In our day, order is pretty well taken care of. The delicate balance that ideally exists between freedom and order has long since tipped against freedom practically everywhere on earth. In some countries, freedom is altogether down and order holds absolute sway. In our country the trend is less far advanced, but it is well along and gathering momentum every day. Thus, for the American Conservative, there is no difficulty in identifying the day’s overriding political challenge: it is _to preserve and extend freedom_. As he surveys the various attitudes and institutions and laws that currently prevail in America, many questions will occur to him, but the Conservative’s first concern will always be: _Are we maximizing freedom?_ I suggest we examine some of the critical issues facing us today with this question in mind. FOOTNOTE: [1] This is a strange label indeed: it implies that “ordinary” Conservatism is opposed to progress. Have we forgotten that America made its greatest progress when Conservative principles were honored and preserved. CHAPTER TWO The Perils of Power The New Deal, Dean Acheson wrote approvingly in a book called _A Democrat Looks At His Party_, “conceived of the federal government as the whole people organized to do what had to be done.” A year later Mr. Larson wrote _A Republican Looks At His Party_, and made much the same claim in his book for Modern Republicans. The “underlying philosophy” of the New Republicanism, said Mr. Larson, is that “if a job has to be done to meet the needs of the people, and no one else can do it, then it is the proper function of the federal government.” Here we have, by prominent spokesmen of both political parties, an unqualified repudiation of the principle of limited government. There is no reference by either of them to the Constitution, or any attempt to define the legitimate functions of government. The government can do whatever _needs_ to be done; note, too, the implicit but necessary assumption that it is the government itself that determines _what_ needs to be done. We must not, I think underrate the importance of these statements. They reflect the view of a majority of the leaders of one of our parties, and of a strong minority among the leaders of the other, and they propound the first principle of totalitarianism: that the State is competent to do all things and is limited in what it actually does only by the will of those who control the State.