"The Neglected Tradition of High Church Conservatism"

"Reviving the Constitution depends on restoring the tie between church and state," rightly says Daniel McCarthy in a brilliant essay — What Would Burke Do? The first paragraph:

Edmund Burke might not like what American conservatism has become. With its devotion to abstract rights, democracy, and perpetual growth, the American Right today looks more like a stepchild of Thomas Paine than an heir to the author of Reflections on the Revolution in France. But Burke would recognize the conservative movement’s rhetoric of liberty, its anti-elitism, and its alienation from institutions of authority. Those are the hallmarks of a disposition Burke described as “the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.” In 1775, that was how he characterized the creed of Britain’s rebellious New England colonies. Today, those words apply to the faith of many in the Republican Party’s base.