Tonsor: Introduction: Second Call -- The Tragedy of Lord Acton

In late July, shortly before loading a 20-foot U-Haul and moving to Ann Arbor, I phoned Tonsor again, seeking his advice about which professors to look up once I was at Michigan. Then I broached a topic from our first conversation that I hoped to resume: Lord Acton as a giant of modern intellectual history and cultural criticism.

“Professor Tonsor, our last conversation sparked me to read an essay in which Acton said that liberty is more about morals than about politics and --"

Tonsor jumped right in: “Acton said that liberty is so holy a thing that God Himself was forced to permit evil that liberty might exist.[1] Think of it this way, Mr. Whitney. Animals live in the realm of necessity. Human beings also live in the realm of necessity – we have to bend to gravity and answer the need for food and water – but we live in the realm of freedom, too. A person’s dignity, a person’s nobility, resides in his using freedom to act morally. A person can only act morally if he is taught the difference between right and wrong and is free to choose between good and evil.”

Lord Acton (1834-1902)

Tonsor paused. I could hear him breathing now. “It follows that a primary aim of education is to learn how to exercise liberty within the bounds of the moral life.[2] A primary aim of politics is to preserve liberty as the organizing principle around which the other values in society must be ordered.[3] And a primary aim of historical research is to chart man's enduring efforts to decrease the realm of necessity and increase the realm of liberty. In Acton's mind it all coheres.”

That précis, I thought, was brilliant. The man speaks in perfectly formed paragraphs.

“Acton thought the historian should be a hanging judge?" I ventured.

“The most severe hanging judge,” said Tonsor, punching the word severe. “He was fond of saying that a man’s life must be measured against its low-water mark, the one act of evil that outweighs all good.[4] Let a man criminate himself. History is better written from private letters than from public chronicles.[5]

“Acton’s reputation as a hanging judge was undoubtedly helped by the fact that he had a better nose for gossip than almost any other Victorian.[6] Gossip was the oxygen the Victorian Age inhaled. It should be said that historians in every age have inclined their ear to gossip. Take Suetonius, Procopius, or Boccaccio. People read such authors to be titillated by Eros and to satisfy their curiosity about the mechanics of sex.”

It was reassuring for me to hear references to authors with whom I was familiar (but it surprised me to hear him speak of the mechanics of sex). As an undergraduate back in Colorado, I had read Suetonius, the Roman author of Lives of the Caesars, a masterpiece of gossip parading as history, a smutty collection of the scandals surrounding the first eleven Roman emperors. Likewise I was familiar with Procopius, the Byzantine historian who wrote not just official chronicles of the Emperor Justinian but also the sordid Secret History, which is full of invective against the members of the royal family. No one knows how true these accounts are, but they are good reads to slip into a stack of monographs – like the mayonnaise between slices of dry bread.

Tonsor continued: “The people who are drawn to the salacious details in Suetonius and Procopius are the same people who read TV Guide. You will not find them grappling with Acton. Yet he is the model of rectitude when it comes to historical research and writing."

Cambridge University Library

TV Guide? I smiled at Tonsor's sarcasm -- he brandished his weapon of choice skillfully.

“During Acton’s lifetime," he continued, "the discipline of history was flowering because of the archives that were opening up all over Europe. Acton himself took part in this flourishing. He donated a thousand boxes of his own notes and research to the Cambridge library. I’ve gone through a good many of the documents to examine everything from his morals to his methods.[7] It’s staggering to trace all the directions his mind went. When it came to advising historians attempting to write history, Acton's advice was, Don’t! Instead visit Purgatory![8] It was his way of getting scholars to understand the arduous journey they were about to embark upon. I hope, Mr. Whitney, that you have also prepared for the journey."

I had, but did not feel like saying so since Tonsor had served on the committee that admitted me. Perhaps in the pause Tonsor sensed I was at a bit of a loss, so he continued to dilate on Acton's advice: “History done well requires almost superhuman talent and effort. In the first place, Acton charged researchers to be open to evidence that does not fit the thesis; to turn over every last stone and get multiple perspectives if they want to know what really happened in the past. In so many words he cautioned against what the social scientists call ‘confirmation bias’; his notes recall a scene in Dante’s Paradise, in which St. Thomas Aquinas warns the Pilgrim that 'opinion -- hasty -- often can incline to the wrong side, and then affection for one's own opinion binds, confines the mind.'[9]

One of Gustave Doré's exquisite prints made for Dante's Divine Comedy

            “In the second place," Tonsor continued, keeping my mind on the stretch, "Acton charged historians to make out a better case for the other side than they are able to make out for themselves.[10] Cultivate the ability to drive the prosecutor’s case into a corner, and with equal skill to drive the defense’s case into a corner. Transpose the nominative and accusative and see how things look then![11]

“Acton did not suppose that the strenuous effort to understand both sides would lead to the exoneration of murder, injustice, and deceit. Not at all. Out of his elementary sense of decency and justice, he demanded that the historian administer a fair trial. But a trial there must be.[12]

“So,” I asked, “how did Acton square the scientific view of history then emerging with his insistence on moral judgment in historical writing?” I was not idly asking the question to linger on the phone. As an apprentice historian, I really needed to understand.

“You mean the old fact-value debate,” said Tonsor firmly, “the modern divide between objective facts that can be universally verified and subjective values that vary from person to person and from culture to culture. For Acton, the distinction was not so cut and dried. When it came to historical narrative, it was not ‘either-or’ but ‘both-and.’ Both the facts uncovered in the archives, and the moral assessment of human behavior. They were both the stuff of history, properly understood. Acton approached history this way because, like most Victorians, he believed in a universal natural law that could be apprehended by reason and enforced by conscience. This belief enabled him to sidestep differences in doctrine presented by the Axial Age religions. The main thing was to understand the ethical commands common to them all. The prohibition against murdering the innocent, the obligation to follow one’s informed conscience, the Golden and Silver rules – these universal commands to man’s conscience formed the basis of his moral judgments. It is probably accurate to infer that Acton’s moral reasoning was more informed by Kant than by Jesus.”[13]

Karl Jaspers's term, "Axial Age," describes the brilliant spiritual leap
humankind took around the world some 2,000-2,500 years ago.

“So," I pressed, "Acton would regard the universal commands of conscience sort of like ‘value facts’? In other words, because the Golden Rule is universal among the world’s major religions, it is tantamount to a fact? By extension, if I am pulling all of this together, it means that the most basic requirement of freedom is the right to obey the commands of conscience, to do what one ought. Or, as John Adams said, liberty is a power to do as we would be done by.”[14]

“Yes,” Tonsor said with emphasis. “To do as we would be done by.”

“Now,” Tonsor continued, “nobody ever accused Acton of being a saint in his personal life. Goodness is as far from sanctity as cleverness is from genius. Acton was personally cloaked and choked by the moral law as one might be squeezed into a suit of armor two sizes too small.”[15]

I did not know exactly how to understand the analogy, but I went on to ask whether Acton struggled with the Church.

Pio Nono (Pope Pius IX): no fan of Acton's

“Indeed! And the Church with Acton! In Acton the hierarchy confronted a petulant son, especially when it came to the doctrine of papal infallibility. Acton had a mischievous side -- he enjoyed tweaking the lion in his den, so Pio Nono was no fan of his. Acton was especially disliked by Ultramontanist toadies who prostrated themselves before the pope and scurried at his every twitch. Acton was a devout Catholic, to be sure. But he was not passionately Catholic. I’ll take the thought a step farther. The absence of religious enthusiasm may have been what made Acton tolerable to be around. He was the one you wanted to sit next to at dinner parties.

“And yet, despite his cosmopolitan ease in conversation, despite his wit at soirees, Acton was probably a very lonely man. He didn’t suffer fools. And his absolute moral stances, his implacable judgments, invariably separated him from other men. A liberal Catholic, he was too liberal for the Catholics and too Catholic for the liberals. He criticized his mentors. He broke off friendships. He quarreled bitterly with the Church hierarchy. Technically and morally, he was probably right in most of his quarrels. But whatever satisfaction he derived from being right must have been offset by the isolation he inflicted on himself from being self-righteous.[16]  

“Acton is the prophet who foresaw our times. He anticipated the dangers of statism. But ironically he is now a setting star – passé and remote. This, it must be said, is a tragedy of his own making. It’s a mystery why he never wrote his planned magnum opus, The History of Liberty – the book he was meant to write. Everyone around him waited years for the work to appear, but it never did and posterity is the worse for it. The History of Liberty has been called ‘the greatest book never written.’[17]

"The greatest book never written"

“The irony is that Acton had already written it in his head. He had penned thousands of pages of notes brimming with material for the book. I’ve seen the material myself.[18] But, reaching the end of his life, he realized he would not compose the work and donated all his research to Cambridge, all his notes that fill literally a thousand boxes. He had to settle on the hope that some enterprising scholar would eventually come along after his death and compose the history of liberty he failed to write. Those boxes are a feeble commemoration of a brilliant mind, a sad testimonial to the tragedy of wasted labor.[19] Socrates, Jesus, Mohammad, Charlemagne – they could pull off going unpublished; Acton could not.”

I listened in silence to this remarkable lesson on Lord Acton and tried to be comfortable with the pause that ensued. But my mind would not be still. What with his dizzying erudition, Tonsor had given me much to ponder. I had never heard a teacher speak in this manner before.

---

Notes

[1] Stephen J. Tonsor, “The Conservative Search for Identity,” in Equality, Decadence, and Modernity, ed. Gregory L. Schneider (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005), pp. 255-56; Acton's view is line with that of Edmund Burke, who said as much when he wrote, in 1790, “It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.” Thanks to Professor Bradley Birzer for reminding me of Burke's quotation.

[2] Stephen J. Tonsor, Introduction, The Legacy of an Education, by James C. Holland (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Occasional Paper no. 11, 1997); Kindle edition, loc. 11.

[3] Tonsor, “The Conservative Search for Identity,” in Equality, Decadence, and Modernity, pp. 255-56.

[4] Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, 2015), Kindle edition, Ch. 8, loc. 4138. Himmelfarb's book was particularly helpful in reconstructing Tonsor's and my first conversations on Lord Acton.

[5] Lord Acton, letter to Mandell Creighton, at URL http://oll.libertyfund.org/search/title/2254?q=criminate, accessed August 26, 2016.

[6] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 104.

[7] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 125.

[8] Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg (Lord), “Advice to Persons about the Write History,” at The Imaginative Conservative, at URL http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/06/advice-to-persons-about-to-write-history.html, accessed August 26, 2016.

[9] Paradiso, Canto 13: 118-20, trans. Allen Mandelbaum.

[10] Acton quoted by Stephen J. Tonsor, “Faculty Diversity and University Survival,” in Tradition and Reform in Education (La Salle: Open Court, 1974), p. 155.

[11] Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg (Lord), “Advice to Persons about the Write History,” at The Imaginative Conservative, at URL http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/06/advice-to-persons-about-to-write-history.html, accessed August 26, 2016.

[12] Tonsor, “Faculty Diversity and University Survival,” in Tradition and Reform in Education, p. 155.

[13] Tonsor, Introduction, Legacy by Holland, loc. 23.

[14] John Adams, Works, vol. 10; quoted in Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7^th ed. (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway Edition, 1985), p. 100.

[15] Tonsor, Introduction, Legacy by Holland, loc. 23.

[16] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 125-148.

[17] L. M. Phillipps, Europe Unbound (London, 1916), p. 147n.; quoted by Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 114.

[18] Caroline Tonsor interview with GW, Chelsea, MI, March 15, 2017. Ms. Tonsor spoke of a different era when it came to research. She said that the "Xeroxed documents" from the Cambridge University library arrived in Ann Arbor on a continuous roll that she had to divide up with scissors. See the resulting monograph and detailed references in Stephen J. Tonsor, “Lord Acton on Döllinger’s Historical Theology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 20, no. 3 (June-September 1959), pp. 329-52.

[19] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 114.

Tonsor: Introduction: First Call -- To hone one mind against the gritty stone of another

This book by George Nash is the history
of the movement in which
Stephen J. Tonsor played a central role.
On the dust jacket of the first edition (1976),
Tonsor's photograph is in the lower left corner.  

My first conversation with Stephen Tonsor occurred on a mid-April morning in 1987. I was living in Fort Collins, Colorado, and had recently received the acceptance letter to study history at the University of Michigan. So I was eager to introduce myself to the man who was to be my graduate advisor for the next five years plus. With some nervousness I placed a long-distance call to his home from my crowded kitchen table: nervous not just because of the anxiety produced by a major life transition, but also because of what my colleague Gregory Wolfe said about the Michigan professor. “Tonsor,” he warned, “is old-school German. He can be a mite prickly and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Remind me to tell you what he said at the Philadelphia Society last year.”

Although I had braced myself for possible unpleasantness during this initial phone call, the conversation with Tonsor went well. The handshaking over the phone soon done with, I told Tonsor that I had received a Weaver Fellowship and was honored to be in a position to study under his direction. I'd be moving to Ann Arbor in the late summer. 

He had enthusiastic words for my future home. "I occasionally spend a few weeks away from home, and I must say that rediscovering Ann Arbor after a short stay elsewhere is always a very pleasant experience for me. It really is a marvelous and unique community. It is so manageable. I am able to walk nearly everywhere I wish to go. It is vibrant and filled with elegant shops and restaurants. Even the bookstores continue to proliferate. I have the feeling sometimes that Ann Arbor is like Athens must have been in the years between Aristotle and the closing of the pagan schools by Justinian. Great university towns always have a very special character."[1]

After this happy thought, I asked Tonsor who the most influential historian in his life was. His answer made me appreciate his way with words, his way of seeing things.

“To hone one mind against the gritty stone of another,” Tonsor observed, “is the surest path to intellectual excellence.[2] It’s against the gritty stone of Lord Acton, Tocqueville, Parkman, Burckhardt, and sometimes Dawson that I’ve learned the most.

Lord Acton: a giant in intellectual history

“It was in graduate school, under the wise direction of my dissertation advisor, that I discovered Lord Acton.[3] It may sound funny to put it this way, but I had an experience similar to that of Marx, who locked himself in a dank room and refused to come out until he had read everything Hegel had written. After three weeks he emerged into the light, rubbed his eyes, and proclaimed, ‘I am a Hegelian.’[4] More than a century later, I retrieved material from the Anderson Room at Cambridge, read Lord Acton for days on end, and emerged an apprentice of Acton’s thought. I liked the cut of his jib compared to that of most historians who are over-educated stamp collectors.”

Tonsor gave a deep-throated chuckle – it was the first time I heard him laugh. “You probably do not know this,” he said, “but Lord Acton’s family on his mother’s side claimed they were related to Jesus. Apparently there was a Semitic ancestor of the Dalbergs who became a Roman soldier and was stationed on the Rhine.[5] If you are going to fabricate a lineage, you might as well start with the Father Almighty. But tell me, Mr. Whitney, what have you read of Acton?”

Trying to ingratiate myself in this first conversation, I replied that I’d found it difficult to lay hands on Acton’s books. (That’s because he didn’t write books, but I didn’t know it yet.) I noted, nevertheless, that I had looked up one of Tonsor's articles about Acton in The Journal of the History of Ideas, and that it was at the top of my "to read" stack by my desk.

“That article is not very good,” Tonsor said. “But Acton, on the other hand, Acton I hope will soon be in your ‘re-read’ stack. Recur to his essays often and he will repay you generously. He is one of the most important Liberal historians and moralists you will encounter, indispensible today because he was the first great modern thinker to aim his firepower at statism. Acton’s resistance to Leviathan did not discriminate. He was opposed equally to authoritarian, socialist, and democratic regimes[6] – anywhere the state had become a ravenous, ungovernable beast. Nor was he a friend of nationalism which, in his day, was everywhere coopting the state and leading Europe down the road to ruin. The nation, said Acton, is responsible to Heaven itself for the evil acts of the state.”[7]

In these opening words on Acton, I was processing two things that didn’t square. First was Tonsor’s dismissal of his own early article. Was it false modesty or did he mean it? Second was a word that Tonsor used; it seemed incongruous for a conservative to lavish high praise on his “Liberal” idol. I asked for clarification.

Making a stand for the right to follow one's conscience.

“Acton,” said Tonsor, “was a Liberal in the most original and meaningful sense of the term: that of upholding the individual’s right to follow his conscience. A Liberal in Acton’s mold believes that the claims of conscience are superior to those of the state. This philosophical principle is derived from our Judeo-Christian heritage and it informs the Liberal’s politics. Political rights, he taught, proceed directly from religious duties, and these are the true basis of Liberalism.[8] Hardly a liberal today professes it anymore, at least not in the U.S. where all the liberals have become statists, but in Victorian England it was a commonplace, a Whig’s article of faith.

“In addition to his intellectual significance, Acton was one of the most fascinating human beings of the last century. As one of his biographers, Gertrude Himmelfarb observed, he was an anomaly in many worlds – a Catholic in poor standing with the hierarchy, a politician without portfolio, an historian who didn’t write books, and for most of his adult life a scholar without academic rank.”[9]

I took note that Tonsor used the old-fashioned “an historian.”

“Like every giant he aroused the envy of lesser men who were eager to pick the meat off his ribs. Nevertheless, he remains a colossus of intellectual history and cultural criticism. It’s been said of Acton that he knew everyone worth knowing and read everything worth reading.[10] Even those who suffered harsh treatment at his hands climbed atop his shoulders to declare his genius.”[11]

“Intellectual achievement and social skills,” I offered. “A rare combination in the academy.”

“Nothing illustrates your point better,” said Tonsor, “than his conversational style. At the dinner table Acton could speak with his children in English, with his wife in German, with his sister-in-law in French, and with his mother-in-law in Italian.[12] He was said to possess the most powerful memory of his generation. A friend reported that he could retain two octavos a day.”[13]

Two what? I asked myself. Since we weren’t speaking in person Tonsor couldn’t see me stretch the phone cord to the corner of the kitchen to grab my American Heritage dictionary and look up “octavo.” It means 16 pages. I had the feeling that urgent searches were going to be the new normal for the next few years at Michigan.

Eager to say something meaningful, I ventured that I wanted to find out what led up to Acton’s profound remark that “Power corrupts –”

            Before I could finish Tonsor interrupted. “Let’s get the quotation right, Mr. Whitney. What Acton said to Mandell Creighton was, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’[14] How right the pessimistic Acton was. Our weary old world has furnished innumerable examples of corruption, especially since Machiavelli released government from the restraint of law.[15]

Acton always looked for the cloven hoof.
            Pope Sylvester II and the Devil.

“Acton always looked for the cloven hoof. History, he said, is the disclosure of guilt and shame.[16] Because he had searched out the dark corners of man’s past, nothing surprised him. It was said that speaking with Acton was the nearest one could approach divine omniscience.”[17] Tonsor expressed mirth at this aperçu, and I heard him laugh in little gusts and voiceless puffs.

After a moment Tonsor interrupted the pause. “Small talk eludes me, Mr. Whitney. I loathe chitchat. What is more, too many academics drown their students in a deluge of verbiage and cant. But I hope you will come to visit regularly during office hours. As I said at the beginning of this phone call, conversation is one of the most important aspects of education. To hone one mind against the gritty stone of another is the surest path to intellectual excellence.”[18]

Thus the phone call ended and the teaching began. I found this unusual first conversation with my “prickly” advisor gritty enough. Already we were talking about a great nineteenth-century historian, the first principles of a European Liberal, and what it all meant to an American conservative. Scarcely did I realize how this brief sketch of Lord Acton would parallel much of what I would learn about Tonsor himself – a difficult man who was a contradiction to his age.

Stephen J. Tonsor about the time he was first studying Lord Acton.

---

[1] Stephen J. Tonsor to Henry Regnery, June 16, 1980, pp. 2-3; letter in GW's possession courtesy of Alfred Regnery.
[2] Stephen J. Tonsor, Introduction, The Legacy of an Education, by James C. Holland (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Occasional Paper no. 11, 1997); Kindle edition, loc. 34.

[3] For the reference to Swain’s admiration for Acton, see Stephen J. Tonsor, “Joseph Ward Swain,” in Equality, Decadence, and Modernity, ed. Gregory L. Schneider (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005), p. 313: “Swain was a devotee of Lord Acton.”

[4] The story is also told in Lloyd Kramer, lecture 13, “Hegelianism and the Young Marx," in European Thought and Culture in the 19th Century (Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 2001).

[5] Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty); Kindle edition, Ch. 1, loc. 170. Himmelfarb's book was particularly helpful in reconstructing Tonsor's and my first conversations on Lord Acton.

[6] A. Walter James, “John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1^st Baron Acton,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, accessed August 26, 2016.

[7] This paraphrase of Acton is a slight modification of the direct quotation in James, “Acton,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, accessed August 26, 2016.

[8] This paraphrase of Acton is a slight modification of the direct quotation in James, “Acton,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, accessed August 26, 2016.

[9] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 8, loc. 3922.

[10] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 104

[11] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 8, loc. 3932.

[12] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 114.

[13] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 104.

[14] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 9, loc. 4880.

[15] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 8, loc. 4005.

[16] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 8, loc. 4138.

[17] Andrew Dickson White, Autobiography, vol. 2, p. 412; quoted by Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 8, loc. 3932.

[18] Tonsor, Introduction, Legacy, by James C. Holland, loc. 34.

*     *     *

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS SERIES ON STEPHEN J. TONSOR:

If you’ve not had a chance yet, please make sure you check out Gleaves Whitney’s series of essays, reminiscences, and vignettes regarding his graduate school advisor, Stephen Tonsor.

Though more or less forgotten now (as so many of the greats of the last century have been), Tonsor once stood rather high within conservative thought.

Whitney’s relationship with his mentor was not always calm, but it was certainly always sharp.  He is now on a long and fascinating journey exploring exactly what that relationship meant and what his advisor signified to him and to the republic.

Don’t miss this excellent series Whitney is writing.  There’s nothing he does that is not critically important, but, even by his always exacting standards, Whitney is producing some thing innovative, artistic, and moving.

~Bradley Birzer, professor of history, Hillsdale College; on his Stormfields blog, September 15, 2016

Gleaves, your reflections on Tonsor are what you were meant to write, I think. They are quite beautiful, sometimes disturbing, always interesting.

~John Willson, professor emeritus, Hillsdale College; in a Facebook post to GW, October 24, 2016.

I listened to a podcast where you spoke about Tonsor. I liked his fierce intellect before, but now I'm even more intrigued by his life and career.

~Seth Bartee; Ph.D. in intellectual history, Virginia Tech; in a Facebook message to GW, November 16, 2016.

Tonsor: Introduction: Prologue and first encounter

At the start of a new academic year, I am inaugurating this series on the most critical phase of my education as a historian. Three decades ago I began graduate school in the history department at the University of Michigan. It turned out to be intellectual boot camp. This and subsequent posts are creative reconstructions of the many fascinating conversations I had with my graduate advisor. They are reimagined from my notes, his public essays and private letters, the articles and books that we read together, and interviews with people who knew him. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to learn a lot from Stephen Tonsor. He had a fierce intellect. Under his influence I learned not only about history, not only about his civilizational mission to confront modernity, but also about myself.

I.

Long's Peak from a meadow below Twin Sisters.

The old family cabin where I was spending the weekend was at an elevation of 10,000 feet. It stood astride a spur of the Storm Pass Trail that led hikers into Rocky Mountain National Park. I timed my stay to occur in late September because, at that time of year, Colorado delivers spectacular autumn days. Over the Continental Divide the sky was the fathomless blue of gothic stained glass. The aspen trees had turned into a shimmering luminescence, as though each were made of cascading yellow diamonds. In my 360-degree view from the long slab of granite in front of the cabin, I had a panoramic view of Long's Peak, Twin Sisters, and Estes Cone -- all cloudless and serene. Surely this day, September 27, 1986, I was witness to earth's greatest crescendo of yellow and blue.

That morning I set out on a short hike to a meadow frequented by elk. After taking some photographs of a fine bull, I returned to the cabin and split lodgepole pine logs into firewood to help my relatives prepare for the coming winter. The languid afternoon hours were cut short when the sun dropped behind the granite wall of Long's Peak, and the rapid cooling hastened my retreat inside to build up the fire I had banked that morning. My back muscles ached from swinging the axe, but my mind felt invigorated by the physical work.

II.

Aspen trees in late September

This particular Saturday evening was dedicated to something I had planned all week. Sitting by the fire, I took out the journals I'd thrown into my backpack -- old copies of Modern Age and Intercollegiate Review that a former English professor, Loy O. Banks, had given me. In 1984-1985, I had completed my Fulbright year in West Germany and had spent a summer in Oxford. Now it was time to consider graduate school in earnest. Was a historian out there who would be a good fit?

As the evening closed in, I felt the disconnect between the mountains and the monographs -- a gap between the enchantment of the setting and the chore of the articles. Was I really in the mood to focus on the task at hand? But as I slowly turned the pages and scanned for "great ideas," I was not disappointed. A number of writers seemed to embrace not just a scholarly but a civilizational mission. One passage in particular resonated. It was from 1958: 

The historian must look beyond facts to meaning, purpose, and direction. Meaning, purpose, and direction -- they are not apt to emerge in the parochial study of one culture, one civilization, or one religious tradition. It is only when the historian makes the comparative method the tool of his studies that he can move beyond the provinciality of national, class, and religious prejudice. The meaning of Western civilization emerges only when it is confronted by another civilization. It is in these dramatic historical confrontations that the meaning of culture, civilization, and religion emerges. It is in these confrontations, too, that cultures and civilizations are enriched and expanded. It is through this process that every period of crisis is a period of hope, that the periods of cultural dissolution can be, and frequently are, periods of great innovation and harbingers of a new cultural era. We have been grievously and justly broken, but if such eyes as mine are worthy to foresee the divine meaning, the divine purpose, then we have been broken only to be made one.

I read the passage a second time. My thought became suspended in the rarified atmosphere of a civilizational as well as a continental divide. The author was comfortable with contrast, paradox, and tension. Turning back to the top of the essay, I was keen to know who wrote this historical manifesto. His name was Stephen Tonsor.[1] When the piece was published, almost three decades earlier, Tonsor was a 34-year-old instructor at the University of Michigan. He described the transcendent purpose of civilization as ultimately a quest for truth, goodness, beauty, even love -- the qualities that most dignified and humanized Homo viator, man the pilgrim. Here was a historian who wrote with the conviction that a civilization, although existing in time, was actually the vestibule of eternity.

With Tonsor's essay in my hands, my mind strained to recall what I had written about truth, goodness, beauty, and love on a sheet of paper that I kept folded in my collection of Great Books back in Fort Collins. It had been prompted by a class in the philosophy of the ancient Greeks that I had taken with Dr. Jan Benson:

Truth is about being. It is knowing what really is.

Goodness is about doing. It is acting in a way that helps others and yourself thrive.

Beauty is about attracting. It is moving irresistibly toward good things. Think of how we gaze at a sunrise. Beauty thus serves to feed the soul as hunger serves to feed the body.

Love is about connecting. It is uniting our soul with what is true, good, and beautiful.

As the fire burned down and my energy waned, I picked up the journals at my feet. The photocopy of a manuscript had slipped out of one of them. Curious, I picked it up and saw that there was no author's name on the front page. But the title, "Conservative Pluralism," led me to a surprising and serendipitous find: 

"The summer of 1953 was an exciting summer. My wife and I and our two small children spent that summer, as we had spent the previous two summers, atop a 10,000 foot peak in the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho as employees of the Forest Service watching for forest fires. One cannot imagine isolation much more complete. And yet, in that isolation, we heard the echoes of the great events transpiring in the world below the serene altitude we inhabited....

"One day that summer I hiked four miles and four thousand feet down to the road to meet the ranger and pick up a month's accumulation of mail. My mentor, Joseph Ward Swain, a distinguished historian of antiquity, had clipped various articles and reviews which he thought might be of interest to me and had sent them on. Among those clippings and articles was a review which had appeared in the Sunday New York Times Book Review of May 17, 1953, of a book by a young historian at Michigan State University, Russell Kirk."[2] 

This manuscript, whose opening scene was a fire lookout on Ruffneck Peak, was written by Stephen Tonsor. Not just any manuscript but this manuscript fell to the floor at my feet. Was it coincidence? Fate? Providence? I could not know what it meant at the time. Yet September 27, 1986, would be my first encounter with the mind of Stephen Tonsor. And these two men, Stephen Tonsor and Russell Kirk, would soon cross my path and I would walk with them for a crowded hour. Indeed, they and the tension between them would be decisive in my intellectual formation over the next several years.

Stephen Tonsor on how he discovered Russell Kirk --
in the Rocky Mountains

_____________________

[1] Paraphrase of a passage from Stephen Tonsor's review of Christopher Dawson's book, The Dynamics of World History, in "History and the God of the Second Chance," Modern Age (spring 1958): 200-01.
[2] "Conservative Pluralism -- The Foundation and the Academy," typed manuscript. The manuscript itself is not dated, but Tonsor's letters to Henry Regnery on September 8, 1981 (p. 4) and September 25, 1981 (p. 1), referred to the lecture by title and event organizer, the "Presidents' Club," and indicated that the lecture would be delivered on September 25, 1981. Letters are courtesy of Alfred Regnery.

Tonsor #n -- An Azalea Blooms in Winter

One mid-February day after class, Tonsor invited me to walk back to the house and enjoy lunch with him and Caroline. The weather was fine and he was in good spirits when we reached 1505 Morton Avenue. "It's wonderful to see the sun shining through our south windows again. Earlier this morning it was so very cold and gloomy." Pointing to a table in front of the large living room window, he drew my attention to an unexpected sight: "Look at that azalea. Last Saturday it was in bud, and now it has bloomed. I like the way the sun is pouring through its purple splendor. The Germans would call that color rosarot."[1]

"Yes, rosarot," I said, impressed by his poetic expression and by the precision of his German. I added, "I grew up in that azalea's natural habitat -- in Houston and New Orleans. In fact, every March Houston hosts the Azalea Trail through the River Oaks neighborhood. It's one of the most pleasant ways to explore the city."

Tonsor did not respond, but his tenderness toward the azalea blossom prompted me to ask if he missed the rural life.

"Good Lord, no," he bellowed. "Growing up in southern Illinois in the 1920s and '30s, I know the rural life. It is not the pastoral scene that you people from the city think it is. The rural life can be brutal. It can be stultifying. It can cause one's mind to become slow and dull. That said, I have always liked to garden, even as a child pulling weeds for my grandmother.[2] Usually by the end of May I will have spaded and planted until I am quite pleasantly tired. If we are having a good spring with plenty of rain, then by Memorial Day there is already enough spinach, shallots, bib lettuce, and Romaine for the whole family. It is a beautiful thing -- the seeds come up fast, the plants thrive, and there is such a large quantity of salad coming in that we must use it as quickly as possible.[3] Today's bright sun is making me look very forward to spring. 'O Sonne! O Glück, o Lust!' as Goethe would say."[4]

Caroline emerged from the kitchen with a greeting and a plate, saying, "Stephen does need his garden. I think it's therapeutic for him after the cold winter and hectic academic schedule. His spirits can get down if a long winter or rainy weather keeps him from his plot of earth."[5]

Tonsor moved a book off the dining room table and said, in a more wistful register: "I do find myself thinking back on my childhood in southern Illinois from time to time. A few years ago I was reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder to my grandson, Alex, and we enjoyed the experience very much. It's a book about her husband's childhood on a New York farm. What a distant and strange world it was to him, and yet how familiar most of it was to me. Every once in a while I would stop and explain what was happening on the farm."[6]

The azalea blossom and the talk of gardening and farming made me think of warmer months ahead. I said that I looked forward to my first Art Fair next summer, to which Tonsor protested:

"Huh! For a whole week in July, Caroline and I cannot even use our city because it is taken over by that misnamed Bacchanalia! There is nothing 'fair' about it. As for the art, don't even bother trying to see it, what with the milling throngs of sweating people in the streets, more than 500,000 of them. They have the manners and sanitary habits of Italians -- or at least of Neapolitans. They leave behind mountains of stinking garbage and refuse. Worse, for three consecutive nights last summer, drunken celebrants rioted by the campus. The whole thing is sick and disgusting. But," he added with mock appreciation, "the merchants love it!"[7]

Caroline frowned: "It's not as bad as Stephen says it is. You can meet the most interesting people -- people you'd never expect to be artists -- and talk with them about their work and --"

"No, they are not interesting at all," he interrupted. "Art Fair is just a carnival for over-aged hippies with long fingernails and bad breath."

Caroline and I laughed at his rant. "I hope," she said, "that Stephen will tell us what he really thinks of Art Fair!"

Tonsor looked backed over at the azalea in the sunny front window, as though wishing to be tending his garden.
_______________

[1] Stephen J. Tonsor to Henry Regnery, February 15, 1986, p. 1; letter in GW's possession, courtesy of Alfred Regnery.
[2] Bernard Tonsor interviews with GW, Jerseyville, IL, July 1, 2014; and June 26, 2015.
[3] Stephen J. Tonsor to Henry Regnery, May 31, 1985, p. 1; letter in GW's possession, courtesy of Alfred Regnery.
[4] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Mailied"; at URL https://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/pommeren/Gedichte/mailied.html. The line means, "O sun, O joy, O delight!"
[5] Caroline Tonsor's observation of a tendency to "get down" is backed by much evidence. In letters to his close friend Henry Regnery, written in the 1980s, Tonsor frequently confessed that he was either tired, overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed (e.g., in Tonsor to Regnery, May 31, 1985, p. 4; Tonsor to Regnery, May 19, 1986, pp. 1-3; both letters in GW's possession, courtesy of Alfred Regnery). The latter letter begins, "It is difficult to write a letter when one's life is engulfed in constant commotion and uncertainty.... My depression was deepened by the wet, cold weather. I cannot work in the garden and as the days pass I am becoming quite desperate." On May 18, 1985, he wrote Regnery: "... I felt disappointed that I could not get into the garden" (p. 1). On August 18, 1984, he began a recap of a list of scholarly chores with, "Most of last week I led a dog's life" (p. 2). Additionally, his oldest daughter, in a moving Veterans' Day tribute to her father, has provided sympathetic insight into his struggles stemming from the years he served in World War II's Pacific Theater and won three Bronze Medals: "He was in the [Army] Signal Corps, made the Leyte landing with MacArthur, and heard the first reports of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It changed his life, enabling a poor boy from a small farm town to attend universities, travel the world, and make use of his tremendous intelligence. It also made him wake up screaming for many years. He had to listen to the radio all night to be able to sleep. I don't really know what he did in the war, but I will always remember the man he became" [Ann Tonsor Zeddies, Facebook post, November 11, 2015].
[6] Stephen J. Tonsor to Henry Regnery, June 16, 1980, p. 4; letter in GW's possession, courtesy of Alfred Regnery.
[7] Stephen J. Tonsor to Henry Regnery, July 25, 1987, p. 1; letter in GW's possession, courtesy of Alfred Regnery.

Tonsor #19 -- Bryn Mawr

At the conclusion of the fall semester in 1987, I accepted my brother's invitation to spend the holidays with his family in New Jersey. After the feasting and festivity of Christmas Day, I wanted to do some networking on the East Coast. Since I was within an hour of the headquarters of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Bryn Mawr, I headed out for the City of Brotherly Love to visit the organization that had conferred the Richard M. Weaver Fellowship on me. I'd arranged a meeting with the man who had led ISI in some capacity for 35 years, E. Victor Milione. He had served as executive vice president and then as president of ISI from 1953-1988. We arranged to meet on Monday, December 28. As I drove into town, waves of sleet and snow were rolling eastward across the Delaware River Valley, and I thought of George Washington's treacherous crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776.

Emanuel Leutze, "Washington Crossing the Delaware" (1851)

I found Milione alone in a darkish office on the Main Line; the space felt more like an old-fashioned law firm than a salient for the defense of Western civilization. He was an elfish man with bright eyes and a quick intelligence, and we were able to talk for more than one hour about his philosophy at ISI and about my graduate advisor and his place in the conservative movement in America.

From my opening question about the evolution of ISI, he became quite animated: "At ISI we throw ourselves into the battle of ideas. Whether it is the mission of the university, or the American experiment in ordered liberty, or the contest between faith and unbelief, or the crises of the twentieth century with its totalitarian threats and nihilistic philosophies -- we confront these challenges at the level of ideas. We must win the battle of ideas.[1]

"What exacerbates the crises nowadays is the tendency to forget. What with all the glittery distractions that bombard us, we tend to forget the historic foundations that made our civilization possible. But imagine what would happen if we forgot -- I mean really forgot -- if teachers quit teaching and preachers quit preaching; if no one played Bach; if no museum exhibited Michelangelo. Why, in just one generation we'd devolve into barbarians tearing down the intricate edifice of our civilization with all its beauty and strength. So the central task of our time is what the great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson called "enculturation." Our aim must be to encourage each new generation of young people to learn, better than their fathers, that our heritage must be studied, understood, nurtured, and transmitted."[2]

"Now, your graduate advisor Steve Tonsor understands how important enculturation is. He's been a great ally of ISI. I've worked with Steve for some three decades now. He is unpredictable, which makes him interesting. You never know what is going to emerge from that fierce intellect of his!"

"You're not talking about his Philadelphia Society address last year?" I asked with bemusement.

E. Victor Milione (1924-2008)

"That was a corker," Milione chuckled, "but the surprise doesn't end there. Take his view of America. Here we sit, just a few miles from Independence Hall. Steve's take on the American Revolution has the most interesting way of combining opposing ideas. On the one hand, he argues that the rebellion changed everything. Like Gordon Wood, he see our Revolution as the first major break with the pattern of rule by monarchs and hereditary nobles. They had governed according to principles derived from divine right, reason of state, and traditional and customary usage. Rejecting those principles, America's revolutionaries substituted in their stead republicanism and a rational politics based upon the self-interest of the citizenry.[3]

"On the other hand, Steve argues for the Founding's continuity with what came before. Along the lines of Russell Kirk, he maintains that by 1776 the American Revolution was already centuries old. I commend to you the essay he wrote on the American Bicentennial -- I just had occasion to reread it myself. In the piece he argues that the War of the Revolution was waged in the name of a conservative appeal to rights won and cherished -- rights that many of the American colonists believed had been usurped and violated by London. They were fighting to restore their traditional rights as Englishmen. It is difficult to believe that those articulate spokesmen of the American cause were insincere when they appealed not just to the revolutionary break from Britain, but also to the ancient, hard-won rights of free men.[4]

"In fact, I remember Steve telling me that it was precisely this conservative devotion to liberty which made, and still makes, the American Revolution the most radical political movement of the modern era.[5] How many scholars can pull off combining 'conservative' and 'radical' in the same thought?" Milione wondered, laughing.

"How is life in Ann Arbor? Last I heard, there were not many conservatives in that particular grove of academe."

"It's been intense, like intellectual boot camp. Maybe I'm lucky, but the professors I have at Michigan are really good. A few graduate students from the East Coast confess they haven't had much contact with conservatives in higher ed. I guess for them, talking to Tonsor is like a visit to the circus, where they can gather around the biological rarity at the freak show. I get the feeling that he is avoided by the more liberal students. They don't enroll in his classes."

"What a shame -- the loss is theirs. We conservatives who sit around the fireplace, sipping Scotch and smoking pipes and talking about Russell Kirk, are characters, yes, but extremists, no. Steve once told me about the time the founder of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, went to the University of Michigan to give a campaign speech. It was when he ran as a write-in candidate for president in 1964. Rockwell began by saying that everywhere he spoke, fights broke out. I don't think the cultural conservatives could be accused of inciting any riots! Our weapons of choice are ideas." 

"Yes -- Professor Tonsor certainly holds his own. When challenged, he gives as good as he gets. Since arriving in Ann Arbor, I've been slowly navigating his view of conservatism, doing frequent soundings as I go. He defies stereotypes, but his political philosophy seems to fit best in the 'liberal conservative' tradition that Russell Kirk writes about in The Conservative Mind -- especially the section of the book that is devoted to Cooper and Tocqueville and that tips its hat to Burke and Acton.[6] What confused me at first is that this term, 'liberal conservative,' is not one that I've encountered outside of Kirk or outside of my conversations with Professor Tonsor.[7] He outright told me that the 'liberal conservatives' are his kind of people.[8] It seems that his vision of conservatism differs from that of the traditionalist wing in that he more readily accepts, rather than rejects, the tension between the two sources of authority in Western civilization -- classical Christendom and the modern Enlightenment. You can see it in the way he grafts what is conservative in the American Founding to what is liberal in the American Revolution. It's really quite brilliant the way he pulls the opposing ideas together."

SJT's mentor in political philosophy, Frank Meyer

"And you can bet Steve is brilliant enough to pull it off," Milione said. "I see Steve as a fusionist influenced by the work of his late mentor, Frank Meyer.[9] About the time Steve was becoming a self-conscious conservative, around 1955 or 1960, the house that conservatism built was in disarray. There were cracks that went right through the middle of the foundation. Off in one wing were the libertarians -- Nock, Hayek, Chodorov -- who championed freedom as the highest good, and along with it minimal government and the sanctity of the individual. Off in another wing were the traditionalists led by Kirk, Weaver, and Nisbet, men who championed the need for transcendent order, especially in the revolutionary modern age when so much was in flux anthropologically, philosophically, ethically, and spiritually.[10]

"Frank had a vision. He wanted to pull these two factious wings of the conservative house into a well-integrated family. He made the case that freedom needs order if it is not to devolve into anarchism or libertinism, and that order needs freedom if it's not to devolve into authoritarianism or antiquarianism. Frank saw America's founders as the original fusionists because they believed in the need to leaven a manly freedom with an organic moral order. While our nation's founding documents are relatively silent on the subject of virtue -- the notable exception being the Northwest Ordinance with its Article Three -- they do present freedom as the ultimate political goal. But freedom needs a complement -- the helpmates of religion, morality, and knowledge -- as that same article declares. Our founders taught that citizens must use their freedom to choose virtue in the public square. And because the exercise of virtue requires man's free will, it should not be compelled by government or by force. Indeed, by definition virtue cannot be compelled because, obviously...."[11] Milione looked at me intently.

"Yes," I jumped in. "There is a passage in Mere Christianity in which C. S. Lewis writes: "If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give us humans free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having."[12]

"Lewis nailed it!" Milione said with enthusiasm: "Unfortunately, Frank didn't succeed in renovating the house that conservatism built. He had a pugilistic personality and got in fights with Russell Kirk and other leaders in the movement. We conservatives, like any big sprawling family, were as fractious at the end of his life as we were when he started his fusionist project. Nevertheless, Steve's political philosophy is heavily indebted to Frank. I think Frank's fusionism is a good way to understand Steve as a 'liberal conservative,' since the former is preoccupied with political freedom and the latter is concerned with the organic moral order. They are a necessary unity in any free society."

"It's courageous of him to use the word 'liberal' in his self-description since the word has become a term of opprobrium," I said. "But I think the reactionary in him wants to reclaim the old idea of liberal, Lord Acton's idea of liberal. And it explains why Professor Tonsor quotes Walt Whitman's lines in "Song of Myself" where he speaks of containing multitudes and even celebrates the fact that he contradicts himself.[13] He is radically open to every good experience or tradition that shapes the character of a man and a civilization. Professor Tonsor is quite insistent that the conservative must discern the inevitable tensions that arise among powerful ideas. It's a messy process; it doesn't allow for the tidiness of the ideologue's design. The civilizational mission of the "liberal conservative" is in the very label, with its tension. It is to work for the organic accommodation of opposites -- freedom and virtue, liberty and order, natural aristocracy and equality, the individual and community, the profit motive in the free marketplace and those values that cannot be commodified. I see Professor Tonsor as the champion of a method of political philosophy and historical interpretation that one might call the hermeneutic of accommodating opposites. He comes the closest to saying as much in his essay on "The Conservative Search for Identity."[14]

"Yes, that's one of Steve's seminal essays. As I recall, Frank commissioned that essay in a 1964 collection, What Is Conservatism?[15] That's where Steve grapples with paradox, tension, and opposites, just as Meyer did. And to bring it back to this place, Philadelphia: For as much as he is a champion of order, Steve never loses sight of the freedom at the center of the American experiment. By putting liberty at the center of the American political order, the American revolutionaries served notice that they would not be distracted or deflected from its pursuit by other political, social, and economic objectives. Whatever the merits of equality or social justice, ethnicity or nationality, established religion or high culture -- if any of those pursuits interfered with liberty, or deflected the citizenry from the pursuit of liberty, they were eventually rejected. As a result, over the past two centuries, the world has witnessed the way in which liberty has permeated and revolutionized every aspect of American society. From the way in which we greet strangers to the way in which we pray, the most common and ordinary activities of our daily lives have been transformed by an ever greater participation by free men and an appeal to the sanction of their opinion.[16]

Frank S. Meyer's most read essays

"Especially modern notions of the state have changed as a result of the American experiment. Under the impetus of the idea of liberty, the state stood on the sidelines of the public arena and left the game to be played by individual men, voluntary associations, and corporate groups. Most Americans have believed that what the state necessarily does poorly, individuals and voluntary associations can do better. Ideally, the supreme achievement of revolutionary liberty is 'the withering away of the state.'[17] That was the idea that launched Ronald Reagan on the road to the White House," Milione added, laughing with irony. "I think we will need a succession of Reagans if we are ever to see that happen."

As my visit with Milione wrapped up, he did something as gracious as it was unexpected. He led me to a room with stacks of books that ISI had either published or carried under its banner. "It's Christmas. Why don't you take some books back to Ann Arbor?"

He gave me a largish box and told me to fill it with the books I needed for my library. Due to Vic Milione's kindness, I got to celebrate a second Christmas in a place called Bryn Mawr.

*     *     *

Late in the afternoon, as I was leaving Philadelphia and approaching the Delaware River, the snow and sleet stopped. I pulled into a filling station to warm myself up with hot chocolate. As I stood waiting for the drink to cool, I kept feeling the pull of a nearby phone booth. There was a question I had to ask....

"Professor Tonsor, I am just leaving Philadelphia after having a great visit with Vic Milione, who sends his regards. I have just one question. I think I know the answer but I still have to ask it. You and I have talked about the West's 'inner dialogue' that informs your liberal conservative worldview. It's the dialogue between its two sources of authority -- classical Christendom in which our faith and morals are rooted, and the modern Enlightenment in which our science and our secular peace in a pluralistic world are rooted, preeminently in America. When these two sources of authority clash and cannot be reconciled, you stand with...."

That's the call I wanted to make and the question I wanted to ask. But I hesitated. And then the moment passed, and I was back in the car crossing the Delaware. On the drive back through the bare ruined choirs of the Jersey countryside, I hardly noticed the scenery.

_______________________

[1] T. Kenneth Cribb, "William F. Buckley Jr. and E. Victor Milione," Intercollegiate Review (fall 2008); at URL https://home.isi.org/william-f-buckley-jr-and-e-victor-milione.
[2] Cribb, "Buckley and Milione," Intercollegiate Review; at URL https://home.isi.org/william-f-buckley-jr-and-e-victor-milione.
[3] Stephen J. Tonsor, Introduction, America's Continuing Revolution: An Act of Conservation, ed. Stephen J. Tonsor (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1975), p. ix. Tonsor was credited by the president of AEI, William Baroody, with "conceiving and guiding the project ... a crucial factor in its success."

[4] Tonsor, Introduction, America's Continuing Revolution, p. ix.

[5] Tonsor, Introduction, America's Continuing Revolution, p. ix.

[6] Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th ed. (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1985), pp. 185-224.
[7] Confirming my hunch that the term, "liberal conservative," is rarely used are two volumes that thoroughly assess the postwar conservative movement in America. One is the great compendium of the movement, American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia, eds. Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006); and George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in American since 1945 (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008). Neither has an entry or section devoted to the term, "liberal conservatism." I believe Tonsor's use of the term was influenced by his first encounter of it in 1953, when he was exposed to Kirk's The Conservative Mind.

[8] Stephen J. Tonsor to Henry Regnery, August 17, 1987, p. 2; letter in GW's possession, courtesy of Alfred Regnery.
[9] SOURCE?
[10] Various articles in American Conservatism flesh out the line of argument. See, e.g., "Milione, E. Victor" (by Lee Edwards); "Meyer, Frank S." (by Kevin Smant); "Fusionism" (by E. C. Pasour Jr.); "Libertarianism" (by David Boaz); and "Traditionalism" (by Mark C. Henrie).

[11] Smant, "Meyer, Frank S.," American Conservatism, p. 571.

[12] C. S. Lewis, "The Shocking Alternative," Mere Christianity. Thanks to Darrin Moore for this reminder.

[13] Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," quoted by Stephen J. Tonsor, "The Conservatives Search for Identity," Equality, Decadence, and Modernity, ed. Gregory L. Schneider (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005), p. 247.

[14] Tonsor, "Conservative Search for Identity," Equality, pp. 247-49.
[15] There are two editions. Stephen J. Tonsor, "The Conservative Search for Identity," What is Conservatism, ed. Frank Meyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964); republished (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2015), pp. 161-84.

[16] Tonsor, Introduction, America's Continuing Revolution, pp. ix-x.

[17] Tonsor, Introduction, America's Continuing Revolution, p. x.