A Powerful, Profound Assessment of Conservatism and America An impressive burst of creativity gave rise to a vigorous conservative intellectual movement in the United States after the Second World War.
It sets forth its own strongly argued view of how to understand and address America\'s crisis..
Mixing new and previously published writing, the book bristles with provocative ideas.
It explains the current disorientation of conservatism and why cancel culture and Woke were predictable.
The Failure of American Conservatism analyzes these weaknesses in depth.
Ryn was a very early critic of all these weaknesses.
Paradoxically, it even made room for abstract universalist ideology, including Straussian anti-historicism and neoconservative imperialistic democratism.
Conservatism also resisted intellectual discourse of the most rigorous kind and failed to make crucial distinctions.
Developments in the culture were actually radicalizing the American mind and imagination and eroding America\'s constitutional order.
In the 1980s when Ronald Reagan won great political victories the movement celebrated the triumph of conservatism, but this reaction confirmed a superficial understanding of what most fundamentally shapes society.
The movement became preoccupied with politics to the neglect of academia, history, philosophy, religion, morality, the arts, and entertainment.
Yet, according to Claes Ryn, the great potential of the movement was not realized because of major flaws.
A Powerful, Profound Assessment of Conservatism and America An impressive burst of creativity gave rise to a vigorous conservative intellectual movement in the United States after the Second World War
