Groundbreaker …

… Opening of the American Mind - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

And that seemed to be that until the spring of 1953, when there appeared a revelatory book of intellectual history by an unknown assistant professor at, of all places, Michigan State. The book was “The Conservative Mind,” the author was Russell Kirk, and political thought in modern America was never the same. Liberals no doubt snickered when they received copies of the book—thinking, “what a perfect oxymoron!”—but they stopped laughing when they began reading about a rich and varied conservatism that had existed in America since the founding of the Republic and that reached back into the tested traditions of British political thought