Books: Generation to Generation

THE CONSERVATIVE MIND (458 pp.)—Russell Kirk—Henry Regnery ($6.50).

The whole unwhole world of 1953—the Communist world, the Socialist world, the liberal world, the reactionary world—agrees on this: the U.S. is the citadel of conservatism in a tumult of innovation. Yet the label "conservative" is about the last tag that the typical American would think of applying to himself. How explain this contradiction?

Conservatism as a fact and a force never died, and it is now vigorous and growing. But as a conscious and proudly defended outlook on public affairs, as a philosophy of life and...