What is Conservatism in America? The Search for a Viable Heritage

Even some of  the former Communists who gave the conservative movement its crusading fervor seemed at first little interested in America as America. Instead, they tended to perceive the United States as a world power, the only logical leader of the worldwide struggle against messianic Communism. 
这个场景和今时今日有些相似啊。
Why equate conservatism with Burke? How useful was it to assert that because America lacked a feudal social structure, it was therefore not “conservative"? Who had demonstrated that conservatism was solely the ideology of a feudal, hierarchical society? Who had proved that it should be equated only with “medieval” nstitutions? If America was  distinctive, perhaps its conservatism (if any) was also distinctive. To say that the American experience was fundamentally non-Burkean did not establish that it was liberal, only that it was non-Burkean. But had even that claim really been proven? What did Burke stand for? How many Burkes were there? Was Burkean conservatism primarily a defense of a particular eighteenth-century status quo, now long dead, or was it the exposition of a body of timeless truths about man and society, as many conservatives increasingly argued? How much should conservative impulses and insights be linked to transient institutions? Might not old wine be placed in new bottles? And just how accurate was the ritualistic assertion that America was essentially—essentially—a restless, dynamic country? In many respects, it undeniably was; one thinks of its industrial might, extraordinarily mobile population, and social fluidity (Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches, opportunity for all, free land, “a fresh start”). But were these the only or even the most relevant factors? Had America's material and physical expansiveness been matched by political, moral, or religious experimentation of equal magnitude? Was it not true that in certain mores, attitudes, and even fundamental beliefs, this supposedly liberal people had remained faithful to its Western heritage?
50-60年对保守主义源流的质疑、进而发展对伯克的争论。这里想起之前看过的文章：
 Kendal, W., & Carey, G. (1964). Towards a Definition of "Conservatism". The Journal of Politics, 26(2), 406-422. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2127604]