SOURCE: “Robert Nisbet: Resisting Leviathan,” in Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era, University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, pp. 177-205.

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 acknowledged conservatism's debt to British statesman Edmund Burke. Indeed quotations from the great conservative appeared throughout Nisbet's text. But Nisbet did more than pay homage to Burke. He paused to consider Burke's era and the special conditions of Western Europe in his day. He made this observation:

In addition...