Since World War II, conservatism has been one of the most diverse, stimulating, and influential intellectual movements in America. Encompassing sensibilities ranging from that of the religious revivalist to the cold rationalist and traversing ideas as diverse as libertarianism, republicanism, and even royalism, the body of political, cultural, and religious thought loosely confederated as “conservative” is daunting in its scope and is often misunderstood and misrepresented in popular imagination. The forthcoming American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (ISI 2006), more than a decade in the making and with more than 600 entries on the persons, events, organizations, and concepts of major importance to postwar American conservatism, brings the breadth and depth of this influential movement together in one volume.
More than anything else, the New Pantagruel was fashioned out of this tradition and has sustained an anti-liberal argument against not just the usual suspects of the left, but also against much of what has passed for conservatism in the late modern age. We agree with Alasdair MacIntyre and David Schindler that most of the political and cultural, and even religious arguments today are between liberals: conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals. In the wake of such a thoroughgoing critique of liberalism, the complaint we have heard most often, and most loudly, is “if not this, then what?” We hope that the following entries from American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia on “Community,” “Agrarianism,” “Anarchism,” and “Localism” will provide at least a taste of the possibilities and alternatives available from within the rich tradition of authentically conservative thought. –Eds.
You may read an interview at The National Review Online regarding American Conservatism with one of the book’s editors, Bruce Frohnen, who is also an editor with The New Pantagruel.
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