This chapter concentrates on the antifascism of the American conservative establishment, which resembles its leftist variants. The conservative media parrot the Left's warnings about a fascist danger while trying to adapt that message to their own cause. Like the Left, conservative celebrities find a fascist threat in, among other things, a resurgent European nationalist Right and, more generally, white racism and anti-Semitism. In view of so-called conservative sponsors, which include defense industries; immigration-friendly corporate capitalists; and pro-Israeli, socially liberal donors like Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer, it is not surprising that conservative media have never felt driven to break from certain antifascist stereotypes. Instead, the conservative media pin the fascist label on their opponents with the same abandon as their rivals.

Has Ulrich Hintze succeeded in producing a "general political theory"? At the least, the author has provided a useful tour of the thought-provoking work of thinkers such as Hermann Heller, Hermann Schmitz, and Ludwig von Mises. Along the way, Hintze makes extensive use of Mises to create a theory of the state, taking aim at anarcho-capitalists.

This essay examines a figure usually considered with justification to be the premier Roman historian of the nineteenth century and perhaps the greatest scholar in his field of all times. It tries to show why Mommsen focuses, particularly in the last volume of his magisterial study of Rome down to the end of the Republic, on the life and activities of Julius Caesar. The essay concludes by reassessing conventional narratives about why Mommsen admired Caesar, so much so that he could not bring himself to describe the death of the Roman leader whom he characterized as the founder of a "military monarchy.".

Kenneth Minogue's Alien Powers provides a primer for anyone interested in a mindset that is still powerful and persistent among Western academics and journalists. Minogue is also on target in bringing up the claims to "revelation" that pervade ideological visions. The idea that historical knowledge is a "potent secret" open to the clever few fits in with ideologically derived elitism. Minogue is correct to observe: "The great discovery of ideology has been that modern European civilization, beneath its cleverly contrived appearances, is the most systematically oppressive despotism the world has ever known. Although Minogue, like Robert Nisbet, has noticed that the left exploits the loss of community to win support for its projects, it is also important to ask whether an increasingly atomized, consumerist society can resist ideology. The broad argument presented here is that ideology is an essential feature of the left, one that may be inseparable from its origin and development.

The abuse of the term “fascism” has become so widespread that it may be impossible to arrest. The best that a scholar can do in addressing this problem (and in this task the author has not been alone) is calling attention as often as possible in as many venues as possible to the extent of the abuse. It may also be helpful to continue to explain why this semantic and rhetorical practice has become so deeply ingrained in Western societies.

Among well-known sociologists, Robert Nisbet was almost unique in considering himself a “conservative.” He defined this orientation not in terms of conventional American partisan affiliation but as a sociological and anthropological perspective. Nisbet viewed human relations as requiring organic relations, which he assumed to be hierarchical and communally determined. Such relations seemed to Nisbet natural and even beneficial; and his lifelong interest in nineteenth-century social theory and his efforts to locate organicist positions among social thinkers of the Left, especially Emile Durkheim, can be attributed to an attempt to substantiate his understanding of basic human relations. Nisbet also significantly viewed contemporary America as departing rapidly and perhaps irreversibly from what he considered to be a good society. This concern pervades his studies of social theory; and it is possible to interpret his emphasis on the “conservative” origins of sociology and his attack on leveling public administration from the 1950s onward as related reference points. Against the social disintegration and social engineering that he already criticizes in his early work The Quest for Community, Nisbet (1990) poses his vision of personal authority and communal hierarchy. This vision is present in Nisbet’s writings, from his early studies of French counterrevolutionary thinkers through his final assaults on America in the present age.

Among well-known sociologists, Robert Nisbet was almost unique in considering himself a 'conservative.' He defined this orientation not in terms of conventional American partisan affiliation but as a sociological and anthropological perspective. Nisbet viewed human relations as requiring organic relations, which he assumed to be hierarchical and communally determined. Such relations seemed to Nisbet, natural and even beneficial; and his lifelong interest in nineteenth-century social theory and his efforts to locate organicist positions among social thinkers of the left, especially Emile Durkheim, can be attributed to an attempt to substantiate his understanding of basic human relations. Nisbet also significantly viewed contemporary America as departing rapidly and perhaps irreversibly from what he considered to be a good society. This concern pervades his studies of social theory; and it is possible to interpret his emphasis on the 'conservative' origins of sociology and his attack on leveling public administration from the 1950s onward as related reference points. Against the social disintegration and social engineering he already criticizes in his early work The Quest for Community, Nisbet poses his vision of personal authority and communal hierarchy. This vision is present in Nisbet's writings, from his early studies of French counterrevolutionary thinkers through his final assaults on America in the present age.

There are two main reasons for pairing these posthumously published essays of Paul Piccone (1940–2004) with those of Panajotis Kondylis (1943–1998). One, both of these authors, who died in the last few years, were my friends, whose lives moved along much the same general trajectory as my own. None of us could be described as an academic luminary; although neither Paul, who mentored later successful professors, nor Panajotis, who called himself a “Privatgelehrter,” periodically associated with Heidelberg and the University of Athens, had as close an association as I've had with a long-term academic post. These brilliant social thinkers spent…

Recent studies of the career diplomat and distinguished historian George F. Kennan, and particularly a little noted intellectual biography by Lee Congdon, reveal a side of this figure that has often been neglected. Despite his reputation as a critic of the Cold War, Kennan was in fact a strong anti-Communist and profoundly conservative thinker. His conventional defenders have stressed his displeasure with vocal anti-Communism in order to create an image of him that is consistent with their left-of-center politics. This has come at the expense of playing down unfashionable opinions that Kennan expressed on a wide range of issues. Many of his opinions, which he viewed as eminently “realistic,” would have been unacceptable to his mainstream admirers even fifty years ago, were it not for his stands on the Cold War and for certain isolated statements drawn from his post-World War Two speeches mentioning racial inequality and industrial waste. What is now being published on Kennan’s life, however, provides a more balanced picture. Congdon and John Lukacs have both offered this necessary corrective to earlier views about their subject in recent biographical studies. These and other commentators are now highlighting the anti-modernist perspective from which he viewed and criticized the twentieth century.

A conservative or realist approach has little appeal in the present debate over American foreign policy. In the twentieth century, according to George F. Kennan, the United States succumbed to “the evils of utopian enthusiasms.” In recent years, this worldview has been associated most closely with the neoconservatives, but even the Clinton administration leaned in the same direction. Crusading moralism has been the recurrent theme of America's self-image as a global power. Whether or not neoconservatives and liberals today are really dedicated to the same democratic political culture as the one that Wilson idealized, a recognizable Wilsonian manner of conceptualizing international relations has come to dominate American politics, reflected in a shared rejection of any foreign policy that is not based on the temporal salvation of humanity. Yet many Wilsonians seem unable to imagine that one can be “moral” without trying to make everyone resemble one's self.

The role of Christian Democratic parties after World War II in helping to build stable parliamentary regimes in Western Europe deserves attention simply for their ability to survive. Such parties took root in Catholic countries and electorates and incorporated electoral organizations from the early twentieth century. After the war, Christian Democrats provided an alternative to the large Communist parties that were particularly strong in France and Italy. They also represented a link to the European past that was not implicated in the crimes of the Nazi era. Germany's Christian Democracy has proven the most successful of its kind. It moved beyond its original Catholic base to include a significant Protestant minority. And it has survived amidst the social and cultural changes and charges of corruption that have reduced their counterparts elsewhere to a secondary parliamentary force.