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According to George Nash in The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America no genuinely articulate conservative intellectual presence existed in the United States in 1945. He notes the influential and seminal works of F. A. Hayek, Richard Weaver and Peter Viereck writing in the late 1940s. Russell Kirk's The Conser vative Mind appeared in 1953, the same year that Francis Graham Wilson (19011976) published The Case for Conservatism based on a series of lectures he gave at the University of Washington. Whereas the names of Russell Kirk and Clinton Rossiter are well known to many, Wilson remains a forgotten figure, remembered mainly by his former students and readers of Modern Age. Clearly, Wilson played an important role in the revival of American conservatism during the post World War II era.
As a small circle of conservative scholars published books and articles, founded a learned journal for academic publications, and launched a very successful journal of public opinion, the post-war revival of conservatism gained momentum. Sparked by the publication of Eric Voegelin's The New Science of Politics, and Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History, the number of academic conservatives increased. Interestingly, Wilson, publishing his first article on conservatism in 1941, had described himself as a conservative prior to these events. Here, we shall revisit the role that Wilson played during the earliest days of the contemporary American conservative movement. Although Wilson wrote a very large number of academic articles during his long and successful career, I shall focus on Wilson's discussion of conservatism in three of his books and in his first published article on this subject.
Wilson received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Texas in 1923, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1928. He published his first work on public opinion in the American Political Science Review in 1933. He wrote on many subjects, but had a life-long interest in Roman Catholicism, conservatism, public opinion and Spanish political philosophy. Wilson resided in Spain for several years, and spoke and wrote in Spanish. He taught political philosophy at the University of Illinois for many years and served as departmental chairman. Wilson was a distinguished scholar, an active member of professional associations, and an influential teacher. A product of Southwestern culture, he...