American Conservatism
CONSERVATISM IN AMERICA. By Clinton Rossiter. (Heinemann, 21s.) WHEN American writers get on to a topic there are always so many of them that the result is like an avalanche. For every English writer who now has something thoughtful to say about political conservatism there are at least fifty Americans, and the English reader is apt to find himself overwhelmed. Professor Clinton Rossiter's book is the latest contribution to this avalanche. But it has two characteristics which will be counted as virtues by English readers: it modestly concerns itself with indigenous American conservatism, and it provides a discriminating guide to the current literature of American conservatism.
As it appears to Professor Rossiter, contemporary conservatism in America is something of a miracle. For, although American Political practice has always been conservative in disposition, and although there have been notable conservative political writers In the past, the normal rhetoric of American political talk has been of a different character—and it is rhetoric that counts. Moreover, by the beginning of this century Conservatism had acquired so indelible an appearance of crankiness that no revival was to be looked for. Nevertheless, a New Conservatism has emerged during the last ten years. Its shape has been determined partly by the relics of the older conservatism which had been driven underground in 'industrial, democratic America,' partly in opposition to local and temporary circumstances (a distaste for
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