This stylistic difficulty and his questionable generalizations about Americans to the contrary notwithstanding, Kondylis reveals two strengths that American conservatives would do well to imitate. One, he contextualizes ideas, without reducing them to mere epiphenomena of other historical forces. Kondylis grasps the necessary relation between cultural and moral ideals and the social and political configurations in which they develop. He demonstrates the disintegration of a conservative vision, one based on fixed orders with corresponding duties and privileges, in a society then undergoing critical changes, namely urbanization and the Industrial Revolution. Those who wished to represent an already superannuated conservative vision lost their social base and were forced to modify their public stance to include bourgeois ideals.