The Old Right and the Recovery of Social Order

Modern American conservatism is often thought to begin with Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, and the founding of William F. Buckley's National Review shortly thereafter. But Kirk's book was a discussion of earlier writers. These were often American, and often of greater interest and diversity than those associated with the post-50s movement. This essay discusses key figures among them, including Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, the Southern Agrarians, journalistic anti-New Dealers and anti-imperialists, and Richard M. Weaver, who sums up themes from many earlier figures. Their various projects failed, and the essay attributes the failure to the strength of consumerism and managerialism, and the writers’ own inability to engage fundamental understandings and loyalties due to the absence of a religious foundation.

James Kalb holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Yale University, is a lawyer and independent scholar whose work has appeared in various journals in the United States and Europe. He is the author of Against Inclusiveness; The Tyranny of Liberalism, and more recently, The Decomposition of Man: Identity, Technocracy and the Church.

Herbert Agar, and Allen Tate (eds.), Who Owns America: A New Declaration of Independence (Wilmington, Delaware, USA: Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books, 1999 [1936])

Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (Cambridge, Massachsetts: The Riverside Press, 1924)

Paul Elmer More, The Sceptical Approach to Religion (Princetown, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 1934)

Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take My Stand: the South and the Agrarian Tradition (New York, New York, USA: Harper, 1962 [1930])

Richard Weaver, “Conservatism and Libertarianism: The Common Ground”, In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929–1963 (illust. ed.; Indianapolis, Indiana, USA: Liberty Fund, 2001)

Richard M. Weaver, Ted J. Smith III, and Roger Kimball, Ideas Have Consequences: Expanded Edition (enl. ed.; Chicago, Ilinois, USA: University of Chicago Press, 2013 [1948]).

Richard Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Postbellum Thought (New York, New York, USA: Regnery Gateway, 2021 [1968]).

Richard Weaver, Visions Of Order: Cultural Crisis Of Our Time (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995)