Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

by Lisa McGirr

In the early 1960s, American conservatives seemed to have fallen on hard times. McCarthyism was on the run, and movements on the political left were grabbing headlines. The media lampooned John Birchers's accusations that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Mainstream America snickered at warnings by California Congressman James B. Utt that "barefooted Africans" were training in Georgia to help the United Nations take over the country. Yet, in Utt's home district of Orange County, thousands of middle-class suburbanites proceeded to organize a powerful conservative movement that would land Ronald Reagan in the White House and redefine the spectrum of acceptable politics into the next century.

Suburban Warriors introduces us to these women hosting coffee klatches for Barry Goldwater in their tract houses; members of anticommunist reading groups organizing against sex education; pro-life Democrats gradually drawn into conservative circles; and new arrivals finding work in defense companies and a sense of community in Orange County's mushrooming evangelical churches. We learn what motivated them and how they interpreted their political activity. Lisa McGirr shows that their movement was not one of marginal people suffering from status anxiety, but rather one formed by successful entrepreneurial types with modern lifestyles and bright futures. She describes how these suburban pioneers created new political and social philosophies anchored in a fusion of Christian fundamentalism, xenophobic nationalism, and western libertarianism.

While introducing these rank-and-file activists, McGirr chronicles Orange County's rise from "nut country" to political vanguard. Through this history, she traces the evolution of the New Right from a virulent anticommunist, anti-establishment fringe to a broad national movement nourished by evangelical Protestantism. Her original contribution to the social history of politics broadens--and often upsets--our understanding of the deep and tenacious roots of popular conservatism in America.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, 20th Century, Grad School, The United States Of America

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Lisa McGirr is professor of History at Harvard University.

Reviews

[Simon Purdue · Rating 4 out of 5]

In her study of 1960s suburban activism in Orange County, Lisa McGirr essentially argues that the 60s saw a counter-revolution. While college campuses and urban centers across the US were undergoing a left wing revolution of sorts, McGirr argues that the new, white, middle class suburbs were experiencing similar radical change. This change, however, was more reactionary and neo-conservative than revolutionary, and saw the emergence of the ‘New Right’. Often driven by middle class women and mothers, this neo-conservatism sought to ‘protect the family and the nation’, revolving back to an imagined, idealized era in which the nuclear family was centered and society was peaceful, traditional and essentially white. This movement of ‘suburban warriors’ sought to ‘turn the tide of liberal dominance’ and fight back against what they saw as the erosion of the core values of American society. These suburban warriors saw themselves as the true Americans, products of the social mobility that defined the American Dream. Their activism and grassroots organizing brought their brand of neo-conservatism from the McCarthyist fringes (portrayed by Hofstadter et al as a ‘marginal, embattled remnant’) into the mainstream of American politics, culminating in the election of Richard Nixon in 1969. The ‘kitchen table activist’ was crucial in the reformulation of American political life and the re-casting of the Republican Party from the Lincoln mold into the Southern, Christian Conservative Republican party we see today. McGirr’s central argument revolves around the idea that the emergence of modern conservatism was not so much a return to traditional values, but marked the creation of an entirely new ideology, formed by the forces of post-war consumerism and the re-orientation of the family that Tyler-May argues occurred in the post-war years. The suburb itself acted as a powerful force in the creation of this ideology, acting as a protected space in which ideas of otherness and exceptionalism could easily foster, in which the physical and social removal from the tumult of the city acted as a dividing force and made the 1960s revolution seem distant, unnecessary, and unwarranted.

[N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rivals the conservative movement in its dedication to explaining that the New Right wasn't racist. If you append "because they're racist" to the end of every sentence it's a good history.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

McGirr argued that the rise of the New Right, grassroots conservativism that fused anti-communism and attacks on the New Deal through an alliance with libertarians and social conservatives, was rooted in southern California’s Orange County in the 1950s and 60s. OC was populated by old protestant individualists and newcomers from the South and Midwest whom came because of the boom of the defense industry in Los Angeles. They rejected both the New Deal and the rising New Left, fueled by the apocalyptic anti-communist group the John Birch Society. The New Right in OC was grassroots by professional middle class business people who lived there, opening Freedom Forum bookstores, starting study groups, running in school board races, and finally working the Republican Party, which helped recast the Republicans as a party of Wall Street to one of the South and West.

Chapter one starts with how Southern California became prosperous, sewing the seeds of right-wing activism, through the defense industry spending, community of business people, and a long tradition of fierce property rights and protestanism. Chapter two starts with the stages of mobilization of the New Right, the first being in the 1950s as conservatives saw themselves long out of power and began forming intellectual roots in journals. The second was the mobilization of activists in the early 1960s, taking cues from McCarthyisms ideas, symbolism, and targets. Chapter three moves to the electoral roots of the take over by the New Right of local and state GOP, which set the stage for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Presidential run that almost doomed the conservative cause. Chapter four then looks at how conservatives responded to that disaster, by refocusing New Right intellectualism and shedding the apocalyptic anti-communism for a focus on domestic law-and-orderism and anti-tax activism. Chapter five then moves to how OC conservatives moved forward, electing Reagan in 1966, who became the spokesperson for the resurgent right-wing, with attacks on liberal permissiveness, welfare, criminality, big government, law and order, anti-communism, anti-tax, and a call to restore order as cities were rocked with riots. He appealed to middle class whites explicitely. Chapter six then moves to the rise of evangelical Christianity in OC in the 60s – 70s, which moved much activism of social conservatives towards church-based, especially around sex and abortion.

Key Themes and Concepts
-Orange County was the prototype of a middle to upper middle class suburbia that was the breeding grounds of the New Right, which spread out to other places such as Cobb County, Georgia, or suburban Phoenix, and more.

-The New Right had a throughgoing view, which was rooted in anti-egalitarianism and disdain for Communism, but switched its focus to attacking liberals and what they saw as the attacks on personal property and business.

-McGirr argues that conservatives saw themselves as outsiders to government from 1933-1981, and developed as a response to the New Deal, fighting against federal expansion to help citizens.

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors examines the rise of the right during the 1960s in California’s Orange County (“Reagan County). She cites this time and place as the origin of modern conservatism for the following two decades. The new right in California produced an emerging Republican majority because of three factors. First, before the post-war migration to the modernizing region of southern California, ranchers and small-businessmen already adhered to laissez-faire attitudes. The in-migration of Midwesterners and Bible Belters only further bolstered already strong Republican support. The growth of high-tech defense industries emphasized private industry, not the public spaces of an Affluent Society, and made most residents sympathetic to increased defense spending and a strong military. Finally, conservative groups (some affiliated with evangelical churches) provided messages that fit what middle-class Midwestern transplants were now seeing in the OC. They held anti-communist classes, thereby combining their values with political action.

Daniel Bell and Richard Hofstadter predicted that the ‘60s brought with it the death of the far right. They forgot to account for McGirr’s “Suburban Warriors” who, through positions in the defense industry, were affluent, well-educated, and had a global worldview (modernity). Bell and Hofstadter’s views were obfuscated by the extreme radicalism of the new left and the counterculture. On the right, extremists like the John Birch organization and especially the Goldwater campaign popularized the extreme side of conservatism, not the viable platform/values held by OC conservatives.
The first victory for these new righters was the election of Governor Reagan in ’66. Fed up with the extremism of the new left and the watts riots, Reagan won handily. Issues such as busing and lowering of taxes brought together factions of the right. In short, McGirr does a commendable job in explaining why OC was Reagan country, but this case study falls short in explaining fully the rise of conservatism for the nation. Certainly, Malaise, Vietnam, New York, the overall downfall of liberalism and international events such a détente and the Iranian Revolution all helped Reagan ascend to the presidency.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

When it was first published, Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors was relatively revolutionary. Deemphasizing Southern conservatism and the politics of the counter-civil rights movement more general, McGirr sought to explain the rise of the New Right in the 1960s through a local study of Orange County, California, a prototypical example of the rise of non-Southern conservatism in the nation more generally. McGirr emphasizes the “colorblindness” of the non-South New Right (i.e. outright ignoring or sidestepping civil rights, etc.), the key role of women as political force in conservatism, the rise of post-WWII conservative intellectualism, and the influence of anti-New Deal businessmen and revivalist Protestant religiosity (xii-xv).

McGirr argues that Orange County, with its political landscape defined by libertarianism, nationalism, and moralism, proved a fertile breeding ground for the conservative ideas dismissed as a politics of anxiety and psychological distress by the 1950s/1960s liberal “Consensus School” (5-14). Orange County’s position as an economic powerhouse fueled by Cold War federal defense spending, conservative elite bolstered by conservative migrants from the Midwest attached to the defense industry, the influence of evangelical Protestantism, libertarianism, extremist anti-communism, and anti-Eastern attitudes created the perfect storm for the rise of the Orange County archetype (21-50).

1960 to 1963 was a period of right-wing mobilization in Orange County. A general loss of concrete conservative political power and their marginalization during the presidencies of Eisenhower and Kennedy created a deep animosity to national politics and a desire for conservative revival, which played out in struggles over the influence of the ACLU in school boards and a rise in the influence and membership of the John Birch Society (59-79). Orange County conservatives tended to be middle-class professionals or their wives, doctors and dentists, aerospace industry managers and skilled workers, military officers and their families, as well as Orange County old-timers in the ranching world, etc. They were held together by a cultural opposition to wider California liberalism and influenced by national conservative intellectual currents and social networks (81-98). Local business tied to the Free Entreprise Association, evangelical and Catholic religious leaders and institutions, and the local Register under a libertarian editor “provided the infrastructure and ideas essential to the movement’s success” (98-110).

Orange County exercise disproportionate influence on the national development of conservatism with its mobilization in favour of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, securing the Californian primary for the conservative over his Modern Republican rival Rockefeller (111-112). The mobilization for Goldwater broadened “the scope of grassroots conservative influence,” while the image problem caused by connections to the John Birch Society caused the muting of more militant conservatives to make the rising New Right politically palatable (113-128). Influenced by William F. Buckley and his “Sharon Declaration,” “except in the Deep South…Goldwater won the votes only of those individuals who embraced a broader conservative worldview based on limits to federal government control and a strong defense, as well as states’ rights…” (134). Goldwater pulled support from the local Orange County business world, religious institutions, and the libertarian Register (134-138).

“The conservative worldview at the grassroots” in Orange County was characterized by “opposition to the liberal Leviathan…the postwar federal government,” the liberalization of U.S. social and behavioral norms, libertarian anti-statism, and an embracing of normative social conservatism which despised the Supreme Court’s “activism” and embraced a dualist good vs. evil cosmology (148-163). Political mobilization in Orange County was jointly libertarian and conservative, despite the inherent ideological contradictions, united by anti-statist attitudes, commitment to authority (God for the conservatives, private property for the libertarians), a common historical “national heritage” nationalism, and rising evangelical Christian libertarian thought (164-168). Uniting at the grassroots in the struggle for conservative worldview in children’s education, these activists also focused on broader issues in supporting anti-communist foreign hawkishness, anti-UN stances, and anti-civil rights discourse (168-185).

“Populist conservatism,” birthed in the 1965 gubernatorial campaign of a certain Ronald Reagan riding on Goldwater’s coattails, became a dominant political force by insisting on “unity” within the Republican Party, forcing the Modern Republicans to the conservative side while moderating right-extremists. Aided by PR embracing “conservative respectability,” the defection of “Jeffersonian” Democrats to his campaign, and general anti-student attitude galvanized by the activities of the New Left at UC Berkeley, Reagan rode the majoritarian conservatism to victory (189-210). This accompanied a general rise in conservatism nationally, with the election of Nixon to the Presidency in 1968. Ironically, the seemingly archconservative George Wallace and the American Independent Party was not conservative enough for the New Right—his dependence upon blue collar workers not yet cleaved from welfarism tied him to New Deal economic policy and lower-class support in a manner the middle-class Reaganites could not abide (210-216).

As they began to win, the conservatives put the old conservative organizations on the out: membership in the John Birch Society declined, the California Republican Assembly fell out of use as conservatives dominated actual party mechanism, and conservatives turned to single-issue, often cultural campaigns: obscenity laws, sex education, abortion (creating tension between the conservatives and libertarians), anti-tax movements, and anti-busing mobilization (225-241). Throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, Orange County experienced a religious revival under the influence of Chuck Smith and the Jesus Movement (who used New Left humanism to skewer it towards evangelicalism), the self-help Christian consumerism of Robert Schuller, Pentecostalism, and the rise of televangelism nationally (241-257). This culminated in the Christian anti-gay movement, which actually found little traction national beyond the most extremist elements of the conservative movement (257-259).

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lisa McGirr's Suburban Warriors is a key title in historians' assessment of the American Right's rise in the '60s and '70s. Prior to McGirr and a few contemporary works (Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm, Gregory Schneider's various works) the conservative movement was largely ignored by mainstream historians, who caricatured it as a collection of troglodytes motivated by "a series of mental gestures." McGirr focuses on Orange County, California which proved the seedbed of the New Right: deeply conservative, overwhelmingly white middle class Americans, the OC often served as a petri dish for rightist ideas that later caught on with broader Americans. McGirr focuses on grassroots organizing by locals, mostly middle class, small businessmen and their wives, who found themselves irritated by the "consensus politics" of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era and threw their weight behind conservatism. Orange County backed conservative politicians like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan at the onset of their careers; they also supported fringe groups like the John Birch Society and Young Americans for Freedom. McGirr argues that most were motivated by status anxiety, religious belief a belief in capitalism and fear of communism; she downplays the cultural issues of race, gender and that became the New Right's key to electoral success. In this she's not alone, as many books on the New Right drew a similar line between the fringes and movement conservatives. Still, McGirr's offers a useful corrective to simplified, caricatured views of conservatives and merely bigots, fools or tools of the extremely wealthy; that when mobilized and energized by a cause and candidate they believe in, they're a formidable force which no amount of liberal condescension can overcome.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right charts the rise of the conservative branch of modern American politics from its emergence after World War II to the Presidential election of 1980. The author seeks to show that the ideologies of the conservative, Right-wing movement are a product of the values of ordinary, everyday men and women rather than the fanatical, extremist radicals that other authors have attributed it to. She focuses on Orange County, CA as both a microcosm of the national movement and a vital breeding ground for many of the ideas that have come to be identified with cause. From the backyards and church pews of Southern California, the conservative movement went from a fringe group within the Republican Party to the dominant force that it is today.
To explain the transformation of the conservative movement into its current powerhouse, McGirr breaks it down into four eras of development, usually punctuated by a defining event that helps explain that eras goals. The first era is the birth of the movement in the late 1950s. Orange county was already a land of ranchers, farmers, “cowboy capitalists”, and real estate developers who all had a tradition of valuing “privacy, individualism, and property rights.” (30) As other people moved into the area, many of them had lost their sense of community and found it again in the Protestant church. Although they didn’t agree on everything, both old and new citizens of Orange County came together in their rejection of “federal regulations, the welfare state, and liberal popular culture.” (35) Above all, anticommunism “was the glue that united conservatives…bringing social and religious conservatives together with libertarians.” (35-36) This unity laid the groundwork for right-wing politics to grow in influence, both in Orange County and in similar communities nationwide.
McGirr’s second era is the deepening of the grassroots movement during the early 1960s and spreading of their cause nationwide. During this time, Orange Countians joined numerous pro-conservative organizations and committees while also starting community newsletters, pamphlets, and other literature to spread their views. The elections of 1958 and 1960 had been huge wins for the Democrats and many people felt the country was headed in the wrong direction. Conservatives began targeting schoolboards and Republican Party committees seeking to change the curriculum and get their message beyond just the local level. By 1961, social conservatives were winning local Republican Party positions, but they wanted control of a statewide organization. They focused on the California Republican Assembly and, by 1964, they were able to swing the Republican Presidential Nomination to Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative and a westerner. Despite Goldwater’s eventual loss to Lyndon Johnson, many saw his nomination as a victory. Southern California conservatives, in conjunction with their growing national network, had turned the Republican party away from the moderate views of Eisenhower and towards their own conservative agenda.
In Mcgirr’s third era, after Goldwater’s defeat, the conservative movement had grown in support both in Orange County and nationwide. With the backing of Republican Party, the Right-wing cause had become a populist movement and now had the numbers to challenge the Democrats for in national elections. However, with the new popularity, the movement had shifted its focus. Still based on a marriage of the “antistatist libertarianism and normative conservatism into a single political movement”, they shifted much of their animosity away from the foreign communists and toward the “liberal Leviathan” that was the federal government. (163-164) During these years, the American Right had continued to grow both in numbers and influence. The movement had become “an ideological tapestry wide enough to encompass a broad political movement.” (149) As its influence grew, they were able to win the California Governorship for Ronald Reagan and, in 1968, help win the White House for Nixon, who, while not a true conservative, did show that Republicans could win a national election and that they couldn’t do it without the conservative vote.
By the late 1960s,McGirr’s fourth era, American conservatism was definitely here to stay. Many of the organizations that had helped it begin as a grassroots movement had declined in significance, like the John Birch Society and the CRA, but rather than “signify that conservative activism had disappeared,” instead it showed “the character of grassroots movement had shifted.” (224) As rampant support of anticommunism had faded away, it was replaced with fights on many single-issue campaigns. Conservatives fought against obscenity, sex education, abortion, and gay rights. Most importantly, they fought against government taxation, specifically property taxes and some even wanted to abolish the federal income tax altogether. The fundamentalist, Christian churches continued to grow in influence, some becoming national podiums for Right-wing leaders. This all lead up to the 1980 Presidential election in which Reagan was voted into office as a true conservative and a Californian too. Not only did Reagan win the election, but it was by quite a large margin, showing that the conservative message had reached far beyond just Southern California and reached people across the country who found something to agree with in their message.
McGirr’s work is an excellent example of how 20th century history should be written. Extremely well-researched and written in an easily enjoyable style, she makes a solid argument for the importance of Orange County, CA not only a microcosm of the conservative movement but, in many way, its birthplace. She says it was not necessarily unique as a suburban city, but that it was “at the leading edge of economic and social changes that have propelled…conservative political culture.” (271) By picking a single, specific location, the author offers a less abstract, more concrete way to look at history that lets the reader feel more in touch with the subject. Additionally, McGirr’s method gives the reader a closer understanding of the people who lived during these events and what it was like for them going through it, which can help alleviate some of the presentism that often comes with reading a more broad history.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 2001, Suburban Warriors played a major role in shaping the scholarship on the conservative movement in the 1960s, which had been largely relegated to the deep background previously. If you've kept up with the scholarship, the book won't hold many major surprises. The idea that the rise of the right had multiple, complex sources is now well-established, as is the importance of grassroots activists. It now seems clear that Goldwater's defeat in 1964--probably inevitable for any Republican at the time--was in fact a watershed moment in the larger forces that catapulted Reagan to the presidency, inspired the Tea Party Movement, and have entered their late decadent phase with our current administration.

McGirr lays out all of those patterns clearly (though the long-term historical arc couldn't have been clearly anticipated when she was writing). Her portrait of the intersecting force that made Orange County, California, a kind of laboratory for the new right--most notably the intersection of Libertarian and Normative currents of conservatism (roughly free enterprise and moral absolutist religion)--remains definitive.

[Joey Randazzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friends close, enemies closer..

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I guess not everyone liked Ike

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right details the rise of conservatism in Orange County, California, beginning in the aftermath of World War II and culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan to the United States Presidency in 1980. She draws upon numerous secondary sources, dozens of oral histories, and a variety of other primary sources, such as the Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan papers, to construct her narrative on the rise of conservatism in Orange County. The book is quite effective in showing how incremental change over the decades led to the modern Republican party, which is almost unrecognizable from its forebearer. McGirr also especially emphasizes that this transformation was not accidental; instead, it resulted from organizing, fear-mongering, and the establishment of cultural identity.
McGirr begins the book by laying out the demographics for Orange County and what made it such fertile ground for a conservative grassroots movement compared to the rest of California. Orange County became a destination for transplants out west. Many of the new residents after the conclusion of World War II were military veterans who had maybe spent time in California during their service and thought the mild climate and burgeoning economy made for a great place to set down roots. The presence of numerous defense contractors in the area, along with military installations employing civilians, led to a population that had a propensity for conservative ideology to fill the county. Not to mention, the transplant community, many from the American South and Midwest, came along with their own cultural beliefs and strong Christian foundations.
McGirr describes how, in the 1950s, many citizens of Orange County became conservative activists. They joined local organizations with the aim of stopping the spread of communism and rooting out suspected communists from their community. Furthermore, these citizens were attempting to push back on the nation’s trend towards secularism. This is brought into focus during a vignette in the book in which a member of the Magnolia School Board is recalled from his position when it is discovered he is a member of the ACLU. His membership in a left-leaning organization was enough for a motivated segment of the county’s population to organize a successful recall campaign and have him removed from his position. These citizens were not professional provocateurs; rather, they were common residents and housewives who found purpose in involving themselves in a movement that promoted their ideals and perception of the world. McGirr provides evidence that this sense of moral purpose was felt by conservative activists, translated into perpetual political action and an identity. This identity linked their domestic life to their political activism and would help shape the movement for decades.

The John Birch Society comes up often in this book; this organization played a large part in influencing the rise of conservatism in Orange County. Although the leadership of the society was extremely wealthy conservatives with extreme ideology, those extreme positions did not necessarily reflect the leanings of the broader membership, but they did help guide it. The movements throughout the book are often referred to as being grassroots as they are organized and led organically; however, it is worth noting that the John Birch Society had a large influence in guiding many of these movements as they penetrated the state.
The experiences gained by these Orange County citizens during the 1950s and early 1960s led them to participate in Barry Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential bid. The politics of Goldwater reflected a more extreme version of conservatism that flourished in Orange County and the American South. Republicans in these areas were able to seize control of the Republican Convention away from the traditional East Coast leadership and forever shift the Overton window further to the right. Although Goldwater lost in a landslide, his campaign was vitally important to the Republican cause. It furthered notions of social programs as being somehow communist and that any taxes collected to fund such programs amounted to theft. In addition, this campaign brought the much more charismatic Ronald Reagan into focus on the national conservative stage as he campaigned for Goldwater. Although Republicans had lost on the national stage, Reagan was soon elected Governor of California and began his trajectory as an anti-communist, anti-tax leader that would eventually propel him to the White House.
Throughout the book, McGirr often describes the actions, beliefs, and/or motivations of Republican voters in Orange County. A better way to describe this would have been Republican activists. Obviously, there are many Americans in the past, just as there are today, who are not particularly politically informed, but do identify with one political party or the other. These low-information voters, in many cases, simply rubber-stamp whatever their preferred party's platform is with their vote and without much research or conviction. It is worth mentioning that the Republican Party’s shift to being evermore focused on race, taxes, immigration, and crime as rallying cards was not necessarily put forth by the voters themselves but by the highly motivated minority of Republican policy makers, activists, and politicians. The grassroots descriptions of these movements might have some truth to them, but the influence of the John Birch Society’s leadership and organizations like it should have been highlighted a bit stronger. It is through their money that their ideas were filtered down through their organizations and down to these grassroots organizations.
Overall, McGirr has contributed a valuable addition to our understanding of the rise of conservatism in both California and the United States as a whole. She aids in our understanding of the political climate that ushered in Ronald Reagan and draws a direct link from the 1950s and McCarthyism to the modern MAGA movement. The evolving ideology and platform are clear in this interesting book. The organization of a recall of a school board member based on ACLU membership by an annoyed mob of suburbanites parallels today’s more sinister statement by President Trump that Democrats are “The enemy from within.” This book is recommended for anyone interested in the political history or the history of Southern California.

[AskHistorians]

Looks at the rise of the new right and the Goldwater campaign in Orange County in 1960.

[Petra · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are curious about the origins of the modern Republican Party, this is the book to read.

[Gary Reger · Rating 4 out of 5]

In November 2020, Orange County, California, 814,009 votes came in for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, against 676,498 for Trump and Pence. This remarkable repudiation of the Republican candidate represented a sea-change in the county's politics. Since the post-war period, Orange County has been a hotbed of far-right Republicanism. Born from anti-Communism, paranoia, and an ambivalent relationship to modernity, it ended in social conservatism and fundamental evangelicalism by the 1970s. Lisa McGirr's object is "Suburban Warriors" is to explain the origin and development of far-right movements over the decades up to the election in 1980 of Ronald Reagan as president.

McGirr based her research on interviews with figures who played prominent but grass-roots roles in the birth and course of these movements, especially women, who played an outsized role. The white population of Orange County in the early 1960s was generally well-educated and middle or upper-middle class; many husbands were engineers in the aerospace industry who benefited from the booming defense industry and happily embraced the material side of the post-war expansion. McGirr notes that these people seem at first glance poor candidates for right-wing radicalization. The heart of the book is her attempt to square the circle of this (apparent) contradiction.

McGirr makes an excellent and clear case for her interpretation. The county had a prior long tradition of conservative politics. The newcomers -- for many of McGirr's subjects immigrated into the county in the 1950s or early 1960s -- found plenty of economic opportunity, but, originating in tight-knit Midwestern towns, well networked with relatives and friends, suffered from loneliness and alienation. The right-wing movements emphasized small, intimate meetings hosted in people's living rooms -- so the social structure of the right provided precisely the social ties that they missed. Anti-Communism, notably drummed up by the John Birch Society, correlated with the jobs many of them had, and so fit in with their economic interests. These factors go a long way to explain the conservatism of the county. Later, the emergence of sex education in the schools, abortion advocacy, and other liberal social activity -- including student unrest at the University of California and African-American activism -- shocked their sensibilities and provided another infusion of motivation to organize, protest, and vote. Political activity started especially with Goldwater, whose defeat did not discourage but spurred people on, and ended up with Reagan's two extraordinary victories: governor of California in 1966 and president in 1980.

Orange County hasn't become a puddle of blue -- it did re-elect some of its right-wing Republican representatives. But as the seedbed for modern conservatism, its impact grew nationwide and remains central to today's right. The complaints of the 1960s are echoed in the 2000s -- if not always precisely the same (though raging against "socialism" remains) still built on the same basis of conspiracy, fundamentalism, and rigidity. "Suburban Warriors" is well worth reading as a primer on the origins of the right we see today.

[Ryan A. Fleming · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right, Lisa McGirr charts a parallel revolution going on in California in 1960s, diametrically opposite to the popular memory of it.

By focusing specifically on Orange County, California, McGirr creates an anchor through which ongoing changes in US society brought about by postwar affluence can be examined before they would come to define the nation barely a few decades later. It’s a microcosm where all of those trends seemed to be concentrated. It is laid out neatly into distinct eras as the conservative grassroots movement changes throughout the decade. High watermarks from refusing to turn out for Nixon in 1962 to securing the nomination of Goldwater in 1964 and later the election of Reagan to Governor of California in 1966 demarcate these eras. It also charts the evolution of the movement as it moved away from the anticommunism that defined it early on and into opposition to increasing social liberalism seen elsewhere in California and eventually, without ever saying it, civil rights. Laying out on why these changes happened and the impact on expanding the movement.

That it is all told in such a linear fashion does not help to keep it engaging. Often it can drag as events are told in a mostly chronological fashion whilst the reader waits for the next dramatic turning point. It perhaps should have been organised thematically rather than chronologically. Either way, we would still get all the interesting case studies and flashpoints that are peppered throughout the book. These can be as minor as a debacle over a school board recall or as major as the reactions to the Watts riots. Whether minor or major the influence of or impact on the grassroots remains a throughline. At times too, McGirr could have done more to put events in Orange County and California into a wider national context. How the grassroots conservative movement in California impacted the decision of a Southern strategy by the Nixon campaign in 1968, for instance, barely gets a mention, instead wrapping up in the aftermath of Reagan’s election in California.

The focus on California and Orange County did allow McGirr to emphasise the changes in US society that allowed for this grassroots movement to take off. How Orange County changed from a few sparse orange groves into a network of suburban developments around aerospace defence industries that expanded after World War II. It also provides a contrast on the outskirts of Los Angeles with the popular understanding of California during the 1960s, which is more focused on the hippie movement and similar largely out of the San Francisco area. In the long run, the Orange County movement would prove more influential and impactful. McGirr cites many firsthand accounts of life during the era that made coffee mornings and other social occasions so conducive to a political awakening. Reading these events in the words of those who lived them puts them into context far better than if it had been all quantitative information used.

Suburban Warriors charts the beginnings and rise of a new political movement in the United States, one whose understated origins would belie its ultimate influence and trajectory.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really top-notch history, McGirr's "dissertation book" (you can tell by the super-long chapters). This is a highly revealing study of conservative politics in Orange County in the 60s and 70s. The OC was a hotbed of conservative activism at the time for a number of reasons: strong presence of the defense industries, migrants mainly from midwest and south, suburban spaces cultivating a sense of independence, the Western ethos of resentment against the Eastern establishment, and the backlash against Civil Rights and cultural/social changes in the 60s. McGirr advances a few arguments here. One is that while race formed the core of conservative movements in the south and the urban north, it was less salient in the OC in large part because of its homogenous population but also because Cali in general had a less rigid racial hierarchy than the South. Instead, anti-communism and anti-liberalism, and the fear that liberalism led inevitably to communism, was the driving force of OC conservative mobilization behind candidates like Goldwater and Reagan. This shifted in the mid-late 60s to a focus on more "culture war" type issues that sought to combat "liberal domination" of schools, government, and culture as well as what they saw as moral degeneration. The new issues became things like school curricula, abortion, gay rights, school prayer, etc. Of course, race was still important, especially given that OC conservatives vehemently fought residential integration measures. Still, there's a reason why Wallace didn't take off here: anti-communism and anti-statism, rather than populist racial resentment, dominated this middle to upper-middle class section of the country.

McGirr makes an interesting argument regarding extremism, one that I wonder if she would alter today. She contends that as the right mainstreamed itself in the 60s (in large part because of the lesson that Goldwater was too easily tarred as extremist) they isolated the whack-job Birchers, open racists and anti-Semites, and other nutcases from the movement. I think McGirr shows this was largely the case in this context, although conspiracy, prejudice, and what I would call extremist views remained part of the "mainstream" right. Of course, in 2020 this looks a lot different given that a populist, race-baiting, conspiratorial fringe has taken over. I think the truth is (and McGirr would probably agree) that the fringe and the mainstream have always been more overlapping than it sometimes comes across in this book.

This gave me a great understanding of how local/regional politics and identities develop and how they can add up to national political movements. This book is a testimony to the power of environment and culture in shaping our viewpoints; we have much less choice in what we think than we think we do. Recommended for political history buffs as well as educators from high school up who want a better understanding of modern conservatism.

[Chuck Kollars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough description of what actually happened. Lots and lots of footnotes, huge bibliography, and evidence of having put a lot of energy and time into research techniques such as interviews.

Describes the conservative movement centered on Orange County more by historical precedent than by either ideology or sociology. As an example of the approach: first there was A, which then begot B, which then led to C, and so forth, and that "explains" things. (In fact, the book sometimes notes that ideological expectations are exactly the opposite of what actually happened, and that sometimes ideology was wildly internally inconsistent.) A semi-academic work, yet accessible to the general reader. Readers who are mainly interested in either the ideology or the sociology of conservatism should look elsewhere.

Given the simple historical developmental model, there isn't a whole lot of room for a "thesis". Nevertheless -although not much emphasized- the book does present one: that what happened in Orange County was a preview of the ascendancy of conservatism throughout the country, so understanding that one place and time will probably lead to understanding the entire U.S. right now.

Several partial explanations for the pronounced conservative slant in Orange County are offered, including: Much of the population were recent immigrants from either more rural or midwestern areas, and they brought their uncomfortableness with modernity with them. Because of having changed their lifestyle dramatically from what they knew before, the people are "unmoored", and so quite open to anything that promises comfort without having to learn anything new. Positions are not a result of particular deep ideological thinking, but rather simply of the desire for the comfort of "the same way we did it when I was a kid". The continued strength of the movement owes a lot to its flexibility, addressing current concerns without trying to maintain historical consistency. While current _individual concerns are treated as very important, one way or another people are told they are NOT responsible for the problems of any _group, i.e. society-wide problems.

[Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this book on my "to read" list for forever. I can't remember what drew me to it or how I found it, but I did know that this remains a timely issue: the battle for the suburbs is just one arena for elections, and it is interesting to see how history repeats itself. This book in particular is especially interesting because it specifically looks at Orange County, California, which currently held by Democratic Representative (Katie Porter).

Author McGirr looks at how despite the turbulent times of the 1960's, places like the suburbs was actually a reactionary movement in the other direction of "traditional" family values, of the fear of communism, of wanting to protect their wealth as Southern California became increasingly prosperous and traces how the right gradually built their power: running for local office, eventually gaining greater influence in the Republican Party, etc.

Overall it's really dry and academic and if you're someone who is really familiar with the OC this could be really fascinating. But as other say, McGirr curiously avoids the cultural factors (this is the 60's after all!), and in retrospect it is worth considering those factors (especially since 2016 was the first time it voted for a Democrat for president since the Great Depression and would do so again in 2020).

I am glad that I read the book as it gave me information I certainly did not have and would not have found otherwise, but I am also glad I waited until I could get a library copy to borrow. I do question some of the thinking (ignoring cultural issues seems like a strange choice) but in the end I would say this is probably one of those books that should be supplemented by others that do discuss cultural factors. Maybe not of the OC specifically but of this time and/or in Southern California, etc.

Library borrow was best for me. Wouldn't be surprised to see this on a college syllabus, either. I would not recommend you buy the book unless you need it for a class or something and to try to get a used version if possible.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and well-researched history of the background and rise of the 'suburban', middle class political right in Orange County CA in the 1960s from its roots in the removal of a ACLU-sympathising school board member, the development of home and church-based anti-communist study groups, the mobilisation of support for Goldwater's presidential campaign, reaction to counter culture movements of the late sixties through to the triumph of Ronald Reagan's election in 1980.
McGirr demonstrates how different 'strains' of right-wing political action such as libertarianism, social conservatism, anti-communist activism and religious fundamentalism, while at times strange bedfellows, were brought together during the sixties to change the Republican Party forever. While the themes are a little repetitive through the book, this reinforces McGirr's message about the impact of these middle class activists. The use of contemporary 'letters to the editor' and interviews with a wide range of participants illustrate the motivations behind this activism making 'Suburban Warriors' much more than a dry historical and sociological review.
An excellent exploration of, for this Australian at least, an unknown aspect of American political culture whose effects are still being felt 50 years later.

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Works best when thought of as a supplement to Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm, which chronicles the rise of Goldwater, which really kicked off post-New Deal conservatism.

Here we get an ethnography of Orange County, California, the physical home of Goldwater's and Reagan's base. A land of contradictions, Orange County was full of people who firmly believed in free market capitalism, yet were directly or indirectly the recipients of government largesse through the military industrial complex and large infrastructure projects that made settling the West possible. They were people who had every modern convenience - air conditioning, multiple car households - yet clung fervently to 'traditional values.' Great example of conservatism ability to constantly reform itself.

Also hard not to come away from this thinking about how Kamala Harris won Orange County in 2024. Of course, large influx of diverse groups and other changes in 60 years have shifted things in OC. But it should still tell you something about how successful these Goldwaterites were in shifting the Overton window and how far right the Democrat Party has shifted.

[Matt Ely · Rating 4 out of 5]

A focused study on Orange County conservative Republicanism in the 1960's and 70's... is not the thesis for a book I thought I'd enjoy and find instructive. The author clearly chose her subject wisely, as it reflects many broader trends that would manifest in the Reagan years and beyond.

Perhaps the most amusing/disquieting element was how many arguments, rhetorical devices, and resentments are happening now in almost the same way they happened then. It makes me wonder, a bit sadly, whether we're all condemned to having the exact same arguments and anxieties our whole lives, completely unaware that we're parroting every generation before us.

That said, it was a shockingly quick read. The academic tone might seem like a turnoff, but the author draws you into the various narrative threads, if not particular characters. Recommended for liberals who say "Conservatives just don't make sense. Why would they say that??" and for conservatives who say "I hold unique opinions." Do people say that? I don't know.

This review is too long.

[Corporate Clone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative, fascinating, and at times nauseating, McGirr's account of the rise of conservative movements throughout the history of Orange County reveals the machinations of America's right-wing populace through the lens of sunny California. McGirr demonstrates the socio-political neuroses plaguing conservative thought throughout the mid-20th century while neglecting to offer any critique with teeth, opting instead for ironic and damning quotations. Not every book needs a strong bent of course, and I give this four stars because the historical detail covered allots more than enough information for one to come to their own conclusions.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa McGirr does an excellent job with this book, especially with attempting (and, in my view, pretty much succeeding) to come at the subject from an as-neutral-as-possible-lens that does not include her personal affiliations or biased judgments. Really great book, especially relevant in understanding a lot of today's (conservative) politics and their roots in late-20th century movements.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

McGirr's tome isn't the only study of American conservatism but is surely one of the best, taking painstaking amounts of research and shaping it into a compelling narrative not of a 'backwards' ideology but very much a constructed and affected 'modern' movement, whose very modernity enabled it to grow and mix with legacies of race and free marketeers.

[Matthew Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed account of how the United States has found itself in the political quagmire that exists today. By tracing the rise of the conservative movement, McGirr establishes exactly when politics went off the rails in the US.

[lifelongreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

McGirr's fascinating book traverses the conservative psyche of the people who catapulted the this movement into power. I found this book to be a telling story of America, one that is vital to understanding how and why the tides of American political life change.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Critical reading for understanding current socio-political events and their incipient foundations. McGirr nails it...

[Laura]

Came across at work and realized I read it in a class.

[William Valentini · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great academic author that non-academics can dive into, this book and esp. her book on Prohibition are worth reading!

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

An insightful dive into the driving forces behind the Right through the lense of one booming county in the 50s-60s: Orange County. The author seemed to repeat themes quite a bit, so I thought this book could be condensed greatly. My takeways:

1. Orange County was a growing, entrepreneurial suburban area of the 50s and 60s, ironically no small thanks to significant government defense spending in the area during the cold war (big government spending is the irony).
2. Orange County's population grew during the period via an influx of educated transplants from the midwest, southwest and south - many bringing traditional moral conservative religious and political beliefs with them. Many came from Democrat families. These migrants were college educated and coming to southern California to take advantage of the booming aerodefense and other industries, not to mention the pleasant surroundings and weather of southern california. In many respects, Orange County was a perfect place to be in the 50s and 60s.
3. Orange County had a strong entreprenuerial, self-made business ethos. Businesses were involved in the communities. Orange Countians saw themselves as hard working, self-made, and many started new businesses of their own in this economic hotbed.
4. By and large Orange Countians were distrustful of "collectivism" and the welfare state, anti-thetical to their self-made, individualist ethos
5. It was easy to connect big government spending and the welfare state with "sub-version" and the anti-communism movement. These movements had ripe ears in Orange County (and elsewhere in the country during this period).
6. Grassroots efforts in the community makes Orange County worth looking at. Housewives, husbands, dentists, store owners became uniquely involved in local matters they saw threating the American way of life. Homes organized anti-communist study groups, hosted John Birch readings, etc. This type of organizing is one of the major theses of the book- it grew in strength through the 60s.
7. The grassroots organizing of populous Orange County began carrying noticable clout in California in the 60s - first on Republican Party convention / officers, then with the nomination of Barry Goldwater in no small part thanks to the overwhelming grassroots campaign in Orange County.
8. Though Goldwater's defeat deflated many conservative organizations, Orange Countians persisted and shortly thereafter put their energies behind Ronald Reagan who they helped get to the Governor's Mansion in 66. Of course, the movement (if there is a "movement") culminated with Reagan's presidential victory in 1980.
9. The book shows the characters of Orange County behind the Right's ascendancy are not wing-nuts looking to go back in time. No, they were educated. They were very modern and enjoyed technologya nd modern life. Their driving forces were: (a) a strong belief in individualism (b) an opposition to big government attempts at egalitarianism and the Welfare state, antithetical to their moral fabric and what they saw as the American way of life (c) opposition to federal interference in state or local matters (d) horror at visible moral decline becoming front and center in American in the 60s: student protests bringing the best CA university to its knees, "if it feels good, do it," draft dodgers and troop train stoppers, "gay liberation" and finally abortion, among others.
10. The author points out not all conservatives adopted the moral agenda forcefully, but all adopted the individual responsibility and more libertarian elements. Notable is Ronald Reagan for example who in the 60s distanced himself from the extreme moral conservative outcries.
11. It is this individualism/libertarianism that has survived and rises up each time to counter government steps toward collectivism or the Welfare state. This Right is mainstream, modern, successful, and driven. The author illustrates that liberal left has often missed the boat on this, rather dismissing the Right as wingnuts or psychologically maladjusted. (interestingly, only fueling the Right's view of liberals at elitist). Given the educated, modern, mainstreamness and strong beliefs in the individual of the Right, the author concludes the Right will be a force in American Politics for some time to come.