While conservatism is an ideology of reaction—originally against the French Revolution, more recently against the liberation movements of the sixties and seventies—the nature and dynamics of that reaction have not been well understood. Far from yielding a knee-jerk and unreflexive de fense of an unchanging old regime or a staid but thoughtful tradition alism, the reactionary imperative presses conservatism in two rather different directions: first, to a critique and reconfiguration of the old regime; second, to an absorption of the ideas and tactics of the very revolution or reform it opposes...