George H. Nash | |
|---|---|
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| Born | April 1, 1945 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Amherst College Harvard University |
| Occupation | Historian |
George H. Nash (born April 1, 1945) is an American historian and interpreter of American conservatism. He is a biographer of Herbert Hoover. He is best known for The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, which first appeared in 1976 and has been twice revised and expanded.
Nash graduated from Amherst College in 1967 and received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1973. He is an independent scholar who lectures and consults widely. From 1975 to 1995, he lived in Iowa to work at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, where he wrote three volumes of a definitive, scholarly biography, ending in 1918, commissioned by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association. He did research in hundreds of manuscript collections and archival sources in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Nash published numerous essays on Hoover. Most recently, he edited and wrote a long introduction to Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath (2011).
Nash's essays have appeared in the American Spectator, Claremont Review of Books, Intercollegiate Review, Modern, National Review, New York Times Book Review, Policy Review, University Bookman, Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals. He has lectured at the Library of Congress; the National Archives; the Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson presidential libraries; the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum; the Hoover Institution; the Heritage Foundation; the McConnell Center; and various universities and conferences in the United States and Europe.
In 2019, Nash said, "I would describe myself as a fusionist with a traditionalist tilt", referring to the conservatism promoted by Frank Meyer (1909–1972) in the National Review magazine. [1] He accepts capitalism and the individual liberty it requires. But liberty is not enough, he believes, and he stresses the importance of religion and the pursuit of personal virtue, as argued by the conservative traditionalists. [2]
In mid-2019, Nash evaluated the Trump presidency:
Nash argues that Trump has shattered the fusionist consensus within conservatism. On every front, Nash claims, Trump has challenged or subverted the conservative orthodoxy. He has abandoned the doctrine of free trade in favor of protectionism. He pays lip service to traditionalist concerns, and he pursues pro-life policies, but his past positions and personal conduct clash with social-conservative sensibilities. He has called into question the merits of the NATO alliance, sounding, when he does, like an isolationist. For Nash, Trump is in many ways an aberration from, rather than a fulfilment of, the ideas of the conservative intellectual movement. [2]
From 1987 to 1990, Nash served on the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS), a federal agency. He has served on the editorial advisory board of Modern Age and is a Senior Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
Since 2004, he has been an Associate of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University. From 2006 to 2008, he served as president of the Philadelphia Society. [3] In 2008, he was the recipient of the annual Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters, created by the Ingersoll Foundation. [4] In 2014, he joined the National Advisory Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Historian Jennifer Burns, evaluating The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 concluded in 2004:
It is a rare work of history that remains the authoritative treatment of its subject nearly thirty years after publication, cited by numerous contemporary historians for its content and scholarship rather than as an historiographical curio.... Nash's book, based on his Harvard dissertation, has become literally the first and last word on the topic....[it] achieved this dominance because he was the first historian to cast aside the stale interpretive legacies of the 1950s....Today, his work exerts a deep influence on our common understanding of conservatism in America, an influence that is deserved but nonetheless in need of critical appraisal. [5]
Examining conservative intellectual history, Kim Phillips-Fein writes in 2011:
The most influential synthesis of the subject remains George H. Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Tradition since 1945, first published in 1976. Nash sought to counter the condescension of the consensus scholars who assumed that conservatives had no serious intellectual life. He argued that postwar conservatism brought together three powerful and partially contradictory intellectual currents that previously had largely been independent of each other: libertarianism, traditionalism, and anticommunism. Each particular strain of thought had predecessors earlier in the twentieth (and even nineteenth) centuries, but they were joined in their distinctive postwar formulation through the leadership of William F. Buckley Jr. and National Review. The fusion of these different, competing, and not easily reconciled schools of thought led to the creation, Nash argued, of a coherent modern Right." [6]
Phillips-Fein concludes, "There is, as yet, no work of intellectual history that challenges Nash's synthesis, and it is difficult to overstate the impact that it still has on the field." [7]
Historian Ellis W. Hawley, evaluating the first volume of the Hoover biography in the American Historical Review, says that Nash's descriptive detail ranges from "rich and fascinating" to "excessive and tedious." Hawley concludes:
Throughout, the quality of the scholarship, the sifting and use of evidence, the imaginative reconstruction of relevant historical contexts, and the ability to communicate all deserve high marks." [8]
Historian Stanley Shapiro calls the third volume "definitive," saying it belongs to "a special class of scholarly achievements: meticulous in archival research, richly detailed, magisterial in its command of the domestic and international politics of the war period, and always patient and even-handed in judging men and events." [9]
| External videos | |
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 George H. Nash, Ph.D, discusses research at the Hoover Presidential Library (December 9, 2014) |
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Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and was the director of the U.S. Food Administration, followed by post-war relief of Europe. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1928 before being elected president in 1928. His presidency was dominated by the Great Depression, and his policies and methods to combat it were seen as lackluster. Amid his unpopularity, he decisively lost reelection to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.
National Review is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief is Rich Lowry, and its editor is Ramesh Ponnuru.
Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and a paternalistic strain of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, traditionalist conservatism, and non-interventionism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s as well as with paleolibertarianism. By the start of the 21st century, the movement had begun to focus more on issues of race.
William Frank Buckley Jr. was an American conservative writer, public intellectual, and political commentator.
Frank Straus Meyer was an American philosopher and political activist best known for his theory of "fusionism" – a political philosophy that unites elements of libertarianism and traditionalism into a philosophical synthesis which is posited as the definition of modern American conservatism. Meyer's philosophy was presented in two books, primarily In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (1962) and also in a collection of his essays, The Conservative Mainstream (1969). Fusionism has been summed up by E. J. Dionne, Jr. as "utilizing libertarian means in a conservative society for traditionalist ends".
Conservatism in the United States is based on a belief in individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to U.S. states. Conservatism is one of two major political ideologies of the United States with the other being liberalism. Conservative and Christian media organizations and American conservative figures are influential, and American conservatism is a large and mainstream ideology in the Republican Party and nation. As of 2021, 36 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative, according to polling by Gallup, Inc.
The Claremont Review of Books (CRB) is a quarterly review of politics and statesmanship published by the conservative Claremont Institute. A typical issue consists of several book reviews and a selection of essays on topics of conservatism and political philosophy, history, and literature. Authors who are regularly featured in the Review are sometimes nicknamed "Claremonsters."
The Old Right is an informal designation used for a branch of American conservatism that was most prominent from 1910 to the mid-1950s, but never became an organized movement. Most members were Republicans, although there was a conservative Democratic element based largely in the Southern United States. They are termed the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors who came to prominence in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
These are the references for further information regarding the history of the Republican Party in the U.S. since 1854.
In American politics, fusionism is the philosophical and political combination or "fusion" of traditionalist and social conservatism with political and economic right-libertarianism. Fusionism combines "free markets, social conservatism, and a hawkish foreign policy". The philosophy is most closely associated with Frank Meyer.
Traditionalist conservatism, often known as classical conservatism, is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of transcendent moral principles, manifested through certain posited natural laws to which it is claimed society should adhere. It is one of many different forms of conservatism. Traditionalist conservatism, as known today, is rooted in Edmund Burke's political philosophy, which represented a combination of Whiggism and Jacobitism, as well as the similar views of Joseph de Maistre, who attributed the rationalist rejection of Christianity during previous decades of being directly responsible for the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution. Traditionalists value social ties and the preservation of ancestral institutions above what they perceive as excessive rationalism and individualism. One of the first uses of the phrase "conservatism" began around 1818 with a monarchist newspaper named "Le Conservateur", written by Francois Rene de Chateaubriand with the help of Louis de Bonald.
Herbert Hoover's tenure as the 31st president of the United States began on his inauguration on March 4, 1929, and ended on March 4, 1933. Hoover, a Republican, took office after a landslide victory in the 1928 presidential election over Democrat Al Smith of New York. His presidency ended following his landslide defeat in the 1932 presidential election by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, after one term in office.
Movement conservatism is a term used by political analysts to describe conservatives in the United States since the mid-20th century and the New Right. According to George H. Nash in 2009, the movement comprises a coalition of five distinct impulses. From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists made up this coalition, with the goal of fighting the liberals' New Deal.
This timeline of modern American conservatism lists important events, developments and occurrences that have affected conservatism in the United States. With the decline of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party after 1960, the movement is most closely associated with the Republican Party (GOP). Economic conservatives favor less government regulation, lower taxes and weaker labor unions while social conservatives focus on moral issues and neoconservatives focus on democracy worldwide. Conservatives generally distrust the United Nations and Europe and apart from the libertarian wing favor a strong military and give enthusiastic support to Israel.
This is a selective bibliography of conservatism in the United States covering the key political, intellectual and organizational themes that are dealt with in Conservatism in the United States. Google Scholar produces a listing of 93,000 scholarly books and articles on "American Conservatism" published since 2000. The titles below are found in the recommended further reading sections of the books and articles cited under "Surveys" and "Historiography." The "Historiography" and "Critical views" section mostly comprise items critical or hostile of American conservatism.
The history of conservatism in the United States is different from many other forms of conservatism throughout the Western world. There has never been a national political party in the United States called the Conservative Party. All major American political parties support republicanism and the basic classical liberal ideals on which the country was founded in 1776, emphasizing liberty, the pursuit of happiness, rule of law, consent of the governed, fear of corruption, and equal rights before the law. Political divisions inside the United States often seemed minor or trivial to Europeans, where the divide between the Left and the Right led to violent political polarization, starting with the French Revolution.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) is a nonprofit educational organization that promotes conservative thought on college campuses. It was founded in 1953 by Frank Chodorov with William F. Buckley Jr. as its first president. It sponsors lectures and debates on college campuses, publishes books and journals, provides funding and editorial assistance to a network of conservative and libertarian college newspapers, and finances graduate fellowships.
Traditionalist conservatism in the United States is a political, social philosophy and variant of conservatism. It has been influenced by thinkers such as John Adams and Russell Kirk.
The following is a list of important scholarly resources related to Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States. For recent work see Ellis W. Hawley (2018). For older studies see Patrick G. O’Brien and Philip T. Rosen, (1981), 25–42, 83–99 and Patrick G. O’Brien, (1988).
Foreign policy of Herbert Hoover covers the international activities and policies of Herbert Hoover for his entire career, with emphasis to his roles from 1914 to 1933.
