… is from page 10 of the 1996 Liberty Fund collection of Frank Meyer’s essays, In Defense of Freedom (William C. Dennis, ed.); specifically, it’s from Meyer’s July 1955 Freeman article, “Collectivism Rebaptized” – an essay critical of the “New Conservatism” as embodied then in the thought of Russell Kirk (original emphasis):
It can be admitted that the long experience crystallized in traditional human wisdom is a necessary make-weight to the conclusions which reason would seem to dictate to a single group or even to the conscience of a whole generation But to make tradition, “prejudice and prescription,” not along with reason but against reason, the sole foundation of one’s position is to enshrine the maxim, “Whatever is, is right,” as the first principle of thought about politics and society. Such a position is immoral from any point of view….
