SOURCE: “Robert Nisbet's America,” in Commentary, Vol. 86, No. 2, August, 1988, pp. 55-59.

In the following essay, Eberstadt considers Nisbet's increasing alarm at the increase of centralized political power in the United States and its effects on primary social institutions.

When a conservative thinker of Robert Nisbet's stature surveys the American scene only to find “a deeply flawed giant; not yet moribund but ill-gaited, shambling, and spastic of limb, often aberrant of mind,” his claims to our attention are several. As a preeminent scholar, sociologist, and historian of ideas, Nisbet has been a mainstay of American intellectual life for decades. From his authoritative works on sociology to his landmark volume of 1980, The History of the Idea of Progress, to his masterfully playful Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (1983), he has continually enriched his chosen disciplines. Yet Nisbet's importance does not rest only on his scholarly accomplishments, varied and distinguished though they are...