Passing Down the Legacy of Conservatism
If she had not found Kirk, he would have found her. At a monthlong retreat for college conservatives here, he was both required reading and a source of after-hours debate among students excited to hear him called “one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite philosophers.”
Young people with old books is a common sight on the conservative circuit, and perhaps a growing one. While the movement has long sought to transmit its intellectual heritage to its young, that mission shows signs of new urgency amid fears of ideological drift.
Everywhere young conservatives turn there are conferences, seminars and reading lists that promote figures from the movement’s formative years. Along with Kirk, they include such canonical names from the 40’s and 50’s as Friedrich A. Hayek, Frank S. Meyer, Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley Jr.
Ms. Pajak, 18, who was home-schooled in Andover, Minn., will be a freshman this fall at Wheaton College, an evangelical school in Wheaton, Ill. While her conservatism springs from her upbringing, the literature “helps me explain what I already believe,” she said. “I don’t want to just say, ‘Oh, it’s because I was raised this way.’ ”
Every political movement has its texts. But James W. Ceaser, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, argues that the conservative focus on core thinkers has no exact parallel among liberals.