The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945

by George H. Nash

            First published in 1976, and revised in 1996, George H. Nash’s celebrated history of the postwar conservative intellectual movement has become the unquestioned standard in the field. This new edition, published in commemoration of the volume’s thirtieth anniversary, includes a new preface by Nash and will continue to instruct anyone interested in how today’s conservative movement was born.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, American History, American, Political Science

490 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1979

About the author

George H. Nash 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.

Reviews

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, let me say that Nash does a great job recounting the development of this movement. He shows how and why 3 strains of conservatism (traditionalists/values folks, libertarians, and ex-Leftists). He lays out their views in just the right amount of detail and shows the great variety of conservative thought in this period. Any 20th century American political historian should check out this book.

I came into this book hoping to find some interesting perspectives and possible challenges to my own classically liberal beliefs. Surely, I thought, somewhere in the conservative canon there are some valuable ideas even for a pretty committed liberal like myself? Well, I was generally disappointed. Pretty much anyone who was an ex-Leftist (with the possible exception of Irving Kristol) had the unsubtle radicalism of the recent convert. I found conservative philosophers and writers from this period to be highly regressive in their views, deeply detached from "real life" in America, and disturbingly unconcerned with civil rights and social justice. I hate to play the overused privilege card, but far too many of these men (yes, basically all dudes) preferred to keep traditions like local government alive even if those traditions held back people from their rights and welfare. Their views of Communism in America were paranoid and their foreign policy views, which focused on confrontation and rollback, were deeply irresponsible. Contrast this with Arthur Schlesinger's call to deal with the Communist threat without eroding civil rights and liberties. Conservatives in this era unfairly branded liberals as equivalent to Communists and leftists when any serious look at liberal (not Leftist) thought shows that they are absolutely not relativists (take for example their passionate beliefs in civil liberties, human rights, and social justice) nor Communists (completely exclusive ends and means). I can see the paucity of conservative thought today stemming from these lowly origins. The only philosophers I found greater respect for were Hayek and Friedman, whose thought is far more subtle and moderate than normally presented in academia. Hayek, for instance, fully believed in the state as a referee for economic activity, imposing standards such as safety, minimum wages, and anti-child labor laws, but did not want the state to become a player in that game.

It is important to frequently challenge one's ideology with the best the other side has to offer, especially at the level of first principles. After this book, I have found the conservative challenge wanting and my own liberalism confirmed.

[Patrick Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

2021-03-19 I read much/most of this my senior year in college and just after graduation. It was fascinating to find out about the several quite distinct focuses of the various individuals and groups that made up the conservative intellectual movement up to that time (1976).

The book started with the libertarian group of economists: Ludwig Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Leonard Read and other individuals and a few groups who focused on free markets and individual freedom primarily. So far so good, even though those individuals just mentioned did NOT think of themselves as "conservative" at all, but much more as (classical) liberals. I thought it was neat and significant that the author started the book focusing on this group, but was later dismayed to hear from him that that point was insignificant to him.

The next group Nash calls the "traditionalists" (or "trads" to libertarians) much more actual conservatives. The group highlighted in Chapter two focused on "The Revolt Against the Masses" - led by Richard Weaver, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Not nearly to my kind of liking at all.

Continuing in the traditionalist grouping, chapter three focused on those seeking "The Recovery of Tradition and Values." EU inspirational leaders here highlighted were T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis and the influential Jose Ortega y Gasset - "whom one critic dubbed the 'Counter-Enlightenment.'" Again, this group and it's ideas are generally at great odds with the libertarians. The Americans in this group included: Peter Viereck, Russel Kirk, Francis G. Wilson, Thomas Molnar, and others.

The third big grouping was the anti-communists, clarified in Chapter four: "Nightmare in Red." Names of leaders here, who were all former communists or sympathizers, but who found out up-close-and-personal what communism was really all about: Eugene Lyons, Max Eastman, William Henry Chamberlain, Freda Utley, James Burnham and others. Then of course, was the hugely famous and divisive, Whittaker Chambers.

Many others are portrayed too, and of course the history significant events and of why each significant person came to he/her understanding.

Another group needs mentioning too: the Fusionists, led by William F. Buckley, the founder and leader of National Review, Frank Meyer, best known for the term that describes this group that tried to take the best of each of the factions, and hold them together in a coalition that could make real advances against the totalitarians, interventionists, collectivists, socialists, etc.

The book was fascinating and difficult. Some positions are irreconcilable and some fit... at times. Some of the individuals in different groups will not work together, but some get along very well.

There is much here to consider, but the focus is so diffuse that it is hard to see how a candidate, and later president Reagan actually held it all together politically. Not that Reagan focused on the intellectual, but rather that he did appeal to them, in large measure, while his political leadership held sway.

The two generations of Bushes really had little appreciation for the libertarian/economics/individual liberty part of the coalition, so even though they won three elections, their policies destroyed much of the credibility that the Reagan coalition built some success on.

With Trump having almost no understanding of or commitment to the intellectual and principled parts of the movement, but winning one election on his fame/wealth/bluster and a very disagreeable opponent, the conservative intellectual and political movement seems to be in tatters.

[William Bies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confronted with a veritable deluge of writings by American conservatives ever since 1945, where can anyone wanting to study the post-war movement turn to orient himself? The consensus among present-day observers pins on George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006) recognition as the preeminent study of its subject currently available.

To set the scene for what follows, let us quote from the Introduction:

In 1945 no articulate, coordinated, self-consciously conservative intellectual force existed in the United States. There were, at most, scattered voices of protest, profoundly pessimistic about the future of their country….Shocked by totalitarianism, total war and the development of secular, rootless, mass society during the 1930’s and 1940’s, the ‘new conservatives’ urged a return to traditional religions and ethical absolutes and a rejection of the ‘relativism’ which had allegedly corroded Western values and produced an intolerable vacuum that was filled by demonic ideologies. [pp. xv-xvi]

Throughout, Nash’s style comes across as merely descriptive, containing hardly any analysis and no normative judgments: in a word, journalistic in a high sense but not in the least scholarly. What he is most fond of is naming names, by the dozens and dozens. His specialty lies in recounting anecdotes about the personal itineraries of major figures in an effort to trace the roots of their evolving thoughts and political affiliations. For instance, after a few paragraphs on the classicist Albert Jay Nock, this assessment:

In one important case—that of William F. Buckley Jr.—Nock’s impact was direct. Since Nock knew Buckley’s family and lunched often at their home in Connecticut, it was no surprise that the young Buckley was personally affected by Nock in the 1940’s. It was Nockian libertarianism, in fact, which exercised the first conservative influence on the future editor of National Review. [p. 12]

Thus, the interested reader can follow minutely all the circumstances surrounding, say, Russell Kirk’s personal background [pp. 67-74]; the founding of the influential quarterly Modern Age by Kirk in 1957 [p. 144] or the founding of the weekly National Review by William F. Buckley in 1955 [p. 147]; the ‘furor’ over Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism (which failed to ‘take conservatives by storm’), [pp. 157-159]; Frank Meyer’s attack on Kirk and, later, his successful reconciliation of opposed conservative factions in an integrated philosophy of so-called fusionism, expounded in his What is Conservatism? (1964), [pp. 160-161 resp. 174-177]; the liberal criticism of conservatism as un-American [pp. 190-194]; James Jackson Kilpatrick’s raising of the states’ rights argument to support segregation [p. 204]; Richard Weaver’s regionalist defense of the South [pp. 206-209]; and a lot more along similar lines.

On a supposed revival of religion during the 1950’s [pp. 56-57]: everyone whom Nash mentions was a lightweight (Fulton Sheen, Norman Vincent Peale, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, C.S. Lewis). Fulton Sheen’s spiritual writings, for example, are marred by his evident treatment of the gospel message itself as secondary to his obsessive anti-Communism. Looking back from our twenty-first-century vantage, any purported revival of ‘religion’ that may have occurred in the 1950’s can be dismissed as inconsiderable in the larger sweep of history, at most a temporary uptick in an otherwise centuries-long downward trend. The blithe Nash himself, needless to say, shows himself much too shallow to notice anything like this.

The main body of the text was completed in 1976 and is republished here with light revisions, along with an epilogue, ‘Conservatism Ascendant: The Age of Reagan and Beyond’, from the second edition in 1996, and a conclusion, ‘Whither Conservatism?’ written in 2006. Movement conservatism reached institutional maturity in the 1980’s. The immediate sequel was Newt Gingrich in 1994 (Gingrich was a college professor with a PhD in history and so heir to the whole intellectual movement, see p. 366). In the closing paragraphs [pp. 377-378], Nash senses that as of 2006 American conservatism was becoming unmoored by the end of the Cold War and in transition to something else about which he couldn’t quite be sure. The confident tone of his judgments—say, ‘A conservative crackup was also unlikely because, amidst all the verbal mayhem of the culture war, signs of cultural renewal continued to appear’ [p. 378]—is belied by the event, its having been revealed to be nothing but wishful and unfounded thinking!

Many of the articles and books featured resemble the ephemeral political tracts of today one can find in multitude on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. Nevertheless, through the decades conservative thinkers managed to produce some more substantial works, memorable enough for Nash to devote a few paragraphs each to—say, Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944); Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1949); Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences (1948); Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (1952) and Order and History (1956-1957); Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953); Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (1953); and Frank Meyer, What is Conservatism? (1964).

In all these debates, what is most salient is the absence of recourse to fundamental principles, such as the discerning reader will be familiar with from the great classics of political theory. The paraphrases of these books included here do give one a sense of their contents and of how they were received by other contemporary participants, but almost nothing more. For Nash plainly isn’t capable of analyzing and weighing ideas themselves, merely of reporting on who held what positions and how they propagated as part of a self-conscious movement. Thus it seems all one can get out of his work would be a book-length bibliographical review that helps one in locating what the actual intellectual sources of the movement were, but not very much in understanding them.

Hence, notwithstanding what one might be led to expect from its title, one could well characterize Nash’s undertaking in the present work as more a political than an intellectual history. The politics of the situation is the main item of attention and the ideas in play in the background receive only a subordinate interest. Now (as far as this recensionist can judge) Nash’s historical appraisals of the political causes of the major developments in the conservative movement since 1945 are probably right in the main which is why one should award two stars instead of just one to this book.

So, one can gather from this monograph by George H. Nash a blow-by-blow account of the mechanics of how the conservative movement succeeded but, in the process, learns almost nothing informative about its ideas or whether they are right or wrong. For the sake of comparison, recall for a moment how, back in the nineteenth century, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) or the early Karl Marx (1818-1883) draw on G.W.F. Hegel’s idealist philosophy to ground a rigorous and compelling atheistic vision of human existence and its ultimate purpose. How is that their bitter opponents, American conservatives in the post-war era, so signally fail to rise anywhere near to the level of originality exhibited by Feuerbach and Marx? They obviously aren’t in the same league.

The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit (John 3:8).

Was there ever an influential figure in twentieth-century America who responds to an authoritative call from God as do the Hebrew prophets of old, or like a Francis of Assisi, a Dominic or an Ignatius of Loyola? Nowhere. As far as one can tell—and Nash omits to marshal any persuasive evidence to the contrary—, it just so happens that the Spirit refrained from blowing in post-war America. For of a verity, the eventual demise of a principled and responsible conservative wing in American politics, beginning perhaps with Gingrich’s Contract with America and reaching its terminus but recently, demonstrates the intellectual vacuum that lay concealed there all along, at its heart.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent but frustratingly inadequate. Nash is honest, but he fails at a deeper task of the intellectual historian: to ask questions the intellectuals can't (or don't) ask of themselves. Intellectually speaking, this is a chronicle, not a history.

Nash generally takes at face value the highly contested concepts deployed by the New Right -- "individualism," "limited government," "tradition," etc. -- rather than inquire about their content. He does note that postwar American conservatism actually comprised at least three distinct strands of thought (libertarianism, traditionalism, and anticommunism) and that the exponents of these traditions ended up in bitter conflict, but he fails to ask any of his own questions about these ideologies' compatibility. That is, Nash dutifully reports numerous instances when one conservative scathingly attacked another in print, repudiated another's thought, or made a reluctant compromise -- but he never analyzes the reasons for these maneuvers, beyond reporting what the figures themselves wrote at the time. The result is a tendentious and incoherent account.

The Conservative Intellectual Movement is still useful today, however, as a chronicle of names and events.

[wyclif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely authoritative treatment of the subject. Does an excellent job of mapping out the various strands of postwar conservatism (libertarianism, anti-communism, and traditionalism) that have taken a backseat to neoliberalism in the latter part of the 20th century. I enjoyed this book far more than I thought I would upon picking it up. Scholarly, yet readable.

[Matthew Linton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic for a reason. Even though Nash is a conservative, his portraits of conservative luminaries like Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley show warts and all (particularly their abhorrent views on race and the civil rights movement).

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for any conservative minded individual, or any politically minded person, regardless of political persuasion. Would love to see another update in the next few years.

[Burt Schoeppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very intense book. Definitely worth the read, for someone interested in conservative thought.

Good as a resource to keep on the book shelf.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommend ESPECIALLY for non-conservatives

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great, very readable history covering up until the Obama/Tea Party years; I read this as part of a deep dive into the history of the conservative movement, inspired by the marginalization of “traditional” or “principled” conservatism since 2016. I am a political independent who might lean more progressive or conservative depending on the issue and context. In the post-Trump era, I happen to worry we have too little “real” conservatives around to preserve institutions and inspire a patriotic understanding of our nation’s history. I come away from the book with a fairly changed understanding of conservatism: whereas I’d understood traditional American conservatism to be fundamentally conservative of our liberal Founding, the movement from 1945-1970’s was hardly monolithic in that sense. “Traditionalists” later called paleoconservatives, for instance, were very distrustful of core liberal principles/libertarian individualism, one flavor of which became 1960’s left Liberalism. This was merely one facet of the intellectual diversity of the 20th century Right and, when understood in this framing, one might take a very different view of the current state of the conservative movement and factionalism within GOP than if 80’s Reaganism were your only frame of reference. Today is less a clean break from a neatly-uniform conservatism of the past, and more a period of flux for an always-tenuous compact among competing factions. Who comes out in control when the populist fever breaks is anyone’s guess. For me, that culminates in an optimism that anti-Trump conservatives may not be as firmly exiled as they now seem (particularly as I think the cultural pendulum is primed to begin swinging back toward traditional cultural mores in the face of clear excesses like “wokeness”), though a return to anything like Fusionism will have to overcome a deserved dearth of credibility.

Chapter summary below:

Intro
* Three ingredients to fusionism post WWII: libertarianism/anti-statism of Hayek, traditionalism/anti moral-relativism of Kirk, and anti-communism

Chapter 1
* Hayek’s libertarianism - Nock’s Remnant from 1920’s
* Road to Serfdom ‘44 - earlier than I thought and was a sensational hit; written from London when Labor Party took over and socialism was winning out
* von Mises was Hayek’s mentor; ~10ish years his senior
* Moves to U. Chicago
* Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and Mont Pelerin Society (revived) as first neo-liberal organizations 1947
* Chodorov, then Buckley on campus socialism; Buckley’s God and Man at Yale 1951; the two co-founding ISI - Intercollegiate Society of Individualists
* The Freeman magazine, FEE, ISI, MPS as four principal architects of the libertarian reconstruction

Chapter 2
* Richard Weaver - another example of conservative who’d been card carrying socialist - ended up at U Chicago during WWII; writes Ideas Have Consequences
* Moral relativism, positivism (abandonment of the metaphysical or theistic)
* Voegelin, Strauss (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke), Nisbet, and tendency of unconstrained 19th century liberalism toward totalitarianism - roots of red scare

Chapter 3
* Traditionalist conservatives
* Buckley, Hallowell, Viereck and post-war revival of Christian conception of evil and sin - not the Social Gospel nor liberal Protestantism.
* Eisenhower surprisingly and overtly religious - Presbyterian
* Tocqueville as creating space for healthy skepticism of too much democracy
* Peter Viereck’s ‘Conservatism Revisited’ first book to use the term after 1945.
* Turning fire on communists/authoritarians, not liberals
* Kirk ‘The Conservative Mind’ 1953 (age 35)

Chapter 4
* Anti-communism
* Revisionist history as last gasp of anti-interventionism in early post-war years - Charles Beard, William Henry Chamberlin, Morgenstern, Utley - called Yalta appeasement - had hoped Nazis and Communists would balance or destroy each other.
* These anti communists were a minority at the time as majority were enthralled with victory and inclined toward peaceful detente with USSR. But the seed was sewn.
* James Burnham as intellectual leader of the strong version of anti-communism; advocated crazy stuff - military confrontation, union with Great Britain, etc.
* Whitaker Chambers and Alger Hiss case; his book Witness and Man vs God, Communism vs liberalism. Also indicting secular liberalism by implication
* McCarthy
* 1954 Buckley Jr. and Bozell defend McCarthy in McCarthy and his Enemies
* McCarthy as only latest installment of “rabble rouser” politics begun by FDR fireside chats - hardened right with most of intellectual class (Rusher) not fans but some (e.g. Burnham) apologist/blamed the Left for creating reaction through unfounded attacks on him. Very similar to evolution of Trump apologia.
* Willmore Kendall - professor at Yale to Buckley, Bozell. Majoritarian argument against having Communists participate in democracy.
* Bruising, common struggle among factions against the Left attacking McCarthy helped forge [the anti-communist] part of the conservative movement.
* Buckle, others: McCarthy controversy branded, injured the movement for a generation

Chapter 5
* Relative rise of conservatism also benefits from disaffected/disillusioned Left. After FDR’s death and New Deal, war weary and accommodating of Soviets, what now?
* Fractiousness with far left; Reinhold Niebuhr’s Protestantism and Arthur Schlesinger Jr’s “vital center”; Henry Wallace’s loss in 1948 blow to Progressives
* “Vital Center” liberals most sympathetic to New Conservative cultural arguments; less so libertarian and anti-Communist. Speaks to the strength of the still-religious Left.
* The magazines. First Russell Kirk’s’ The Freeman’ collapses; National Review in 1955 as the fusionist platform
* Korean War starts and vindicates red scarers

Chapter Six
* Ayn Rand - atheistic libertarianism in conflict with religious National Review and Kirkian traditionalism.
* Kirk and Meyer cross swords over JS Mill, Enlightenment liberalism;
* Hayek’s 1960 essay ‘Why I’m Not A Conservative’ - distinction between Old Whig liberal and European conservatism.
* Rediscovery of Burke after some of his papers were released in 1949 - Kirk latched onto his institutionalism as traditionalism.
* Strauss began writing about the ancients as critique of modernity, which was by implication liberalism
* Burke natural law vs natural rights
* Fusionism; Meyer vs Bozell Jr.

Chapter 7
* Historical lineage of American conservatism
* Liberal critique that America is not Europe misread conservative “of what” - can be conservative of the liberal principles of the founding, and of non-feudal/non-hierarchical but still European/Protestant Christian sociocultural lineages
* Kirk and Weaver - traditionalist Burkean/Southern Agrarian strains
* Revolutionary liberalism of the Declaration of Independence vs the limited govt strictures of the Constitution - one document was conservative
* View of Lincoln as having overstepped and led to the omnipotent Executive
* Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. then Earl Warren as among most impactful progressive SCOTUS justices in terms of normalizing legislation from the bench
* Problematic argument that Brown v Board was an overstep; that pre-Civil Rights Act this was a 10A issue.

Chapter 8
* Straussians - Berns, Kirk, Kilpatrick… virtue over freedom. Favored judicial activism.
* Willmore Kendall - Okie prodigy turned Oxford-educated political philosopher. Spanish Civil War turned him bitterly anti-Communist
* Kendall: Great Tradition over liberalism/Lockeanism. Pointed out “all men are created equal,” after appearing in Declaration, is nowhere to be found in Preamble to Constitution nor Federalist Papers. Bill of Rights originally rejected. First Amendment merely limits Congress in favor of States’ suppression. Argument being the “individual rights” side of liberalism actually not core to founding
* Kendall: “due process” and “equal protection” clauses of 14th amendment troublesome as read too expansively; detract from 10th amendment and centralize power
* Jeff Hart, Dartmouth historian said Kendall among most important political thinkers of post WWII

Chapter 9
* Eisenhower years in 50’s to Nixon in 60, conservatives were disaffected with their president/candidate - even Buckley/Meyer were neutral - not strong enough on anti-communism, or aggressive enough on rollback of New Deal
* Cornuelle - rediscovering private sector “associations” (in Tocqueville’s terms) like churches, NGOs, civic groups that could soften conservatives’ cold/dry anti-statist message
* Milton Friedman and Chicago School - neoclassical economics emerging in early 1960’s coincident to growing disillusionment with government.
* Conservatives cast off Birchers and got serious just as chaotic leftist liberals started to look nihilistic to voters. National Review readership soared, Buckley’s syndicated column reached 300+ newspapers and he launched Firing Line. Friedman became Newsweek columnist. The message was starting to gel.

Chapter 10
* The 60’s student/campus revolts; Meyer and others talked about liberalism as an enemy that inherently begets “radical progeny” - it’s hard to chalk this up merely to a difference in terminology when Nash originally published in 1976 bc this is coming from Meyer and others. Peter Viereck wrote similar in 1949. How to square with modern principled conservatives’ assertion that American Conservatism has always been about conserving liberalism?
* Nash has answer to this: the tumult and nihilism of the 60’s Left, pushed the conservative movement to need to defend liberalism where for most of the preceding decade they’d been critical of its cultural excesses. This is ironic because I view my tendency toward exiled conservative positions as having been forced by the abandonment by most of the Right today of their supposed position safeguarding these principles.
* Bozell again stretching bounds of fusionism in mid-late 60’s with basically a predecessor to Catholic Integralism; he and Buckley estranged w/ latter regarding the former’s politics as anti-American
* Murray Rothbard 1968: in 40’s and 50’s the Right had been libertarian and isolationist; acolytes were Jefferson, Paine, Thoreau, Mencken, Nock and Chodorov. But with rise of McCarthyism and National Review, statist anti-Communism took over.
* ‘72 formation of the Libertarian party

Chapter 11
* Jeffrey Hart, Moynihan, Glazer, Kristol - among liberals late 60’s early 70’s moving right arguing for keeping order in wake of student protests
* ‘72 busing for racial disparities in educational attainment as proxy for bureaucratic overreach
* ‘65 Kristol and Bell found The Public Interest; Kristol’s neoconservatism as jettisoning the extreme ends of laissez faire and anti-communism while still embracing elements of both
* ‘69 Firing Line wine Emmy
* 1970 conservative movement enjoying strength - James Buckley upsets NY Senate race. YAF largest non-party political org; conservative publications record readership; prominent public intellectuals incl WFB, John Chamberlain, Jeffrey Hart, James Kilpatrick, RK, George Will; Chicago School and Milton Friedman popular amid disenchantment w/ gov’t; Mount Pelerin society 25th anniversary 1972
* Hayek corecipient of 1974 Nobel - recognition of increased respectability and influence of libertarianism
* At same time, cultural mores seem to be slipping further in wake of 60’s
* Conservative intellectuals had access to Nixon administration incl. RK, WFB, Arthur Burns at Fed, others (did not stem disenchantment overall with Nixon policies)
* Tension as to whether Meyer’s Fusionism was real or factions were too incoherent
Chapter 12
* Reagan Revolution - while hyperbole, signified transition of ideas from theory into practice
* Neocons expanding movement as liberals of Truman-Humphrey ilk
* Subsequent rise of New Right (religious right) as grassroots movement, eclipsing/co-opting Kirkian strand of cultural traditionalism
* 80’s and 90’s - conservative journals and think tanks proliferate, conservative literature eschews quest for self-definition and philosophical coherence in favor of “choose your own adventure” programming, and closer symbiosis with sympathetic politicians (enactment of supply side economics into policy being preeminent example)
* Paleoconservatives’ rise carrying torch of Old Right, America First; in conflict with neoconservatives’ fundamental liberalism
* Meanwhile, fall of the Iron Curtain raised question of movement’s viability without anti-Communist leg of the stool
Conclusion
* Ends with assessment of movement primarily re-energized by culture war; ground to make up at commanding heights of culture
* Bush friendly to religious right and neocons, but too big-government, too expansionist of executive power for many
* This assessment was in 2006, immediately preceding the Obama years, after which Reaganism would be judged too stale and too negative to win nationally, in wake of Romney loss then populist revolt of ‘16
* Still, Nash’s assessment at the time was that conservative movement too institutionalized to crack up

[Boone Ayala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another entry on the Know Your Enemy reading list!

Nash provides a good account of the emergence and alliance of three interrelated intellectual movements after WWII - the libertarians, concerned about the excesses of the New Deal and big government; the traditionalists, concerned about modern “gnostic” heresies which rejected natural law and embraced moral relativism; and the former Troskyites, whose disillusionment with communism (and especially Stalinism) led them to call for a defense of “western civilization” from the Soviet menace. Each of these was motivated by a perceived deficiency in mid-20th century liberalism.

Nash shows how figures like William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer helped to bring together an ecumenical conservative community, united in a common “fusionist consensus” which married libertarian critiques of the new deal welfare state with traditionalist belief in absolute natural law. (Incidentally, this book makes me appreciate Sam Tanenhaus’s recent Buckley biography much more - Buckley’s role as a unifier is on full display here). Conservatism never becomes a single coherent ideology, and it is frequently plagued by infighting. Yet figures like Buckley and the crucible of the Cold War keep it alive as a force in American politics, and ultimately lead to its ascent during the Reagan years.

This book was originally published in the 1970s, although this edition had a brief epilogue on Reagan and the early 90s. Nash notes in that epilogue that with the end of the Cold War and the proliferation of conservative organizations, the fusionist consensus seems in danger of breaking down. What holds conservatism together in the absence of a common apocalyptic foe? I think Furious Minds might make a good pairing with this, and act as its sequel.

I will note that this book, as an intellectual history, largely ignores politics and the popularization of conservative ideas (it is well and good to explain Bozell’s theory of freedom in his ghostwritten memoir for Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, but why did that view resonate with large numbers of voters?) It needs to be paired with other books which do that work - possibly Perlstein’s “Coming Storm”.

[Jean-françois Virey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely well-documented overview of what the title says, based on extensive reading, research and interviews with the main protagonists. It analyses the conservative movement as the aggregate of three initial strands (anti-Communism, libertarianism and traditionalism) with two later additions (the religious right and neo-conservatism). As a deep-ecology conservative myself, I was very curious to learn more about the movement before it got infected with anti-environmental, anti-vegan, anti-vaxx and conspirationist ideas, and was therefore very much healthier. I'm curious to know whether the worm was in the fruit even back then, or whether the movement just got hijacked by unscrupulous individuals and institutions, as we know it did, at least in part, through the funding of conservative and libertarian think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute by fossil fuel companies. I don't know whether it is because of Nash's lack of interest in the topic, or whether it is a true reflection of the movement in those decades (I suspect both), but I found only three references to environmental concerns among conservatives in this big volume.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well constructed intellectual history of the postwar conservative movement in America. Nash does a nice job of tracking the three different strands - libertarians ("I hate big government"), traditionalists ("The soul of the west is imperiled by secularism!!"), and anti-communists ("Better dead than red") that eventually intertwined to become the most potent force in American politics

[Matthew Dambro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful chronicle of the many threads that came together to make the Conservative movement after 1945. Nash's analysis of the internecine debates and squabbles between the many players is astute and entertaining. This volume is a must read for any Conservative in the United States.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential volume for every conservative library.

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history of the conservative movement since 1945. Read Russell Kirk first, then George Nash.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a conservative (or want to know about conservatism) then buy it. Read it now. Know your history.

[Michael Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Large book, slow read but valuable if you're looking for all the details. An exhaustive looks at all the principle scholars and advocates of Conservatism.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FASCINATING HISTORY OF THE MODERN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT

George Nash has also written books such as 'Reappraising the Right: The Past & Future of American Conservatism,' 'Books and the Founding Fathers,' etc.

First published in 1976 (mostly written when Nash was in graduate school), he wrote in the original Perface, "This book is about conservative intellectuals---those engaged in study, reflection, and speculation; purveyors of ideas; scholars and journalists... While extremists of the Right were often energetic... their contribution to conservatism as an intellectual force was negligible. The focus of this book is on a 'movement'---a movement of ideas, but one with visibly nonacademic and political aspirations... one whose objective was not simply to understand the world but to change it, restore it, preserve it." He admits, however, that "American conservatives themselves have had no such agreed-upon definition" of conservatism. (Pg. xv)

He states early on that men such as William F. Buckley, Henry Regnery, and Edmund Optiz "would have achieved broader intellectual significance were it not for their impulse in the 1940s to proselytize and organize." The solitary struggles of Albert Jay Nock were an inspiration, but "It was not, however, a formula for turning the tide here and now." (Pg. 16)

He observes that "one of the most remarkable features" of the movement is that it was heavily Roman Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, or critical of Protestantism. (Pg. 70-71) The movement was also "substantially" shaped by the McCarthy controversy of the 1950s. (Pg. 97) Another noticeable feature of the flagship magazine, 'National Review,' was "the prominence of ex-radicals in its coalition government." (Pg. 135) Conservatives also cherished "natural law---an objective moral norm---not subjective natural 'rights.'" (Pg. 153)

Nash writes that "Conservatives were in the uncomfortable position of opposing a 'revolution' already consummated and entrenched. In their desire to stand athwart history, yelling 'Stop,' conservatives naturally turned to those features of the American past that seemed most opposed ot the terrible menaces of the modern age." (Pg. 178)

He admits the liberal objection to the presence of "converts" in the movement: If they had been deceived by Communism once in their lives, could they be depended on now? Or were they perhaps inclined to exaggerate the resources of the enemy? Still, to conservatives, "the peculiar experience of the ex-Communists and European emigres were not a handicap at all. Indeed, it was an advantage. Perhaps these individuals... had divined the terrible meaning of Communism more profoundly than most others of their time." (Pg. 243-244)

He also documents the repudiation of Robert Welch and the John Birch Society for their "paranoid views," which were false and increasingly harmful to "informed anti-Communism." (Pg. 275)

This book is a marvelous, and detailed history, which is essential reading for anyone interested in the modern conservative movement.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh, I did not enjoy reading this at all. Nash is clearly a movement conservative, and his uncritical repetition of conservative ideological talking points fatally undermines what is otherwise one of the only intellectual histories of the origins of modern-day American conservatism. As someone deeply embedded with the people he's writing about, Nash is simply incapable of asking hard questions of them. The racism openly expressed on the pages of National Review in thr 1950s might as well never have happened. The right-wing apologias for white imperialism during the Cold War are brushed aside. The conservative opposition to civil rights in the 1960s is essentially ignored.

Likewise, Nash's contention that conservatism essentially did not exist before World War II is provocative but obviously false; it's just that the pre-war roots of conservative thought are generally filled with fundamentalists, anti-Semites, and KKK members, and Nash would rather not acknowledge them as being connected to the movement he clearly loves so much.

In all, Nash's book remains an invaluable resource for historians of conservative thought, largely because Nash spoke personally to so many key post-war conservative intellectuals and therefore has quotes and perspectives that cannot be found elsewhere. But as an actual intellectual history, it fails miserably, reading less like the objective account Nash wants it to be and more like a hagiography.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

How many other intellectual movements had a participant write its history, while the story was still ongoing, and have that history come to be accepted as a standard, informative (if obviously somewhat partial) work fifty years later? Well, Nash’s history of American intellectual conservatism still had that status when I was in grad school, as something of a boom in studies of postwar conservatism was going on, and as far as I can tell still has a good reputation. Nash was a Hoover Institute guy, and wrote a triple-decker biography of Herbert Hoover that tries to save his reputation. He was there for much of this story.

He tells it reasonably well, though with the kind of faux-erudite rhetorical flourishes that conservative dweebs used to throw around, before they traded them in for internet insults and racial slurs (and the sort of pseudo-erudition that fits in with those, sometimes, as a treat). The thing that has really lasted from this book is the concept of “fusionism.” Once upon a time, Nash tells us, there were three ideological strands. There were libertarians who believed that state power is the enemy, free markets are good, and that where governments were going in the mid-twentieth century, whether it was communism, fascism, or New Deal liberalism, was the path to hell. There were “traditionalists” (real heads know I have issues with that term), valuers of the (real or supposedly) old ways, religious types, people with assorted cultural bees in their bonnets, opponents of mass democracy. And there were the cold warriors, people who prioritized the battle against global communism over all else, many of them ex-communists themselves.

These three groups didn’t need to coalesce, but they did! And Nash tells the story. As it happens, they coalesced more on the intellectual level than anywhere else first. It wasn’t a good time for intellectuals of any of the three strains in the late forties, Nash tells us. Academia, journalism, the general intellectual scene understood conservatism of any kind as passé at best, closet nazism at worst. For all that they might have been lonely in the academy, an awful lot of these conservative intellectuals did have academic posts… almost as though they weren’t being persecuted at all…

In any event, they do what they can to promulgate their respective positions, writing books and starting little magazines, and eventually begin to make common cause. There’s a lot of infighting, traditionalists insisting people need to believe in god, libertarians trying to convince everyone Ayn Rand is cool, cold warriors not entirely convinced by the idea we need to return to god or the free market if either gets in the way of beating communism and the other two maybe a bit wary of getting blown to smithereens over Hungary. But, by and by, they get together, thanks in large part to magazines like National Review. National Review, with William Buckley’s panache (and money), manages to make a conservatism that glues the three strands together seem cool, even rebellious- one aspect of the postwar liberal hegemony that worked well for conservatism was its own notional outsider status (the other potential ideological outsider, actual leftism, was of course being hounded into the ground at the time- another advantage conservatism had).

Nash delivers blow-by-blow accounts of internal debates and development of positions with reasonable dash and interest. It all kind of does seem a little silly from my perspective, though, because it seems obvious what actually got conservatism over, and getting the fractious tribes all singing similar songs seems like icing on the cake. Money, race, and taking advantage of liberal arrogance- that’s what did it. One thing Nash seldom talks about — in keeping, really, with his sort of normative postwar conservative that likes business as a concept, as a producer of hierarchies, but doesn’t really like to think about money — is how all this got paid for, how a few millionaires and billionaires with bones to pick and labor forces to discipline played a huge role in keeping conservatism alive and figuring out how to get over with people. Nash acknowledges NR’s embrace of southern segregation and the way a lot of “traditionalism” was neo-confederate nostalgia, but does little to interrogate it. And, for all Nash’s laments for how unfair liberals were to intellectual conservatives — and when you’re dealing with the likes of Arthur Schlesinger and Daniel Bell, they’re gonna say some dumb, unfair shit — it’s also entirely clear that those same intellectuals left doors open and welcome mats clean for exactly what Buckley came to sell. Those liberals never missed a chance to “punch left,” as they say, and always wanted a suave, intellectual right to spar with, and often enough to suck up to. They really didn’t think it would turn into more than that, the fools.

That’s not to say the cosmetics weren’t important. The fact that Barry Goldwater both scared the shit out of people and lost hard to LBJ, and represented a more palatable face than postwar conservatism had yet to generate by 1964, is indicative of the problem. At least Goldwater looked and talked like someone who belonged in the late twentieth century, unlike, say, Bob Taft, William Knowland, Styles Bridges, whoever else. Buckley and the rest did a genuinely good sales job, and one thing good sales types know how to do is move with trends, even as they move them. After however many decades of rapid change, even if the savage furies of racism and reaction weren’t going to move people, someone who could sell nostalgia, especially if they could get over the idea that it wouldn't involve the bad parts of the past, could find buyers. They saw, maybe without quite knowing what they saw, that repackaging oldness — making it something new, ironically — for a new social and cultural environment was a viable play. I would have preferred closer analysis of that, but hey, Nash was writing as it was all going down and was hardly going to call his own guys sales slicksters. That kind of cynicism would come later, after his guys tore down almost everything that would have inhibited the powerful and sociopathic from open gloating. ****

[Tom Stamper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is essential reading for those interested in the different factions of the conservative movement from World War II until George W Bush. But unless you are interested in people like James Burnham, Frank Meyers, and Russell Kirk, the early part of the book is going to seem like a list of names. Of course, Bill Buckley is all through the book as the organizer and personality most associated with the movement among casual citizens until the emergence of Rush Limbaugh.

I especially enjoyed the post-Regaan schism between Neo-Conservatives like Bill Kristol and Paelo-Conservatives like Pat Buchanan, a conflict that flared up during the Iraq War when Kristol had the upper hand and reemerged during the Trump era when Buchanan's view was on top. Growing up in the 1980s all of these nuances were lost on me. Republicans wanted strong defense and Democrats wanted strong social services. They both seemed to like spending money.

It made me think about how Walter Mondale said that Republicans create depressions in his VP debate versus Bob Dole in 1976. Dole replied that Democrats start all the wars. It seems like we are back to that divide in 2023.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other books I have read by conservatives on conservatism have beat the drum for conservatism. This book presents a history that is informative without the promotion that makes one feel the author’s goal is really persuasion. I come away from reading it feeling better informed and even though I have a sense of the author’s feelings, he hasn’t tried to win me over. There are quite a variety of conservatives at any time and they change with time as well. I recommend this book to anyone to understand that better.

[Will Connelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very difficult read. Nash muddies up already muddy waters concerning the conservative intellectual movement. While he does well in tracing the history of the movement and the differentiation between the Old Right and the New Right,in the second half of this monograph often the threads of his argument get so intermingled they resemble a metaphorical knot. If you want to assign a book for your students that will create lots of negative discussion, this is the one.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much name dropping. Too much focus on newsletters and magazines that appeared in the 1950's and 60's. Nash tries to show how the development of Conservative thought evolved and how this evolution appeared with these new magazines but I don't think he is very convincing and the narrative becomes a little tedious.

I would like to try to do a better summary later but my initial thoughts were that the book was convoluted because the conservative movement was convoluted.

[Steve Herreid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely detailed - almost too much so - but invaluable work that traces the development of conservative thought in the US. Most if not all the disagreements within the "movement" today are nothing new. I loved this book.

[StephenM · Rating 5 out of 5]

read 70%.

[Chris McDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine history. Limited as it stops in the 70s, but an unparalleled picture of the Rights early days

[David Nanninga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative for sure, and its 3-legged stool definition of fusionism is very sturdy. Definitely has blind spots when it comes to race and southern agrarians though.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

an interesting synthesis of a lot of political thinkers, many I didn’t know. makes conservatism seem like it could be respectable and intelligent.