Preface<br >Some years ago， I published a collection of essays under the title American<br >Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century. (I entitled the trade book<br >edition Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?) The study was one part of the<br >extensive American Heritage Series put out by Bobbs-Merrill under the<br >general editorship of Professors Leonard Levy and Alfred Young.<br > Almost two decades have gone by since the book s appearance， and<br >few would deny that during that time much has happened that explicates<br >conservative thought. No one would deny that political action of historic<br >consequence has issued from such thought. It did not surprise me when，<br >a year ago， I was asked by Harper & Row to bring out a new edition of<br >the book.<br > To do this competently， I needed the help of a scholar in whom I had<br >confidence， who had spent time during recent years studying the relevant<br >literature. I was lucky to have discovered Charles Kesler while he was still<br >in high school as something of a prodigy. He graduated magna cum laude<br >from Harvard in 1978 and got his Ph.D. there in political science in 1985，<br >having written a dissertation on Cicero and the Natural Law. He agreed<br >to collaborate with me.<br > To my surprise， what grew out of a fresh scholarly investigation was<br >a book substantially new. Only 30 percent of the essays published in the<br >1970 volume survive. It isn t that the discarded material is less interesting<br >now than then. But perspectives change， new authors write， and old<br >authors whose work was neglected sometimes reappear with fresh rele-<br >vance. And， of course， there is the problem of space. It became necessary，<br >at the end， for us to discard eight essays we had intended to include.<br > Along the way， I suggested that Kesler take primary responsibility for<br >the volume， given his more recent experience with the material. We<br >agreed that the book should retain much of the introductory material I<br >provided in the original volume， including， material I wrote to introduce<br >the discrete sections. (They remain substar~lly the same: The Quest for<br >a Tradition; the Status of Freedom; the Cr~ique of Rationalism; Political<br >Economy and the Welfare State; Contemporary Challenges and the So-<br ><br >