Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Peter Viereck
    -Peter Viereck papers, 1815-2006 (Columbia University)
    -ENTRY: Peter Robert Edwin Viereck: American poet, historian, and theorist,/a> (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -BIO: Peter Viereck 1916–2006 (Poetry Foundation)
    -POEM: Tug of War (Peter Viereck, Autumn 1955 , VQR)
    -ENTRY: Peter Viereck (World Heritage Encyclopedia)
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    -OBIT: Peter Viereck: Conservative US historian of Nazi thought and writer of complex poetry (Godfrey Hodgson, 29 May 2006, The Guardian)
    -OBIT: Peter Viereck, Poet and Conservative Theorist, Dies at 89 (Margalit Fox, May 19, 2006, NY Times)
    -OBIT: Peter Viereck: Poet and conservative pundit (Independent, 10 June 2006)
    -OBIT: Peter Viereck (Elaine Woo, 5/20/06, LA Times)
    -OBIT: Peter Viereck: Poet and historian who championed a new liberal conservatism (The Times uk, 8/14/06)
    -OBIT: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Peter Viereck dies (Boston Globe, May 18, 2006)
    -OBIT: peter Viereck (Washington Post, 5/21/06)
    -ESSAY: But—I'm a Conservative! (Peter Viereck, April 1940, The Atlantic)

The conservative's principle of principles is the necessity and supremacy of Law and of absolute standards of conduct. I capitalize 'Law,' and I mean it. Suppose it were proved that the eternal absolutes do not really exist. Instinctively we should say: So much the worse for them. But now we must learn to say: So much the worse for existence! We have learned that from sad experience of centuries. Paradoxically, we have learned that man can only maintain his material existence by guiding it by the materially nonexistent: by the absolute moral laws of the spirit.

Freedom of thought we must never restrict in America. Conduct and action we can and must restrict. Instead of 'progressive education' our democratic school system must instill, from kindergarten on, the necessity of limiting all human conduct and instinct by objective Law. Only so can we learn, the decent rules of the game as an unbreakable habit. By 'Law' I do not mean all existing laws. All are not necessarily good. By 'Law' I mean the legal way as a way to whatever goals we may seek; I mean it as a way of living. This way is necessarily freedom's prerequisite. In this sense, Law must tread pitilessly upon individuals, nations, classes. It must trample with callous and sublime indifference upon their economic interests yes, even their economic interests- and their 'healthy instincts of the race.'

The 'instinctive, unwritten sense of justice' we hear so much about is basically, and always will be, mere glorified lynch law. In instinct, every new 1940 baby is still born a caveman. Law and tradition are the slow accumulation of civilized habits, the few thousand years' habits which alone prevent the 1940 baby from remaining a caveman. Since this accumulation is haphazard, it includes—as radicals correctly accuse—much evil as well as good. But the good and the bad in tradition are often interwoven inextricably by the past. And the past cannot be changed—not even by radicals with a Harvard accent.

Society, as 1 would conserve it, would rest on five great self-disciplines: rule of reason in the individual, Christian ethics between individuals, Law in the state, free parliamentary negotiation among political parties, peace by negotiation among nations.

    -EXCERPT: Babbitt Jr. vs. the Rediscovery of Values (The Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals by Peter Viereck)
    -ESSAY: On Conservatism: Two Notes (Peter Viereck , Autumn, 1949, American Quarterly)
    -ESSAY: A Third View of the New Deal (Peter Viereck, 1956, New Mexico Quarterly)
    -ESSAY: CONSERVATISM: ATTITUDES, TYPES, & PRESENT STATUS (Peter Robert Edwin Viereck)
    -GOOGLE BOOK: Conservatism Revisited
    -POETRY ARCHIVE: Peter Viereck (Poetry Foundation)
    -VIDEO LECTURE: Liberalism vs Conservatism (Peter Viereck, 3/15/1964, UCLA)
    -ESSAY: The New American Radicals (Peter Viereck, December 1954, The Reporter)
    -ETEXT: The Unadjusted Man: A New Hero for the Americans: Reflections on the Distinction between Conforming and Conserving by Peter Viereck (The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s)
    -REVIEW: of GOD AND MAN AT YALE By William F. Buckley Jr. (Peter Viereck, 11/04/51, NY Times)

Is there no "selfish materialism" at all among the National Association of Manufacturers as well as among the "New Deal collectivists" here denounced? Is it not humorless, or else blasphemous for this eloquent advocate of Christianity, an unworldly and anti-economic religion, to enshrine jointly as equally sacrosanct: "Adam Smith and Ricardo, Jesus and Saint Paul?" And why is this veritable Eagle Scout of moral sternness silent on the moral implications of McCarthyism in his own camp?

In this urgent crisis, when our survival against Soviet aggression depends on cooperating with both conservative and anti-Red heroes like the socialist Reuter in Europe, the author irresponsibly treats not only mild social democracy but even most social reform as almost crypto-communism. He damns communism, our main enemy, not half so violently as lesser enemies like the income tax and inheritance tax. Words will really fail you when you reach the book's final "message": trustees and alumni should violate the legally established academic freedom to "banish from the classroom" not merely Communists but all professors deviating from Adam Smith!

    -REVIEW: of The Conservative Mind, by Russell Kirk (Peter Viereck, October 3, 1953, The Saturday Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Story of a Life, by Konstantin Paustovsky Peter Viereck, May 16, 1964, The Saturday Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Life of Lenin, by Louis Fischer (Peter Viereck, July 18, 1964, The Saturday Review)
    -ESSAY: A roll?call of rightist touts, from Plato to Goldwater (Peter Viereck, Oct. 31, 1971, NY Times)
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    -ESSAY: Conservatism’s Humanist Road Not Taken: Peter Viereck valued rootedness and traditional institutions over the market, standing athwart fusionism, yelling stop. (Jeffery Tyler Syck, Aug 10, 2023, American Conservative)
   -ESSAY: It Can Happen to US: In 1940, a twenty-four-year-old Peter Viereck warned of “The Coming American National Socialism.” He had some ideas for how to stop it. (Micah Rosen, 1/19/21, Taxis)
    -ESSAY: Forecasting A Nightmare: Viereck And The Nazis: Peter Viereck's philosophical history of Nazism, and his contrarian conservatism, may have something to teach us about our politics today. (Chris R. Morgan, 10/02/20, American Conservative)
    -PROFILE: Peter Viereck: Reconciliation and Beyond (Michael A. Weinstein, 1997 HUMANITAS)

"I believe in the rooted, not the newfangled, in archetypes, not stereotypes, in the ages, not the age, in the id-restraining traffic lights not only of law but of unwritten custom, in the organic social fabric, not the mechanical social contract, in Burke and John Adams, not Rousseau and Jefferson. And (as obsessive artist of sound, song, word) in the magical creative imagination that is released when the opposites of strict form and wild spontaneity coalesce in beauty."

    -PROFILE: A Center That Can Hold (Jason Willick, Summer 2018, National Affairs)
    -ESSAY: Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism (Mark C. Henrie, Hoover Institute)[PDF]
    -PROFILE: A Conservative Manifesto (Holly A. Case, Jan 15, 2018, 3 Quarks Daily)
    -TRIBUTE: The Legacy of Peter Viereck (Mt. Holyoke, November 8, 2006)
    -TRIBUTE: Viereck Revisited (Daniel McCarthy, June 18, 2007, American Conservative)
    -ESSAY: How Peter Viereck Could Clean Up Conservative Ideology: Peter Viereck's conservatism offers sanity and realism. (Scott Galupo,?Dec. 1, 2011, US News)
    -ESSAY: Afterword: Conservatism and the Liberal Tradition: Reflections on Peter Viereck (Susann Köhler and Andrew S. Gross, American Studies Journal)

Viereck had personal reasons for aligning himself with conservative politics and poetics. His father, George Sylvester Viereck, dubbed ‘Swastika’ by his detractors, was a writer and journalist who early on identified with progressive causes (he backed Robert La Follette) but came to support Hitler in the years leading up to the war. Soon after the publication of his son’s conservative manifesto, George Viereck was arrested as an undeclared foreign agent and spent five years in a federal prison for promoting the Nazi cause in America. His other son, Peter Viereck’s brother, was killed fighting the Nazis in Italy. Peter joined the army after receiving his PhD from Harvard for a dissertation published under the title Meta-politics, which traces Nazi ideology back to German romanticism (the book has gone through several editions and is still in print). In 1949 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Terror and Decorum, which includes several war poems and elegies for his brother. The title is programmatic for the way Viereck’s poetry, like his politics, holds up decorum as safeguard against terror (Gross 127–63).

Decorum, for Viereck, meant tradition and restraint. He was a value conservative who was skeptical of modernity and who viewed education as a moderating force. Thus, while he opposed radicalism in politics and avant-gardism in poetics, he thought that universities could provide forums where these issues could be productively debated. This put him at odds with key figures of the postwar conservative movement like William F. Buckley, who argued in God and Man at Yale that the curriculum at a private university should reflect the values of its donors. Viereck, in his negative review of the book, quipped that if Buckley pretended to support laissez-faire economics, he should grant academic opinions the same freedom in the marketplace of ideas (Viereck, Shame and Glory 294–95, 299–300). This inaugurated a long feud between the two that was exacerbated by Buckley’s support of McCarthy and then Goldwater. Eventually, Viereck was excommunicated from the conservative movement as it coalesced around Buckley’s National Review (Gross 152).

    -PROFILE:THE FIRST CONSERVATIVE: How Peter Viereck inspired—and lost—amovement. (TOM REISS, 2005-10-24, The New Yorker)
    -ESSAY: Veering Off Course: The New Yorker tries to revive Peter Viereck. (John J. Miller, October 26, 2005, National Review)
    -ESSAY: Peter Viereck: Traditionalist Libertarian? (Claes Ryn, 7/23/12, Law & Liberty)

Viereck had been under suspicion among Buckleyite conservatives because of his leanings in American practical politics. The publication, in 1956, of Viereck’s Conservatism: From Adams to Churchill (later renamed Conservative Thinkers: From John Adams to Winston Churchill) brought dissatisfaction with him to a head. The book was a brief survey and anthology of European and American ideas. It was not intended to set forth a definition of conservatism but broadly to inform and provide material for reflection on the subject. The book’s broad, ecumenical, and non-dogmatic approach contrasted sharply with Frank S. Meyer’s attempts to lay down the conservative line. The book gave concise intellectual sketches of a wide assortment of thinkers, including ones favorable to authoritarianism and assistance to the poor. Viereck conveyed that conservatism was quite different from unrestricted individualism and capitalism. Viereck had clearly failed Frank S. Meyer’s acid test, which was unqualified support for the minimal state, and Meyer was in no mood to be generous. He dismissed Viereck’s conservatism as “counterfeit.”

    -ESSAY: How Conservatives Failed “The Culture ” (Claes Ryn, October 10th, 2011, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: The Legacy of Peter Viereck: His Prose Writings (Claes G. Ryn, NHI)
    -ESSAY: Taming the Beast of Economics and Trade (Ralph Ancil, April 10th, 2015, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: GOP Demographic Crisis: Traditional Conservatism ? Conformism (Daniel McCarthy, February 24th, 2014, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: THE CLASSICAL CONSERVATISM OF PETER VIERECK (Politics & Policy, November 2008)
    -ESSAY: The Example Of Viereck (Andrew Sullivan, 11/30/11, The Dish)
    -ESSAY: Peter Viereck and the Demise of New Conservatism Cover for Peter Viereck and the Demise of New Conservatism (George R. Sparling, Georgetown U.)
    -ESSAY: A Conservative's Case for Moderation (Peter Berkowitz, May 15, 2014, Real Clear Politics)
    -ESSAY: Will Conservatives Abandon the Free Market?: Conservatives would either “combat” or “convert” business or base their politics “squarely on it.” But, he warned, conservatism “founded on money,” is “fickle, selfish, and irresponsible.” (Joshua Tait, 4/18/19, National Interest)
    -ESSAY: Who Remembers Clinton Rossiter? (John Holbo, September 29, 2012, Crooked Timber)
    -ESSAY: Taking the Right Seriously: Conservatism is a tradition, not a pathology (Mark Lilla September 11, 2009, The Chronicle Review)
    -ESSAY: The Legend of Edmund Burke (Bertram D. Sarason, Summer 1955 , Dissent)
    -ESSAY: Moving Portrait: Conservatives have long debated the conflict between liberty and tradition. (Richard Brookhiser, May 11, 1979, National Review)
    -VIDEO PANEL DISCUSSION: Conservative Thinkers of the 20th Century (AHTV - Progressive/Conservative Summit, April 16, 2016)
    -ESSAY: "Reverence for the Archetype": The Pragmatic Conservatism of Peter Viereck (Robert Lacey, Anamnesis)
    -ESSAY: Peter Viereck’s View of Metternich’s Conservative Internationalism (Gergely Egedy, West Bohemian Historical Review)
    -REVIEW: of Conservatives Against Capitalism, by Peter Kolozi (Lyle Jeremy Rubin, Jacobin)
    -ARCHIVES: Peter Viereck (Unz Review)
    -ARCHIVES: Viereck (National Review)
    -ARCHIVES: viereck (American Conservative)
    -ARCHIVES: viereck (Imaginative Conservative)
    -ARCHIVES: viereck (Kirk Center)
    -REVIEW: of Conservatism Revisited by Peter Viereck (Gertrude Himmelfarb, January 1950, Commentary)
    -REVIEW: of Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology by Peter Viereck: With a major new study of Peter Viereck and Conservatism by Claes G. Ryn (Michael Federici, University Bookman)
    -REVIEW: of Conservatism Revisited (Daniel Larison, American Conservatism)
    -REVIEW: of Conservatism Revisited (Dwight MacDonald, November 13, 1949, New Republic)
    -REVIEW: of Conservatism Revisited (Hans Rothfels, Journal of Modern History)
    -REVIEW: of Conservatism Revisited (American Political Science Review)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Reading Peter Viereck Anew : a review of Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals by Peter Viereck and Unadjusted Man in an Age of Overadjustment by Peter Viereck (Charles C. Brown, University Bookman)
    -REVIEW: of The Unadjusted Man (Edwin Fogelman, Commentary)
    -REVIEW: of The Unadjusted Man (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Metapolitics by Peter Viereck (Think Classical)
    -REVIEW: of Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals, by Peter Viereck (Robert Gorham Davis, Commentary)
    -REVIEW: of Shame and Glory (Michael J. Halberstam, March 26, 1953, Harvard Crimson)
    -REVIEW: of Archer in the Marrow, The Applewood Cycles, 1967-1987, by Peter Viereck (Thomas D'Evelyn, CS Monitor)