Most Americas seem to agree that our country is facing a kind of political and ideological realignment. This state of affairs has conservatives and progressives looking to the future, but also to the past—to the thinkers and activists both left and right who shaped their respective traditions. An important question to ask is whether we can, or should, resurrect the ideas of the past and apply them today? But then, we should also ask whether we can learn from the mistakes and the faults of past thinkers too.

Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center, asks these questions about a major conservative thinker under whom he studied as a graduate student in history at the University of Michigan: the intellectual historian Stephen Tonsor. Even in the 80s, Tonsor seemed out of place as a conservative intellectual in a mostly liberal public university. But he found community among conservative thinkers of the day: William F Buckley and Russel Kirk, for instance. Gleaves explores Tonsor’s effect on American conservatism from the 60s to the 80s; he also discusses the many differences between the form of conservatism that Tonsor embraced, and the sorts of conservatism that are prominent today.

This interview was recorded on October 25, 2016.