Perhaps your have read Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, or at least excerpts since Peter Gay's translation from the early 1960s runs more than 650 pages. I mention this famous work because the title of Nisbet's substantial but slighter volume invokes Voltaire. And in his conservative outlook he suggests Burke, who advocated the rational exploitation of prejudice as a method of social inquiry. Nisbet presents 70-odd reflections on various topics, however, the prejudices are more of the acerbic, Mencken variety. Thus Nisbet assails egalitarianism under a variety of headings, including "Envy" and "Genius." He argues against an Egalitarianism that represents a pathological way of thinking. His solution: a heavy dose of "liberty", with Burkean limits, that would "make acceptable the differences of strength, talent, and will which are as natural to the social as to the biological order. Related to this is his entry on "Victimology" in which he decries the creation of victims by do-gooders with the assist of the Leviathan state (written in 1982 these words are prescient).
Reflecting current preoccupations are sections on "Abortion" (Nisbet calls out the excessive moralism of both sides); "Environmentalism"--now a "redemptive movement" that has become, "without losing its eliteness of temper, a mass socialist movement of, not fools, but sun worshippers, macrobiotics, forest druids, and nature freaks generally, committed by course if not yet by fully shared intent to the destruction of capitalism" and further one more addition to the Leviathan state; and "Judicial Activism"--itself a symptom of the fact that our government is not democratic, "that is, fully responsive to the considered will of the people". Under the heading of "Tyranny" comes a meditation on the Jonestown episode; under the rubric of "Ideology," a discussion of the reaction to Three Mile Island ("No casualties, then or since, but the ranks of the nuclear doom-sayers have greatly enlarged since the nonevent at Three Mile Island").
I enjoyed his discussions of the humanities in sections including: "Genius", "Golden Ages", "Metaphor", "Originality", and "Humanities". The last of these he sees as an unfortunately pale reflection of what it once was, and area of thought in need of a renaissance. His reflections on these and other topics are not without flaws, but refreshing in comparison to the lack of reflection that is prevalent in the twenty-first century. Critics of these essays might take a moment to reconsider their own prejudices. ( )