is Conservatism?
edited by Frank S. Meyer, collecting some of the essays, was published in 1964. I bought it second-hand a few years later.
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