Tribal Politics

Yoram Hazony’s Conservatism: A Rediscovery admirably attempts to liberate conservatism from undue fealty to liberal dogmatism. I share his ambition to articulate the “conservative foundations,” as I have called them elsewhere, of our civic order. But I fear Hazony has redefined conservatism more than he has rediscovered it. With the late Roger Scruton, a truly trustworthy authority on conservative political philosophy, I see conservatism as a corrective to the one-sided individualism (and the collectivism that later flowed from it) that emanates from liberal theory. Conservatism thus has a dialectical relationship to the liberalism it simultaneously rejects, corrects, and affirms. With Hazony, it is all rejection with little or no correction and affirmation.