The rise of the conservative movement of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan revealed liberalism’s hour to be but a passing moment. Yet, today, something far beyond conservatism seems to be afoot.

As Hegel taught, in the dialectic of history the thesis calls into existence the antithesis. What we seem to be seeing is a rejection, and a counterreformation against the views and values that came out of the social and political revolutions of the 1960s.

Consider the settled doctrine Trump disrespected with Pruitt.

We have long been instructed that climate change is real, that its cause is man-made, that it imperils the planet with rising seas, storms, that all nations have a duty to curb the release of carbon dioxide to save the world for future generations.

This is said to be “scientific truth,’’ and “climate deniers’’ are like people who believe the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. Some hold the matter to be so grave that climate deniers should be censored for promoting socially destructive falsehoods.