Pragmatic Conservatism

Beschreibung

This book is a study of pragmatic conservatism, an underappreciated tradition in modern American political thought, whose origins can be located in the ideas of Edmund Burke. Beginning with an exegesis of Burke's thought, it goes on to show how three twentieth-century thinkers who are not generally recognized as conservatives—Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Peter Viereck—carried on the Burkean tradition and adapted it to American democracy. Pragmatic conservatives posit that people, sinful by nature, require guidance from traditions that embody enduring truths wrought by past experience. Yet they also welcome incremental reform driven by established elites, judiciously departing from precedent when necessary. Mindful that truth is never absolute, they eschew ideology and caution against both bold political enterprises and stubborn apologies for the status quo. The book concludes by contrasting this more nuanced brand of conservatism with the radical version that emerged in the wake of the post-war Buckley revolution.
This book is a study of pragmatic conservatism, an underappreciated tradition in modern American political thought, whose origins can be located in the ideas of Edmund Burke. Beginning with an exegesis of Burke's thought, it goes on to show how three twentieth-century thinkers who are not generally recognized as conservatives—Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Peter Viereck—carried on the Burkean tradition and adapted it to American democracy. Pragmatic conservatives posit that people, sinful by nature, require guidance from traditions that embody enduring truths wrought by past experience. Yet they also welcome incremental reform driven by established elites, judiciously departing from precedent when necessary. Mindful that truth is never absolute, they eschew ideology and caution against both bold political enterprises and stubborn apologies for the status quo. The book concludes by contrasting this more nuanced brand of conservatism with the radical version that emerged in the wake of the post-war Buckley revolution.
An in-depth examination of Edmund Burke as the father of what the author calls pragmatic conservatism A carefully articulated and well-written study of a kind of conservatism that has been neglected and underappreciated since the mid-twentieth century Includes insightful comparisons of Burkean conservative thought to current more known styles of conservatism

Autor*in

Robert J. Lacey

Themen in »Pragmatic Conservatism«

Edmund Burke Walter Lippmann Reinhold Niebuhr Peter Viereck pragmatic conservatism modern American conservatism movement conservatism William F. Buckley us politics

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“Lacey chiefly discusses four writers he believes exemplify pragmatic conservatism: Edmund Burke, Walter Lippmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Peter Viereck. … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” (M. Blitz, Choice, Vol. 54 (6), February, 2017) 

“The philosophic underpinnings of the conservative movement have reached a dead end.  In his wonderful new book, Robert J. Lacey describes Burkean conservatism – or, as he prefers to call it, pragmatic conservatism – as an alternative conservative philosophy articulated by great thinkers of the past which may become the conservatism of the future.  Lacey’s clear and crisp prose makes his book about great ideas a terrific read.” (Carl T. Bogus, Roger Williams University, USA, and author of “Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism” (2011)) 

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