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Robert Nisbet: Conservative Sociologist by Gary North

"Conservative sociologist" is as close to an oxymoron as you can get in academia, comparable to "civil government."

There have been four prominent post-1950 conservative American sociologists with books to their credit, as far as I can figure out: Nisbet, Ernest van den Haag, Peter Berger, and Will Herberg. The original conservative sociologist was anything but prominent: Albert Hobbs. He wrote The Vision and the Constant Star, The Claims of Sociology, Social Problems and Scientism, and Man Is Moral Choice. I mention him because almost no one remembers him today. He wrote mainly in the 1950's. His name is not found even in monographs on the history of American conservatism. He was laboring unappreciated in the vineyard years before the others appeared.

There was one other possible candidate back in 1959: Stanford University's Richard LaPierre. He wrote a book that had some influence in the conservative movement, The Freudian Ethic: An Analysis of the Subversion of American Character, which in 1959 was about the only book critical of Freud that the typical conservative, or even the untypical Russell Kirk, had ever heard of. What his politics were, I have no idea.

That the South was the first section of the United States to sense an enemy in fascism was indicated not only by polls of opinions, but also by its ardor in preparing for the fight. On the surface it is an anomaly of the first order that this most conservative of sections should have discerned a foe in the regimes gathering strength in Europe, for in open debate the South would have been hard put to it to distinguish between some of the slogans of the New Order and the tenets of its own faith, sealed with Confederate blood and affirmed in many a post-bellum oration. That the Southern whites considered themselves Herrenvolk in relation to the Negro is one of the obvious features of the sociological landscape, and belief in the influence of blood and soil is powerful with them, as with any agrarian people. The glorification of the martial spirit, the distrust of urban liberalism, the hatred of money economy are pages that might be found in the book of any unreconstructed Southerner. The restoration of medieval concepts in Europe might almost have seemed the Confederate's dream or reversing history and regaining the way of life which he lost in 1865. Why then the deep, instinctive hostility of the SOuth to Hitler and his allies?

Calvinism and Politics by Abraham Kuyper

MY THIRD LECTURE leaves the sanctuary of religion and enters upon the domain of the State–the first transition from the sacred circle to the secular field of human life. Only now therefore we proceed, summarily and in principle, to combat the unhistorical suggestion that Calvinism represents an exclusively ecclesiastical and dogmatic movement.

Creating Equal? It's Just Not Possible by Ryan Setliff

I simply don't believe that anybody is equal period. There is no divine "Thou shall be equal" command, despite how innate and sacrosanct such a postulate is to modern man's egalitarian intuition. Mel Bradford avows:

Let us have no foolishness indeed. Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end in itself — Equality, with the capital “E” — is the antonym of every legitimate conservative principle. Contrary to most Liberals, new and old, it is nothing less than sophistry to distinguish between equality of opportunity (equal starts in the “race of life”) and equality of condition (equal results). For only those who are equal can take equal advantage of a given circumstance. And there is no man equal to any other, except perhaps in the special, and politically untranslatable, understanding of the Deity. Not intellectually or physically or economically or even morally. Not equal! Such is, of course, the genuinely self-evident proposition. Its truth finds a verification in our bones and is demonstrated in the unselfconscious acts of our everyday lives: vital proof, regardless of our private political persuasion. Incidental equality, engendered by the pursuit of our other objectives, is, to be sure, another matter. Inside the general history of the West (and especially within the American experience) it can be credited with a number of healthy consequences: strength in the bonds of community, assent to the authority of honorable regimes, faith in the justice of the gods.

Contrary to the egalitarian fantasies of liberals, it is the height of folly to even bother distinguishing between equality of opportunity and equality of condition. There are no equal starts in the race of life nor are there equal results. Besides, “only those who are equal can take equal advantage of a given circumstance,” surmises Mel Bradford. No two men — not even twin brothers — are equal whether it be an equality of intellectual faculties, physical prowess, or economic status.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises, Thursday, June 8, 1978

I am sincerely happy to be here with you on this occasion and to become personally acquainted with this old and most prestigious University. My congratulations and very best wishes to all of today's graduates.