I think outside the professional think tanks, which seem to specialize in putting out conservative (reactionary) bullshit, most US conservatives use a hand me down sort of ideology. The garbage thought in No Child Left Behind is typical. Once the think tanks decorate NCLB with what sound like well thought through argument, those become mere chatter repeated over and over.
Strauss and Oakeshott put out a much higher level nonsense, but nonsense all the same. What's behind this higher level is an attack on democractic institutions and even the pretense of them under a republic form of government. What S & O add are semi-rational arguments that make believe democratization of society is the problem, rather than the solution.
Their vision is a strick hierarchy of upper class power along with `expert' intellectuals like themselves who rule the unwashed masses. While S (and probably O) distain business, their aristocratic views of society meld well into the capitalist class as a justification for its wealth and power.
Their problem with the enlightenment is the implicit destruction of such a hierarchical society. While I haven't studied Marx much, I think I can already see he was a child of the enlightenment, he studied it through Hegel and others and much of his work has an implicit foundation in that tradition. Certainly the Cubans picked this theme up and installed it in their public institutions in education and medicine.
The project of mass literacy is at the core of what S&O consider the problem with modernity. When I say literacy, I mean more than the ability to get through a newspaper. I mean a few steps up, enough to be a well informed member of society.
What do I mean by well informed? Informed enough to recognize that most of the US political elite are the enemy and have little or no intention of representing The People.
CG
PS. Mike B, can you post a different link to the article. All I got was a Yahoo ad and request to login. Maybe title and author would do.