About the author
Israeli-American political theorist and Bible scholar (b. 1964), chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation and a principal organizer of the 'National Conservatism' conferences. Through The Virtue of Nationalism and Conservatism: A Rediscovery, Hazony became a leading intellectual of the nationalist and post-liberal right in the United States and Europe.
Synopsis
Hazony distinguishes an empiricist, tradition-based 'Anglo-American conservatism' (Fortescue, Selden, Burke) from Enlightenment liberalism's universal reason and individual rights, arguing the latter corrodes the nation, religion, family, and the bonds that actually sustain free societies. He calls for a restoration of conservative nationalism, public religion, and inherited institutions, and offers a personal account of conservative life and child-rearing.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workHazony argues that authentic conservatism rests not on universal reason and individual rights but on the concrete loyalties of nation, religion, tradition, and family — the inherited bonds that liberalism, he contends, dissolves.
By severing conservatism from Enlightenment liberalism and grounding it in nation, religion, and tradition, Hazony gives the contemporary 'national conservative' movement its fullest theoretical statement — and reopens an old argument about whether conservatism and liberalism are allies or rivals.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with the classical-liberal and libertarian conservatives Hazony argues against (Hayek, the fusionists) who prize individual liberty and markets, and with liberals who warn that his nationalism and religious traditionalism threaten pluralism and minority rights.
Reading note
Read it as the manifesto of national conservatism, alongside Hazony's The Virtue of Nationalism and Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed, and against the classical-liberal conservatives it rejects.
Best paired with
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France; Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed.