Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 35

THE VARIETIES OF BURKE

British Constitution and to the principles of sound government,
our leaders could appeal only to the principles of society on which
they believed a just system might exist" (CC, 57). In Wilson's opinion, The Federalist "ranks with the writings of Burke in the creation
of the modern conservative spirit in politics" (CC, 56).
Wilson's sense of American conservatism is best captured in
this passage: "Conservative spirit in America is . . . never simply a
defense of things as they are, for at the height it seeks to blend
the fading past and the emerging future into an imaginative present. What it can never do is to relieve men of their responsibility
in the vast context of experience" (CC, 51).

W

hile Francis Graham Wilson sees Burke and The Federalist
as coequal foundations of American conservatism, one of
his students, Willmoore Kendall, was not as forbearing in his comments and pushes Wilson's insight into The Federalist further than
Wilson did. In the posthumously published "The Benevolent Sage
of Mecosta," Kendall takes direct aim at Kirk's claim that Burke is
the father of American conservatism:
If we were to assume . . . that conservatism = adherence to the old
and tried = opposition to change . . . then we must look askance
at the contention that both Burke and the Founders of the American Republic were conservatives. For, even if we grant . . . that the
American Revolution was on one side a "conservative reaction"
against innovation by that wicked fellow George III, . . . the feat
of fitting the Founding Fathers into the category "opponents of
change" or "adherents to the old and tried" is one that, quite simply, no one, not even someone with Russell Kirk's gifted pen, is
going to bring off, because it cannot be done. "Change," and not
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Modern Age - Winter 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Winter 2016 - Cover1
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