By Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D.

By training, I am an historian.  I love the discipline and believe that historical mindedness – the ability to see and understand the grounding of current institutions, issues, and events in the complex matrix of the past – this is the superior way to make sense of reality.

All the same, I have been troubled for over a decade by the growing interest of American conservatives in the history of their cause.  This is not to criticize fine books such as George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.  Nor is it to imply that ignorance is the better strategy for guiding a cultural, political, and intellectual campaign.  Nor is it to deny that any movement calling itself “conservative” must, by definition, have a healthy – even determinative – regard for the past.

My concern is over a kind of triumphalism that has crept into American conservatism, a neo-Hegelian view that sees this cause rising out of the intellectual rubble of the Truman era, destined by the spirit to history to create mass publications, to control the radio airwaves, to found great think tanks, and to dominate a political party.  This version of history sees the apotheosis of the movement in the creation of FOX News.  This has actually tended, I believe, toward a narrowing of thought, and a closing off of healthy debate.  [Continued...]