For those of you who've followed my posts here and here and the discussion that has ensued on the shaping of the American mind, I'm giving you a sneak peak into a joint effort between a company I run called World Changers Inc. and Dinesh D'Souza. Our premise has been that before we can even think about the next Ronald Reagan, we need to go about rebuilding the intellectual foundation of the Conservative Movement in the tradition of William F. Buckley, Jr.
The following is a snapshot of some of our thinking. Much of this thinking was shaped by the writing of Al Regnery and his book "Upstream: The Ascendence of American Conservatism." Al is the son of the late Henry Regnery, who launched the company now known as Regnery Publishing. It was Henry Regnery who was responsible for publishing many of the great conservative works that helped fuel the movement in the early years, including a somewhat important book by a 25 year old recent Yale grad who wrote a little book called "God and Man at Yale. (I am talking about Buckley.)
Here's an excerpt of what we're working on:
What transpired in the years immediately following World War II and the election and administration of Ronald Reagan was nothing short of remarkable. In his eulogy of President Reagan, George H.W. Bush said, “In the space of a few years, he took ideas and principles that were mainly found in journals and books, and turned them into a broad, hopeful movement ready to govern.”
A short number of years after his presidency, one conservative leader thanked Ronald Reagan for all he had done done end the evil empire. Reagan’s response was, “Don’t thank me. The real credit goes to those who recognized the nature of the ideological battle we were in during the 40’s and 50’s.”
During that time, conventional wisdom was liberalism. Then, writes Al Regnery:“The decade from 1945 to 1955 was the span when the intellectual foundation for the coming conservative movement was laid... It’s principle advocates were not concerned with ideas only as an intellectual exercise or to better understand the world they were living in. They held practical ideas that challenged the status quo: they wanted to use their ideas to change the world.”
Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises on issues of individual liberty, James Burnham on anti-communism, and then Russell Kirk on traditional values. These writers, among many others, laid an intellectual foundation that led to the establishment of a movement.
Hayek would organize the initial meeting of what would become the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. This meeting was important on a few fronts. First, as Milton Friedman would later recall, Mont Pelerin served as a rallying point for writers who were then so far outside the mainstream. Second, it provided a community of common thinking where subtle intricacies in thinking could be worked out.
They journey from theory to public policy is not always a long one. Twenty-two Mont Pelerin members were economic advisors to Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany, President Luigi Einaudi of Italy, Chairman Arthur Burns of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, and President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic were all Mont Pelerin members.
Al Regnery writes:
“In a sense, the Mont Pelerin Society is representative of the way the conservative movement grew over the years. One or two very able people with definite ideas wanted to see their ideas translated into policy. They raised the money to put on the first meeting from several wealthy individuals who shared the same principles... The meeting was transformed into an organization, more money was contributed... and a lifelong network was born... The society... would strive to win the intellectual battle against socialism by waging policy battles against it.”
Just as Mont Pelerin was developing a coherent statement of individual liberty with a focus on economic theory, James Burnham was writing about the third world war, which, he argued began as World War II was ending. Containment would continue to be official United States policy for another generation, but Burnham was loading in conservative intellectual deck in a way that would swing the tide for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Then, of course there was Whittaker Chambers and the Hiss Case, which would launch the rise of Richard Nixon. Chambers’ autobiography Witness, published in 1952 was a smash success and would solidify his standing as a hero to conservatives.
In 1953, Chambers weighed heavily on his former colleagues at Time Magazine, imploring them to review what he called the most important book of the century: The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. Time did. In fact, they devoted the entire July 4, 1953 book section to Kirk’s work.
William F. Buckley had become widely known as early as 1951 following the bestseller status of his first book, God and Man at Yale. The work he would begin in 1955, however, would prove to be a pivotal moment in the history of the Conservative Movement. More than founding National Review, he brought the separate wings of conservative thought together.
This cohesion of thought would bring three groups together that alone may have had minimal impact: libertarians, anti-communists, and traditionalists.
There are two important lessons to learn from the Conservative Movement post World War II. The first is the importance of a voice that can bring together factions that do not agree on everything but agree on some very basic things. It is hard to imagine libertarians and traditionalists in the same room, but Bill Buckley and Frank Meyer were able to pull this off.
The second, as Richard Weaver so aptly pointed out, is that ideas do have consequences. Many of the early funders of the Conservative Movement knew that it make take 30, 40, or 50 years to see their work come to fruition.
Frank Chodorov was one of these men. Chodorov published a small newsletter entitled analysis that later merged with Human Events. Later, he went on to found what is now the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Chodorov wrote, “We are not born with ideas, we learn them. If socialism has come to America because it was implanted in the minds of past generations, there is no reason for assuming the contrary idea cannot be taught to a new generation.”
And it is only when we teach and nurture and promote these ideas that wen can anticipate real and lasting change. Before we can think about the next Ronald Reagan we need to support the next Bill Buckley.
It is naive to look at the success of the past and say “let’s do that,” but there are certainly lessons to be learned and strategies employed.
And a quick study of the past 50 years should give us hope. It is easy to fall into the thinking that America was most conservative at it’s founding and that since then has become progressively liberal. This is simply not true. America was more liberal post World War II than perhaps any other time in our nation’s history. And then, in 1980, America elected the most conservative president of the 20th century.
A 2004 Wall Street Journal article by James Piereson, executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation, reminds conservatives that you get what you pay for. This article is included as an appendix to this business plan, but Piereson’s argument, in short, is this: conservatives need to do and give me. If our country is going to survive, we’ve got to do more.
During the 2006 election cycle, liberals out-raised conservatives by a ratio of 14 to 1, and that assumes you consider all the Republican candidates conservatives. If you include gifts to organizations that are not inherently political but are nevertheless culture shaping, liberals are, by and large, out-giving conservatives by a ratio of 20 to 1.
We simply need to do and give more.
The question is not what should Congress do or what should the president do. The question is: what are you willing to do for the future of our country?
President Reagan said "Freedom is not something preserved at any one moment in time. We must struggle to defend it everyday. And freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
What are you willing to do for the future of our country?
