In the next century, because of both need and opportunity, American conservative scholars and intellectuals must work to develop the coherence of conservative moral and political thought. Indeed, a generation of mid-career scholars is ready to accept this challenge.¹But before such an opportunity can be fully realized, conservative scholars must be prepared to answer three vexing challenges.

First, they must be able to respond to the charge that America, with its revolution­ary background and liberal political institutions and norms, is singularly ill-suited to embrace ideas associated with a supposedly alien political doctrine like conserva­tism. Remarkably, such a charge is leveled against conservatives not only by self-described liberals, but also by intellectual allies who themselves are taken to be conservative by the liberal intelligentsia.²In their defense of a conservative American past, conservative scholars must be prepared to confront liberal and neoconservative detractors who question their very legitimacy as Americans.

This difficulty draws attention to a second issue that conservative scholars must confront if, in the next century, they are to move conservative political and moral thought to a new level of coherence. That is, without becoming unduly sectarian, conservatives must identify a core set of principles as constituting the essential ground of American conservative moral and political thought. After much debate and careful scrutiny, those whose commitments place them outside the borders of this consensus—for example, thinkers who effectively are disgruntled liberals who seek to shore up liberalism’s tottering foundations or misguided public policies—must not be permitted to take an active role in shaping an American conservative political vision.

The world of politics is, however, another matter and there a more relaxed standard of inclusion must be expected. But still, conservative scholars need to describe more fully how and where the world of conservative ideas and that of political action are to intersect. Conflicts are surely unavoidable; they must be better anticipated. This issue area forms the third set of concerns which conservative scholars must negotiate if they are to meet the opportunity that awaits them in the century ahead.

Let us acknowledge that American conservative scholars must confront a past that is replete with events that seem at first glance anything but conservative. For example, wasn’t our nation’s birth a moment of revolutionary rupture founded on claims of abstract natural rights, and doesn’t this inform the most authentic of American moral and political traditions? And weren’t America’s “Founding Fathers” committed liberals who set in place liberal political institutions and constitutional principles which have uniformly guided America’s political practices, including those observed today? Finally, aren’t our most authoritative political documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, consistently liberal in their defense of natural rights?

Of course, each of these claims has some merit, but the truth of each is only partial. A conservative scholar must therefore highlight the conservative elements in our past rather than the more liberal ones. History doesn’t provide monolithic answers, nor does it speak in a single voice.³And for each of the above claims of liberal hegemony, a more conservative and often more authentic set of historical precedents is available with which to defend a conservative rather than a liberal history of the founding of America. M.E. Bradford, Willmoore Kendall, George Carey, and Russell Kirk proved to us that doing so was important and that it could be done well.

Conservative scholars can and should contest each of the above claims which putatively demonstrate the liberal nature of the American founding on at least three grounds. First, we must do a better job of exploring the language and concepts embedded in founding documents and events, and avoid permitting anachronistic readings to shape our understanding. Too often the meanings of key concepts are translated in liberal ways that ignore historical context and what words meant when written. Thus, in the instance of the Declaration, by exploring numerous other documents promulgated by the Continental Congress, its secret correspondence with European states, and the instructions of the various “state” delegations, we will come to understand it as a wartime document with limited ends. Accordingly, its central import will once again be seen as making possible necessary diplomatic and financial relationships with various European powers, and much of its language, which we today find so striking, will be recognized as natural law boiler plate common to documents in international law. But this is not the place to make such a case. Instead, I would ask only that the reader consider that such a history makes good sense and provides a more conservative understanding of this document.