"Hart has a vision of a benign, aristocratic conservatism, but America was never a plausible candidate for this ideal. The truth is that, whatever feats of intellectual prestidigitation conservative thinkers like Kirk may have performed, they bore little relation to the realities of a country with a booming free-market economy. Conservatives have never been able to reconcile their worship of the almighty free market with its attendant social upheaval. They want unfettered free enterprise, but not all the freedoms that free enterprise brings, such as pornography and other vices. Hart may not be a severe moralist, but he does deplore vulgar taste in the arts, which is another inevitable byproduct of a capitalist economy."
In Washington Monthly, Jacob Heilbrunn reviews Jeffrey Hart's The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times.
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