Defining Key Tenets of Postwar Conservatism (1963)

We did this and received an interesting spectrum of replies. We asked, what are the major contributions of present-day conservatives to the nation? This is Frank Meyer, on the board of National Review Magazine, an author of Indefensive Freedom. He is considered a right-wing ideological conservative. Frank Meyer: Conservatism in control of the policies of this country will contribute two things and things of the utmost and decisive importance. First, it will end the policies that liberalism of both parties has enforced upon us of appeasement and appeasement, retreat, and retreat before the forces of world conquering or rather of communism, which wishes to dominate the world. Second, conservatism will, though it may take time after 30 years of a growth of a bureaucratic parasitic government, reverse the trend away from the Constitution, limit the interference of government and the affairs of the citizens, cut the government back to size, base it upon what it should be doing, the defense of the country, the preservation of order, the administration

of justice, and get it out of the concerns of private individuals and associations of private individuals. Alan Weston: We asked the same question of Senator John Tower, Republican of Texas, who was considered a right-wing practical conservative. Senator John Tower: I think the major contribution that we can make is in opposing the programs that are presented to us by those who would establish an absolute or a welfare state by trying to arrest the current trend toward what we might call a socialistic state, even though some of the programs being proposed may not be actually socialistic, they trend us in that direction. I think that the major contribution that conservatives can make right now is to hold the fort until such time as we have a conservative majority in the Congress or a conservative president and can begin to create or re-create, I should say, a climate of freedom in the United States.

Alan Weston: Senator Leverett Saltonstall, Republican of Massachusetts, is a petretian conservative of the center, Northern style. Senator Leverett Saltonstall: It's a present-day conservative is a realism that our government cannot continue building up new programs, expanding old programs without some realization that these programs are costing them money, and that if their federal government is to be able to reduce their taxes so that they can have more money to spend in their businesses, to build up their businesses, get more production in the United States, they've got to see to it, that they don't ask too much of their government too quickly.