Movement conservatism

Last updated

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.

Contents

In the 1970s, two more impulses were added with the addition of neoconservatives and the religious right. [1] :344 Emmett Tyrrell, a right-wing writer, says, "the conservatism that, when it made its appearance in the early 1950s, was called the New Conservatism and for the past fifty or sixty years has been known as 'movement conservatism' by those of us who have espoused it." [2] Political scientists Doss and Roberts say that "The term movement conservatives refers to those people who argue that big government constitutes the most serious problem.... Movement conservatives blame the growth of the administrative state for destroying individual initiative." [3] Historian Allan J. Lichtman traces the term to a memorandum written in February 1961 by William A. Rusher, the publisher of National Review , to William F. Buckley Jr., envisioning National Review as not just "the intellectual leader of the American Right," but more grandly of "the Western Right." Rusher envisioned philosopher kings would function as "movement conservatives". [4]

Recent examples of writers using the term "movement conservatism" include Sam Tanenhaus, [5] leading paleoconservative Paul Gottfried, [6] and Jonathan Riehl. [7] New York Times columnist Paul Krugman devoted a chapter of his book The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) to the movement, writing that movement conservatives gained control of the Republican Party starting in the 1970s and that Ronald Reagan was the first movement conservative elected president. [8]

History

Journalist John Judis writes that before William F. Buckley established the journal National Review in 1955, anti-leftist forces varied "from free market anti-New Dealers to traditionalists like Russell Kirk to anti-Semitic crackpots like Gerald L. K. Smith". Buckley "knit together" the strands he thought respectable and boycotted "kooks" and others he thought would hurt conservatism. [9]

Paul Krugman described the rise of movement conservatism in his 2007 book The Conscience of a Liberal as occurring in several phases between 1950 and Reagan's election as president in 1980. These phases included building a conceptual base, a popular base, a business base, and an institutional infrastructure of think tanks. By the 2000s, movement conservatives had substantial control over the Republican Party. [8]

Conceptual base

Editor William F. Buckley Jr. (left) and former President Ronald Reagan were dominant leaders of the movement from the 1950s to the 1980s William Buckley and Ronald Reagan.jpg
Editor William F. Buckley Jr. (left) and former President Ronald Reagan were dominant leaders of the movement from the 1950s to the 1980s

Author and magazine editor William F. Buckley Jr. was one of the founding members of the movement. His 1951 book God and Man at Yale argued against Keynesian economics, progressive taxation and the welfare state and gave him a national audience. In 1955, he founded National Review , which provided a platform for arguing the movement conservative viewpoint. His emphasis was on an anti-Communist foreign policy and a pro-business, anti-union domestic policy. However, in its early days the magazine also included sentiments of white supremacy. In the August 24, 1957 issue, Buckley's editorial "Why the South Must Prevail" spoke out explicitly in favor of segregation in the South. It argued that "the central question that emerges... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race." [10] [11] When Buckley ran for mayor of New York in 1965, he may have been the first conservative to endorse affirmative action, or, as he called it, “the kind of special treatment [of African Americans] that might make up for centuries of oppression.” He also promised to crack down on labor unions that discriminated against minorities, a cause even his liberal opponents were unwilling to embrace. Buckley pointed out the inherent unfairness in the administration of drug laws and in judicial sentencing. He also advanced a welfare “reform” plan whose major components were job training, education and daycare.

In 1969, in his capacity as founding editor of National Review, launched a decade and a half earlier as a “conservative weekly journal of opinion” that stood in opposition to the dominant liberal ethos of the time, Buckley toured African-American neighborhoods in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and Atlanta organized by the Urban League and afterward singled out for special praise “community organizers” who were working “in straightforward social work in the ghettos.” In an article in Look magazine months later, Buckley anticipated that the United States could well elect an African-American president within a decade, and that this milestone would confer the same reassurance and social distinction upon African Americans that Roman Catholics had felt upon the election of John F. Kennedy. That, he said, would be “welcome tonic” for the American soul. This Buckley, who emerged in the years after 1965, bore little resemblance to the one who, eight years earlier in 1957, had penned "Why the South Must Prevail". [12]

The movement also gathered support from such disparate sources as libertarian Monetarists like economist Milton Friedman and neoconservatives like Irving Kristol. Friedman attacked government intervention and regulation in the 1950s and thereafter. Other free market economists began rejecting the expansion of the welfare state embodied in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Friedman also associated himself with the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, the first time a movement conservative ran for president, unsuccessfully in this case. Irving Kristol and the magazine The Public Interest were another source of intellectual direction for the movement. During the 1960s, Kristol and his associates argued against the Great Society policies of President Lyndon B. Johnson, which had expanded the welfare state through Medicare and the War on Poverty. [8]

Robert W. Welch Jr. founded the John Birch Society in 1958 as a secret grass-roots group to fight Communists, who Welch said controlled much of the American establishment, and whose agents included even Eisenhower himself. Welch used the dues to build an elaborate organizational infrastructure that enabled him to keep a very tight rein on the chapters. [13] Its main activity in the 1960s, says Rick Perlstein, "comprised monthly meetings to watch a film by Welch, followed by writing postcards or letters to government officials linking specific policies to the Communist menace". [14] After its quick rise in membership William F. Buckley, Jr. and National Review mobilized movement conservatives, including Goldwater himself, to denounce the John Birch Society as an extremist fringe element of the conservative movement. [15] [16]

In support of Goldwater in 1964, Reagan delivers the TV address, "A Time for Choosing", launching him to national prominence in politics

Ronald Reagan was a key figure in expanding the popularity of movement conservatism from intellectual circles into the popular mainstream, by emphasizing the dangers of an excessively large federal government. In October 1964, Reagan delivered a speech as part of his support for candidate Goldwater titled "A Time for Choosing". The speech represented the ideology of movement conservatism, arguing against big government bureaucracy and welfare while also denouncing foreign aid. The speech was widely applauded and gave Reagan a national audience. He was elected Governor of California in 1966 and 1970. [17] [18]

In the wake of civil rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1968, many white southern Democrats began shifting to the Republican Party. This ended the exceptionalism of the "one-party South" in presidential elections and brought significant additional political power to the Republican Party, although these voters were not necessarily movement conservatives. [19] In 1994, for the first time the Republicans controlled the majority of the house seats from the South, and by 2014 had gained a virtual monopoly of state and national offices throughout most of the South. [20]

Business base

Movement conservatives embraced an anti-regulation and anti-union message as part of their appeal to business interests, with whom they had common ground in terms of tax policy. [21] For example, in 1958 Barry Goldwater referred to influential union leader Walter Reuther as a "more dangerous menace than the Sputnik or anything Soviet Russia might do to America." While unions had a strong presence in major northern manufacturing industries, many southern and western states had significantly less union presence, and many business leaders wanted them to remain that way. [22] [23]

Institutional infrastructure

In the late 1960s and 1970s, movement conservatives persuaded wealthy individuals and businesses to establish a conservative intellectual and political infrastructure. This includes think tanks that resemble academic institutions but publish studies supporting conservative and libertarian arguments. The American Enterprise Institute was founded in 1943, but was expanded dramatically with new funding in 1971. The Heritage Foundation was created in 1973, and the Cato Institute was founded in 1974. [8]

Impact of the movement

Selected economic variables related to wealth and income equality, comparing 1979, 2007, and 2015. U.S. economic variables related to the distribution of wealth and income.png
Selected economic variables related to wealth and income equality, comparing 1979, 2007, and 2015.

According to Krugman, movement conservatives drove America's shift to the political right in the 1970s and 1980s and "empowered businesses to confront and, to a large extent, crush the union movement, with huge consequences for both [increasing] wage inequality and the political balance of power." Union representation nationally in the U.S. declined from over 30% in the 1950s to 12% by the early 2000s. [8] Fareed Zakaria stated in November 2016 in describing a book about conservative Alan Greenspan: "It's also a vivid portrait of the American establishment as it moved right from the 1970's to the 1980s and 1990s." [24]

Political roles

Scholars have traced the political role of movement conservatives in recent decades. Political scientist Robert C. Smith reports that in the 1960 presidential election, "While movement conservatives supported Nixon against Kennedy, the support was half-hearted." Smith notes that National Review, edited by William F. Buckley Jr., called Nixon the lesser of two evils. [25]

Historian William Link, in his biography of Jesse Helms, reports that "By the mid-1970s, these movement conservatives wanted to control the Republican Party and, ultimately, the national government." [26]

Phyllis Schlafly, who mobilized conservative women for Reagan, boasted after the 1980 election that Reagan won by riding "the rising tides of the Pro-Family Movement and the Conservative Movement. Reagan articulated what those two separate movements want from government, and therefore he harnessed their support and rode them into the White House." [27]

However, movement conservatives had to compete for President Reagan's attention with fiscal conservatives, businessmen, and traditionalists. Nash (2009) identifies a tension between middle-of-the-road republicans and "movement conservatives." [1] :346 Conservative historian Steven Hayward says, "Movement conservatives bristled at seeing the GOP establishment so well represented in Reagan's inner circle", and they did not realize how well this arrangement actually served Reagan. [28]

To sabotage movement plans, the fiscal conservatives sometimes would leak movement conservatives' plans to the press. [29]

New Left historian Todd Gitlin finds that, "movement conservatives of a religious bent had to be willing to accept a long-term strategy for limiting abortion (via legislation banning partial-birth abortion, and certain statewide bans), rather than go for broke with a probably doomed constitutional amendment." [30]

Movement conservative publications and institutes

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>National Review</i> American conservative editorial magazine

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 the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief is Rich Lowry, and its editor is Ramesh Ponnuru.

Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1960s during the Vietnam War among foreign policy hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s. Neoconservatives typically advocate the unilateral promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, grounded in a militaristic and realist philosophy of "peace through strength." They are known for espousing opposition to communism and political radicalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William F. Buckley Jr.</span> American conservative author and commentator (1925–2008)

William Frank Buckley Jr. was an American conservative writer, public intellectual, and political commentator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young Americans for Freedom</span> Conservative youth organization

Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) is a conservative youth activism organization that was founded in 1960 as a coalition between traditional conservatives and libertarians on American college campuses. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and the chapter affiliate of Young America's Foundation. The purposes of YAF are to advocate public policies consistent with the Sharon Statement, which was adopted by young conservatives at a meeting at the home of William F. Buckley in Sharon, Connecticut, on September 11, 1960.

<i>The Conscience of a Conservative</i> 1960 book by Barry Goldwater and L. Brent Bozell Jr.

The Conscience of a Conservative is a 1960 book published under the name of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who was the 1964 Republican presidential candidate. It helped revive the American conservative movement and make Goldwater a political star, and it has influenced countless conservatives in the United States, helping to lay the foundation for the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William A. Rusher</span> American attorney and journalist (1923–2011)

William Allen Rusher was an American lawyer, author, activist, and conservative columnist. He was one of the founders of the modern conservative movement and was one of its most prominent spokesmen for thirty years as publisher of National Review magazine, which was edited by William F. Buckley Jr. Historian Geoffrey Kabaservice argues that, "in many ways it was Rusher, not Buckley, who was the founding father of the conservative movement as it currently exists. We have Rusher, not Buckley, to thank for the populist, operationally sophisticated, and occasionally extremist elements that characterize the contemporary movement."

Robert Henry Winborne Welch Jr. was an American businessman, political organizer, and conspiracy theorist. He was wealthy following his retirement from the candy business and used his wealth to sponsor anti-communist causes. He co-founded the John Birch Society (JBS), an American right-wing political advocacy group, in 1958 and tightly controlled it until his death. He was highly controversial and criticized by liberals, as well as some conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr. only after being an early donor to Buckley’s National Review in the 1950s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mel Bradford</span> American politician (1934–1993)

Melvin Eustace Bradford was an American conservative author, political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rick Perlstein</span> American historian and journalist (born 1969)

Rick Perlstein is an American historian and journalist who has garnered recognition for his chronicles of the post-1960s American conservative movement. The author of five bestselling books, Perlstein received the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his first book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Politico has dubbed him "a chronicler extraordinaire of modern conservatism."

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. It is one of two major political ideologies of the United States. 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Viguerie</span> American conservative figure (born 1933)

Richard Art Viguerie is an American conservative figure, pioneer of political direct mail and writer on politics. He is the current chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.

Conservatism in North America is a political philosophy that varies in form, depending on the country and the region, but that has similar themes and goals. Academic study into the differences and similarities between conservatism in North American countries has been undertaken on numerous occasions. Reginald Bibby has asserted that the primary reason that conservatism has been so strong and enduring throughout North America is because of the propagation of religious values from generation to generation. This connection is strongest in mainstream Protestantism in the United States, and both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fusionism</span> Political construct to align conservative and libertarian views

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.

<i>The Conscience of a Liberal</i> 2007 book by Paul Krugman

The Conscience of a Liberal is a 2007 book written by economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. It was 24th on the New York Times Best Seller list in November 2007. The title was used originally in Senator Paul Wellstone's book of the same name in 2001. Wellstone's title was a response to Barry Goldwater's 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative. In the book, Krugman studies the past 80 years of American history in the context of economic inequality. A central theme is the reemergence of both economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Krugman analyzes the causes behind these events and proposes a "new New Deal" for America.

Medford Stanton Evans, better known as M. Stanton Evans, was an American journalist, author and educator. He was the author of eight books, including Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (2007). he died of cancer on March 3 2015 at Virginia at age 80.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of modern American conservatism</span>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intercollegiate Studies Institute</span> American conservative organization

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) is a nonprofit educational organization that promotes conservative thought on college campuses.

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 Russel Kirk.

References

  1. 1 2 Nash, George H. (2009). Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism. ISI Books. ISBN   978-1-935191-65-0.
  2. Tyrrell, R. Emmett (2010). After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery. Thomas Nelson. p. 127. ISBN   978-1-59555-272-3.
  3. Doss, Marion T.; Roberts, Robert North (1997). From Watergate to Whitewater: The Public Integrity War. Bloomsbury Academic. p. xiv. ISBN   978-0-275-95597-7.
  4. Lichtman, Allan J. (2008). White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 240. ISBN   978-0-87113-984-9.
  5. Tanenhaus, Sam (2010). The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences. Random House Publishing. p. 10 and book title. ISBN   978-0-8129-8103-2.
  6. Gottfried, P. (2009). Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 137. ISBN   978-0-230-61479-6.
  7. Riehl, Jonathan (2007). The Federalist Society and Movement Conservatism: How a Fractious Coalition on the Right Is Changing Constitutional Law And the Way We Talk and Think About It (PhD thesis). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. doi:10.17615/32hd-y571.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. ISBN   978-0-393-06069-0.
  9. Judis, John B. (27 February 2008). ""He Was A Rebel, But Not A Heretic"". The New Republic. Retrieved 10 August 2024.
  10. Judis, John B. (2001). William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives. Simon and Schuster. p. 138. ISBN   978-0-7432-1797-2.
  11. Wilentz, Sean (2009). The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008. HarperCollins. p. 471. ISBN   978-0-06-074481-6.
  12. Felzenberg, Alvin (May 13, 2017). "How William F. Buckley, Jr., Changed His Mind on Civil Rights". Politico .
  13. Schoenwald, Jonathan M. (2002). "3. A New Kind of Conservatism: The John Birch Society". A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-515726-0.
  14. Rick Perlstein (2001). Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. Hill and Wang. p. 117. ISBN   978-0-7867-4415-2.
  15. Regnery, Alfred S. (2008-02-12). Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism. Simon and Schuster. p. 79. ISBN   978-1-4165-2288-1.
  16. Chapman, Roger (2010). Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices. M.E. Sharpe. p. 58. ISBN   978-0-7656-1761-3.
  17. Ritter, Kurt W. (1968). "Ronald Reagan and 'the speech': The rhetoric of public relations politics". Western Journal of Communication. 32 (1): 50–58. doi:10.1080/10570316809389549.
  18. Ronald Reagan, "A time for choosing" (1964) Online Archived 2015-01-19 at the Wayback Machine .
  19. Shafer, Byron E.; Johnston, Richard (2009). The end of Southern exceptionalism: class, race, and partisan change in the postwar South. Harvard University Press. ISBN   978-0-674-03249-1.
  20. McKee, Seth C. (2012). "The Past, Present, and Future of Southern Politics". Southern Cultures. 18 (3): 95–117?. doi:10.1353/scu.2012.0027. S2CID   144826349.
  21. Phillips-Fein, Kim (2006). "Top-Down Revolution: Businessmen, Intellectuals, and Politicians Against the New Deal, 1945–1964". Enterprise and Society. 7 (4): 686–694. doi:10.1093/es/khl045.
  22. Zelizer, Julian E.; Phillips-Fein, Kim, eds. (2012). What's Good for Business: Business and American Politics since World War II. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN   978-0-19-975400-7. excerpt
  23. Friedman, Gerald (June 2000). "The Political Economy of Early Southern Unionism: Race, Politics, and Labor in the South, 1880-1953". Journal of Economic History. 60 (2): 384–413. doi:10.1017/S0022050700025146. JSTOR   2566376. S2CID   154931829. Archived from the original on 2016-03-06.
  24. "Fareed Zakaria GPS November 20, 2016". CNN Fareed Zakaria GDP. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  25. Smith, Robert C. (2010). Conservatism and Racism, and Why in America They Are the Same. SUNY Press. p. 114. ISBN   978-1-4384-3232-8.
  26. Link, William A. (2008). Righteous warrior: Jesse Helms and the rise of modern conservatism. Macmillan. p. 193. ISBN   978-0-312-35600-2.
  27. Critchlow, Donald T. (2005). Phyllis Schlafly and grassroots conservatism: a woman's crusade. Princeton University Press. p. 267. ISBN   978-0-691-07002-5.
  28. Hayward, Steven F. (2009). The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989. Crown Forum. p. 9. ISBN   978-1-4000-5357-5.
  29. Williams, Linda Faye (1996). "Tracing the Politics of Affirmative Action". In Curry, George E. (ed.). The affirmative action debate. Basic Books. p. 254. ISBN   0-201-47963-X.
  30. Gitlin, Todd (2007). The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals. John Wiley & Sons. p. 126. ISBN   978-0-471-74853-3.

Further reading