Robert Nisbet: Resisting Leviathan

Hoeveler, J. David, Jr. “Robert Nisbet: Resisting Leviathan.” Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era, University of Wisconsin Press, (1991): 177-205.

Abstract:

[In the following excerpt, Hoeveler argues that Nisbet combined belief in the power of social science with an attachment to traditional social institutions, which allowed him to formulate a powerful critique of centralized political and economic power.]

In 1986 Robert Nisbet published a book with the title Conservatism: Dream and Reality. It was a short work that attempted to trace conservative thought from its origins in the late eighteenth century, and like other works of similar subject it…

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