The Conservative Mind (by Russell Kirk), Part I

"Kirk's text was not only a huge, 450-page distillation of the thinking of 150 years of the intellectual right; it was also a relentless assault on every left-wing panacea and error imaginable. The perfectibility of man, contempt for tradition, political and economic leveling-these were, in Kirk's view, the most prominent among post-1789 attacks on social order. Liberalism, collectivism, utilitarianism, positivism, atomistic individualism, leveling humanitarianism, pragmatism, socialism, ideology ("the science of idiocy," said John Adams)-these were some of Kirk's targets. Moreover, at times he criticized capitalism and industrialism; the automobile, for example, he labeled a "mechanical Jacobin." Kirk, in short, left no stone unturned. Here was a full-scale challenge to modernity." (from George Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945) http://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Mind-Burke-Eliot/dp/9659124112/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329446517&sr=1-1