A Program for Conservatives was published by Henry Regnery in 1954, one year after The Conservative Mind. Where the earlier book traced the conservative intellectual tradition, this one asks: what should conservatives actually do? Kirk structures the book around ten problems facing American society and offers conservative responses to each.
The problems Kirk identifies remain recognizable seventy years later: the centralization of power in the federal government; the degradation of education through progressive pedagogy; the destruction of community by industrial mobility and suburban sprawl; the loss of religious conviction; the spread of boredom and meaninglessness in mass society. His responses are equally consistent: restore local authority, return to classical education, defend the family and the small community, renew religious life, and cultivate the permanent things against transient fashions.
The book is important historically as evidence that postwar conservatism was not simply negative (anti-communist, anti-New Deal) but had a positive vision of the good society — rooted in Burke’s conviction that society is a partnership between the living, the dead, and the unborn.
Collecting A Program for Conservatives
First edition (Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1954): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $60–$150
- Very good: $20–$60
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
The Practical Kirk
Where The Conservative Mind traced a philosophical genealogy, A Program for Conservatives (1954) asked what that philosophy demanded in practice. Kirk addressed specific Cold War-era problems — the expansion of the welfare state, the standardization of mass education, suburban sprawl’s destruction of community, and moral relativism in intellectual life — and proposed conservative responses rooted in tradition, localism, and ordered liberty rather than libertarian individualism or Cold War hawkishness.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did Kirk influence the conservative movement? Kirk provided the intellectual architecture that William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan built upon. His “six canons of conservatism” (later expanded to ten principles) became the movement’s philosophical foundation. He remained independent of political organizations, preferring the role of public intellectual to partisan operative.