In September 1960, several dozen young conservative intellectuals descended on National Review editor William F. Buckley Jr.'s estate in Sharon, Conn., to draft a manifesto. Terse but sweeping, it demanded victory over rather than coexistence with "international communism," and declared that when "government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation." Known as the Sharon statement, it helped forge the modern conservative movement. Half a century later, many of the movement's elders -- including former Reagan administration Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner Jr....