The Fall 2005 issue of Modern Age included George W. Carey’s “The Future of Conservatism” that attracted my attention for several reasons. It was forcefully written and testified to Professor Carey’s accumulated knowledge of constitutional history. And though I do not agree with his hope for the Democratic Party to retake of the Congress in order to check a neoconservative Republican President, Carey is right about the “cover” for Republican-endorsed Jacobinism.
Perhaps the most famous quotation from the great Tory lexicographer Samuel Johnson is his offhand remark that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Yet, almost as often as this quotation is repeated, it is pointed out that Johnson did not mean by it to impugn the character of the “true” patriot. What, then, is a “true” as opposed to a “false” patriot? Such questions seem of particular importance given the contemporary atmosphere of fear and hostility arising from the war in Iraq and of perhaps greatest concern to conservatives, those most often associated with this war, and with the administration waging it. . . .
The general conception now among politicians and the public seems to be that conservatives are supposed to be anti-environmentalists. But nothing could be further from the truth. As the eminent “founding father” of the contemporary conservative movement, Richard Weaver, argued: the capstone virtue we need to restore is piety, and especially piety toward nature. . . .
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