A number of conservative thinkers have been elegiac in their tone and writing: Michael Oakeshott, Edmund Burke (at times), Russell Kirk, and Roger Scruton.

But traditionally conservatism as a political vehicle in the Anglophone world has had a buccaneering, cavalier quality. You can see it in the dominance of the Tory party in the late 19th century. One detects it in the joyous pugnacity of G. K. Chesterton when he was at his humanistic best. One of the reasons Boris Johnson excited English voters was that he brought that spirit back, at least until the pandemic. And of course, that spirit was present in William F. Buckley’s founding of this magazine and his enterprising. One can detect that spirit of fun and even adventure in Justice Antonin Scalia’s writing.

Conservatism is at its most attractive when it relishes the fight against faddish orthodoxies. Where is that spirit now? Has it been surrendered partly to the populists who have been quicker to smash the clay idols in recent years? Is it a rare flower in political life, only coming out in particularly stormy seasons? Or is that sort of man rarer than we know?

A friend had suggested that he was lately playing with the term “pious” rather than conservative. For some that may sound quietist, or precious. But he wanted to imply that he had respect for traditions and institutions, but also that he was prepared, with a ready and able will, to go on some new adventure in the name of those traditions.

I don’t particularly care about getting the word right. But where is that spirit today, when we so desperately need it?