Library of the Conservative Movement
We have a number of memorials to the Civil Rights Movement, but where is the library or memorial to the Conservative Movement?
Most of us are still alive who came to maturity during the first days of a political movement begun by Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (1953), fortnightly issues of Nation Review (1955) and F. Clifton White’s “Draft Goldwater” committee (1961).
The “movement” was in full force when Ronald Reagan made his first campaign for the GOP presidential nomination (1968). Between 1953 and 1980, three decades that were the heydey of the Conservative Movement, there was no Internet, no Web browsers, Twitter, Instagram nor Reddit. Consequently we amassed correspondence with one another, our teachers, and leaders of “the Movement.” I have file cabinets stuffed with correspondence with Bill Buckley, Russell Kirk, Gerhart Niemeyer, Stephen Tonsor, Vic Milione, and dozens more.
A library or archive for those documents and testimonials should be created lest the history of our struggle against the Progressives, Internationalists and socialists who are destroying our country be lost.
