Barron YoungSmith at The New Republic thinks conservatism should be studied in schools. Up to a point, YoungSmith is right; the ignorance of conservative ideas never ceases to amaze. But I would disagree with this:
American conservatism actually has nothing to do with Burke, other than drawing street cred off his deceased personage. The conservative movement began with William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, and Russell Kirk himself during the 1950s, in a magazine called National Review--and it was revolutionary, bombastic, and eager to overhaul American society, not Burkean.
This rather reinforces the point about ignorance. Some people just can't understand the difference between wanting to remake society and wanting to remake government to get it out of society's way. As I have said before: conservatives believe that governments cannot change men, but we do believe that men can and should change their governments. That's why Burke himself was favorably disposed towards the American Revolution (YoungSmith's cramped concept of Burkeanism assumes that a conservative can never be a revolutionary) but not the French.