The last of a week long series of Civil Discourse in a Democracy lectures, sponsored by the Institute on National Affairs was held on Monday night.

Theodore J. Lowi, a senior professor of American Institutions at Cornell University, gave a lecture titled “The Consequences of the New Conservatism.”

Lowi began his lecture by speaking of the historical paths of the United States’ two streams of ideology — conservatism and liberalism.

He said that historically this country has been a commerce republic, strictly utilitarian and had no coercion to regulate.

He said that the federal level of the government houses liberalism and the state governments house conservatism.

The two co-existed for 140 years on different levels, he said. Lowi said each survived because each inhabits the federalism of the U.S. Constitution.

He said that conservatism lent to this system because the people believed state governments dealt with more fundamental issues than the federal level.

He said conservatives only wasted their time by going to Washington because only the state’s laws concerned them.

Lowi said this era of conservatism is not new. He said it’s difficult to decipher between different degrees of conservatism and liberalism.

Lowi said he views the radical right as a sickness.

“If Clinton is a waffler it’s because the Republican Party is teetering back and forth and he wants to find out where they are,” Lowi said.

Lowi, who collaborated with Robert F. Kennedy on the book “In Pursuit of Justice,” has written several of his own books including “The End of Liberalism,” “The Politics of Disorder,” and “The End of the Republican Era.”