Unadjusted Man in the Age of Overadjustment: Where History and Literature Intersect

A biting critique of the American desire for normalcy that leads to a culture of the surrender of the personality. In contrast to this voluntary thought control process is the unadjusted person. Cast in the mould of great individualists from Thomas More to Friedrich Nietzsche, such a person responds to fundamental values of conscience rather than conformity built exclusively on ego gratification and icon worship. Peter Viereck criticizes the liberal presumption of a monopoly in critical thought. He argues to the contrary, that most varieties of liberal expression offer little else than the common platitude dressed up as critique. In such a cultural environment, conservatism is the skeleton in the liberal closet. The virtue of conservatism is that in its very stress on liberty as dependent on tradition and law, it permits the human being an opportunity to test all transient things by the touchstone of all lasting ideas. The study seeks to cut deep and in many directions: against left totalitarian regimes of Europe and right wannabes like McCarthyism in America. For Viereck, the art of conserving is not an embrace of utopias to come or empires that were, but retaining the sense of individuality over against the senselessness of the massman . Civil liberties in this approach are a right to non-conspiratorial dissent informed by fundamental values. This edition presents new material without an attempt to rewrite personal history, and with an admission that not every prediction made in the original edition has come to fruition. That said, the underlying themes of the original are not so much repeated as expanded upon.