January 2017 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW private belletristic pleasure? It is difficult to say argued most loudly for this interpretation of with certainty. Be that as it may, I found myself American history; he lost. Koronacki considers engaged with the study and its provocative the Fourteenth Amendment to be another major central argument of political transgression step in the weakening of the rights of individual attending on––nearly a handmaiden of––gender states. In the spirit of this amendment, Franklin transgression, almost in spite of its esoteric, Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal sealed the nearly mystical mode of presentation. ∆ political (and therefore social and moral) profile of American society and politics. An important

element of these changes was the growth of the Amerykański konserwatyzm na importance of the judiciary at the expense of executive and legislative power. The seemingly progu XXI wieku appropriate and just amendments to the (American Conservatism at the beginning of the Constitution have been used to dramatically twenty-first century) increase the power of the courts, to the point where issues that should have been voted on By Jacek Koronacki. Radzymin: von were decided by a fiat of a group of judges from borowiecky (księ[email protected]), 2015. 517 whose errors there was no recourse. pages. Index of persons. ISBN 978-83- 60748=80-0. Hardcover. In Polish. In Koronacki’s view America today is partly shaped by the disappearance of the Soviet Sally Boss Union. As virtually every conservative Pole he word “conservatism” has many knows, this superficial disappearance has not T meanings. Jacek Koronacki takes it for eliminated Russian expansionism and granted that in the political arena they include aggressiveness; it merely changed their support for limited government and the idea of rhetorical tools. Many Europeans, primarily subsidiarity, whereas in the social and moral Germans, do not wish to see it. If Americans arena conservatism flows from a recognition that decide to leave Europe to its own devices, the man is a created being. It is hard though not likely scenario is that Russia will attack the impossible to be a conservative and an atheist. Baltic states, then Poland (annexing Ukraine and Conservatism rejects George Orwell’s and Belarus in the meantime), and then, hypnotized Aldous Huxley’s dystopias, or the taking away by these conquests, would put enough pressure by the omnipotent state of human dignity and of on Western Europe (weakened in the meantime the right to decide while dangling before citizens by Muslim immigration) to make it side up with the utopia of a cradle-to-grave security. In Russia rather than the United States in the global Koronacki’s book these essential aspects of game. There is no doubt that powerful conservatism are viewed in the context of propaganda has been launched to convince American history and society. ordinary Americans that Russia is no longer a threat; however, American common sense works Koronacki’s treatment of the Civil War shows against this propaganda. Still, there are areas of the depth of his conservative convictions. He American conservatism in which this takes the view that when individual states propaganda has taken root. The dream of ratified the American Constitution, they America withdrawing from its engagement with implicitly or explicitly reserved the right to the world is shared by such American withdraw the ratification if federal authorities conservatives as Patrick Buchanan and the claimed undue power. In other words, the right Chronicles Magazine team. Koronacki’s book to secession was implied from the very should help disabuse them of their illusions. He beginning. The Civil War marked a decisive dedicates an entire chapter to the discussion of change in this regard. From that moment on, American isolationism, with Patrick Buchanan federal power continued to grow and state power as the central character. Buchanan’s facile continued to decline. In Koronacki’s view, slogans about the return to being a republic Joseph Sobran was a conservative writer who rather than an empire are rightly dismissed as

2068 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW January 2017 nostalgia rather than a realistic political conservative ideas, personalities, and policies program. However, Koronacki worries about the expressed in specific articles, journals, social tone in which the critique of Buchanan’s other trends, debates, and legislature. The result is a postulates is being delivered. In his view, the vivid picture of postwar American conservatism narrowing of the American debate is clearly from the 1950s (the launching of National visible in this case (78–79). In some areas of Review was a milestone) to the present day. As conservatism there is more room for debate in is well known, American conservatism soon Poland than in America, a paradox that split into paleoconservatism and Koronacki does not explore but merely points neoconservatism, owing partly to the editorial out. policies of the same National Review. Koronacki rightly points out that the firing of Joseph A good part of Koronacki’s book is dedicated to Sobran and Samuel Francis from National the conservative media in the United States, Review did unspeakable harm to the especially Chronicles, Modern Age, and conservative movement, making it a slave of publications of the Intercollegiate Studies political correctness just as has been the case Institute. There also are references to The with mainstream periodicals. ∆ National Interest and The Weekly Standard. Among the thinkers whose works Koronacki invokes most often are Russell Kirk, Thomas Molnar, Peter Lawler, Claes Ryn, Wilhelm East West Street Röpke (while lamenting the scarcity of conservative writings on economics), Orestes By Philippe Sands. New York: Knopf, 2016. Brownson, and the neoconservative Francis 425 pages. ISBN 978-0-385-35071-6. Fukuyama. Rodney Stark’s argument about the Hardcover. role of Christianity in economic and scientific progress is described in detail. Edmund Burke James E. Reid also appears as the fountainhead of many conservative ideas in the English-speaking world. These thinkers are not presented “Where are you now, park benches of Lwów, blackened with age and rain, coarse and cracked chronologically, but rather invoked in like the bark of mediaeval trees?” connection with the topics discussed. From the Mój Lwów, Joseph Wittlin, (1946) Southern Agrarians to the war in Iraq, issues agitating the minds of American conservatives n an odd coincidence, on the morning I are presented clearly, accompanied by copious I finished reading Philippe Sands’s East West citations. It is a platitude to say “This book Street, I walked out to my mailbox and deserves a translation into English,” but in this discovered his article “A Grand and Disastrous case it has to be said most forcefully. Deceit” in the July 2016 issue of the London It is ironic that the best book on American Review of Books. Sands’s survey in the LRB of conservatism has been written by a Polish John Chilcot’s “Report of the Iraq Inquiry” is mathematician who spent several years teaching marked by a damning examination of Tony at American universities and returned to Poland Blair’s reprehensible maneuvering to twist the to head one of the Institutes of the Polish intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not present Academy of Sciences. For nearly two decades a threat to anyone other than his own citizens. Koronacki’s writings have appeared in the Blair twisted the facts until he had an empty Polish conservative bimonthly Arcana, and a casus belli for a pointless war in Iraq, which has great deal of the book consists of essays brought us ISIL, ISIS, Daesh, new wars and appropriately reworked that he wrote for that deaths, hundreds of thousands of refugees, and periodical. Its format accounts for its strengths: unprecedented acts of terrorism. instead of repeating slogans or presenting one However, in East West Street Sands’s tone is more time the well-known theories, Koronacki that of a thoughtful man searching for the sketches out the flow in real time of

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