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Rejecting the Lockean individualism that he sees running throughout American life, he worries that Americans think of themselves mostly as free individuals, and thus they ignore their full human nature as 'parents, children, friends, citizens, or creatures' (p. xi). Beyond Lockean constitutionalism, American culture should be governed by a rich understanding of human nature rooted in common-sense natural law, religious faith, and existential anxiety.

There are 3 widely-held theories of conservatism: (1) the aristocratic theory defines conservatism as the ideology of the European aristocracy in the 18th & 19th cent's. (2) The autonomous theory defines conservatism in terms of certain general values (such as order & balance) of universal applicability. (3) The situational theory defines it as the ideological response of the defenders of any existing soc order against any fundamental challenge to that order. The appearances of conservative thought in history & the inherent nature of that thought both suggest that the situational definition is the most accurate & the most useful one. Only this definition accounts for the absence of a substantive ideal in conservatism & the absence of a conservative intellectual tradition. Accepting this definition, conservatism has no place in America today in the struggles of one soc group against another, but it does have a relevant role in the defense of American liberal society as a whole against the challenge of the USSR & communism. Consequently, the liberals are the true conservatives in America today. AA-IPSA.