A writer, teacher, columnist, novelist, and storyteller, Kirk defined and gave substance to American conservatism more than anyone else besides Buckley. But the collapse of the Soviet Union fractured intellectual conservatism, diminishing its influence and opening it up to challenges from the populist right.īut that story doesn’t fully account for Russell Kirk-and you can’t tell the story of modern American conservatism without him. Its greatest victory came with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. consolidated this alliance, bound together by opposition to the Soviet Union abroad and the welfare state at home, when he founded National Review in 1955. In the early years of the Cold War, however, a coalition of classical liberals, traditionalists, and anti-Communists took shape. The conventional story of the rise of the conservative intellectual movement in America goes something like this: The Great Depression and Pearl Harbor discredited the so-called superfluous men who had criticized Franklin D.
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