Crisis on the Right

Jonathan Rauch reviews two new anthologies of writings on conservatism:

Before there was a Heritage Foundation or a Federalist Society, or a Cato or Claremont or Discovery or Hudson or Manhattan Institute, there was the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Founded in 1953 to seed a new conservative generation, this pioneer of what would become a sprawling conservative counterestablishment boasted as its first president a young man named William F. Buckley Jr., who would go on to bigger things. As conservatism rose first to prominence and then to power, and as the conservative counterestablishment became an establishment in its own right, I.S.I. plugged along, mostly in the background. Today, as conservatism staggers through its worst crisis in a
generation (or two), I.S.I. is still there — now asking what went wrong...

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