MB Civic

By JASON DePARLE

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Headed for what she called “conservative boot camp,” Christina Pajak grabbed the essentials: dress sandals, her Bible and “The Politics of Prudence” by Russell Kirk, the celebrated writer who a half-century ago gave the conservative movement its name.

If she had not found Kirk, he would have found her. At a monthlong retreat for college conservatives here, he was both required reading and a source of after-hours debate among students excited to hear him called “one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite philosophers.”

Young people with old books is a common sight on the conservative circuit, and perhaps a growing one. While the movement has long sought to transmit its intellectual heritage to its young, that mission shows signs of new urgency amid fears of ideological drift.

Everywhere young conservatives turn there are conferences, seminars and reading lists that promote figures from the movement’s formative years. Along with Kirk, they include such canonical names from the 40’s and 50’s as Friedrich A. Hayek, Frank S. Meyer, Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley Jr.

Ms. Pajak, 18, who was home-schooled in Andover, Minn., will be a freshman this fall at Wheaton College, an evangelical school in Wheaton, Ill. While her conservatism springs from her upbringing, the literature “helps me explain what I already believe,” she said. “I don’t want to just say, ‘Oh, it’s because I was raised this way.’ ”

Every political movement has its texts. But James W. Ceaser, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, argues that the conservative focus on core thinkers has no exact parallel among liberals.

“It doesn’t mean they’re not interested in ideas,” Professor Ceaser said. “It means their approach to politics doesn’t rest on theory in the same way.”

Liberalism’s main tenets formed earlier, he said, in the Progressives’ expansion of government, and are conveyed as assumptions rather than matters requiring theoretical debate.

The retreat here is run by the Young America’s Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Arlington, Va., that has long run weekend seminars. A $2.5 million gift allowed the group to begin this expanded effort, the Ronald Reagan Leadership Academy. With an inaugural class of 26, it combines classroom study with public speaking lessons and visits to Reagan’s former ranch.

At a foundation event last year, Ms. Pajak met a fellow student who urged her to join him in reading “The Politics of Prudence.” Their long-distance romance now includes comparing notes about which of Kirk’s 10 conservative principles they find most compelling. (Ms. Pajak is partial to No. 1: “There exists an enduring moral order.”)

Many conservatives say they have to promote their own thinkers because scholars and journalists ignore them. “They don’t study us; they’re ignorant of who we are,” said Floyd Brown, who runs the foundation’s West Coast office. “You can find college courses on all sorts of radical left-wing ideas, but you can’t find a course on Russell Kirk.”

Donald Devine, a lecturer here, said the task of teaching conservatism had changed with political success. When he began to lecture four decades ago, “we had to make the term ‘conservative’ respectable,” he said. “Now ‘conservatism’ has become such a popular word it doesn’t mean anything. The challenge is to decide what is truly conservative.”

Two students here tried to do just that one night after dinner. Ana Lightle, a senior at the University of Baltimore, had just read Kirk’s book “The American Cause.” He wrote it after the Korean War, in part to define, as he saw them, the principles the United States had defended.

“Now we’re fighting a war in Iraq, and people say it isn’t our business,” Ms. Lightle said. “I have this core belief — that the true state of man is free — and the best way we have to be free so far is through democracy.”

“Kirk just nailed it on the head,” she said.

Matthew McCorkle had doubts. “The way President Bush has phrased it — ‘If you support terror we’ll take you out and install a democracy’ — may be biting off more than you can chew,” he said.

Mr. McCorkle, a junior at Hillsdale College in Michigan, countered with a different Kirk book, “The Roots of American Order,” which traces the roots of American civilization to ancient Jerusalem and Rome.

“My impression is that Iraq doesn’t have those roots,” Mr. McCorkle said. “We’re dealing with a sapling here.”

Kirk, who died in 1994, wrote 32 books, the most famous being “The Conservative Mind,” which was published in 1953. It championed 150 years of conservative thought, and offered “conservative” as a unifying label for the right’s disparate camps.

These days, a bookish conservative has many places to turn. The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y, runs programs on free-market economics. The Heritage Foundation, a Washington group, offers courses for interns and Capitol Hill staff members. The Claremont Institute, in Claremont, Calif., emphasizes the founding principles of the United States.

The emphasis on philosophy, over policy mechanics, may reflect the movement’s origins as an insurgency. “A conservative who stays simply at the level of fighting policy battles may win some significant victories, but he’s still playing the liberal game of tweaking big government,” said Charles R. Kesler, who runs the Publius fellowship program for Claremont. “These thinkers give you the chance to step back and think outside the liberal box.”

Here, the students’ conservatism varied. Jaimie Ucuzoglu wants to keep taxes low and abortion legal. Chris Meece calls abortion “barbaric.” Drawing on Kirk’s notion of “prudence,” Ms. Pajak, an abortion opponent, would allow it in rare cases because “if you tried to outlaw abortion right now, it’d still be there in the back alley.”

One common trait is a reverence for Reagan, who left office when they were infants. Most focused less on his policies than his magnetism, what Lauren Wilson called his “immense amount of character.”

“I love Ronald Reagan,” said Ms. Wilson, who attends Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. “One of the biggest things was his affection for Nancy; it’s just obvious they were each other’s world.”

Some conversation strayed from the canon. Dormitory banter cheered on Ann Coulter, the best-selling provocateur. Arguing for private property, Mr. Devine, the lecturer, noted “there are bums all over here” downtown, and “they sit on public property, not private property.” He lamented the prosecution of Kenneth Lay, the late Enron executive convicted of fraud, by asking, “Do you think it’s possible for a rich person to get justice in the U.S. today?”

One highlight was a trip to Rancho del Cielo — “the Western White House” — which the Reagans sold to the foundation in 1998 for $4.5 million. It consists of a surprisingly modest stucco home, set on 680 acres of horse trails and mountain brush.

Lecturing from a tent beside the home, Mr. Devine, who was the head of government personnel in the Reagan administration, seemed moved as he remembered his old boss. He reminded the students that the president “gained strength from Russell Kirk and Friedrich Hayek” and urged them “to be as good and decent and helpful as Ronald Reagan.”

That reminded Ms. Pajak of another line from Kirk, his call for “more elevation of spirit.” Without that, she said, reading from her well-thumbed book, “order, freedom, and justice fall into ruin.”