Editors’ note: The following is an edited version of remarks delivered for a gala dinner of the Otto von Habsburg Foundation in Budapest, Hungary, on November 19, 2022.

There have been few conservative minds—or souls, for that matter—like that of Otto von Habsburg (1912–2011).

I first met Otto von Habsburg in 1965, on account of that least conservative of all human impulses: the arrogance of youth.

I was a twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Salzburg and the part-time deputy editor of a small journal nurturing conservative thought on American college campuses. I was too young and foolish to know how presumptuous it was for me to ask an archduke, one of the great men of the age, to write for my little magazine.

Being a great man, though, Dr. Habsburg forgave my impertinence, on the same grounds that ultimately fostered our friendship: his implacable generosity and my incurable Americanness. That first meeting in southeastern Bavaria eventually yielded “The Effects of Communism on Cultural and Psychological Politics in Eastern Europe”—a seven-thousand-word tour de force of continental breadth and humanistic depth.

I begin with this story not to brag about my acquaintance with the great man, but to affirm the source of his greatness: his elevation of and commitment to the human person.

In truth, there are as many conservatisms as there are people in the world.

It is telling that the conference surrounding this dinner was titled “Conservative Minds,” plural—because conservatism is