American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition

by Andrew J. Bacevich (editor)

As the nation stands at a crossroads, this “valuable collection” urges us to reexamine the ideas and values of the American conservative tradition—offering “a bracing tonic for the present chaos” (The Washington Post). A groundbreaking collection of mainstream conservative writings since 1900, featuring pieces by Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Joan Didion, and more What is American conservatism? What are its core beliefs and values? What answers can it offer to the fundamental questions we face in the twenty-first century about the common good and the meaning of freedom, the responsibilities of citizenship, and America’s proper role in the world? As libertarians, neoconservatives, Never Trump-ers, and others battle over the label, this landmark collection offers an essential survey of conservative thought in the United States since 1900, highlighting the centrality of four key the importance of tradition and the local, resistance to an ever-expanding state, opposition to the threat of tyranny at home and abroad, and free markets as the key to sustaining individual liberty. Andrew J. Bacevich’s incisive selections reveal that American conservatism—in his words “more akin to an ethos or a disposition than a fixed ideology”—has hardly been a monolithic entity over the last 120 years, but rather has developed through fierce internal debate about basic political and social propositions. Well-known figures such as Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley are complemented here by important but less familiar thinkers such as Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, as well as writers not of the political right, like Randolph Bourne, Joan Didion, and Reinhold Niebuhr, who have been important influences on conservative thinking. More relevant than ever, this rich, too often overlooked vein of writing provides essential insights into who Americans are as a people and offers surprising hope, in a time of extreme polarization, for finding common ground. It deserves to be rediscovered by readers of all political persuasions.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Essays, American, American History

833 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 7, 2020

About the author

Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He is the author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism and The New American Militarism. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University prior to joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998. He is the recipient of a Lannan Award and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/andrew...

Reviews

[Jaidee (Belize here we are) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 "educational, illuminating, balanced" stars !!

A ribbon of Excellence read for 2024

Thank you to all the authors, the editor, Netgalley and Library of America. This collection was released March 2020. I am providing an honest review.

I started this very long collection back in October 2023 and only completed this evening. I have spent my life immersed in left wing, feminist, queer and psychodynamic theory and thinking and activism. I will be honest, though, and say that in the past decade I have become disillusioned with many of these organizations that are often led by toxic leaders and boards and are more selfserving than anything else. I have been much more interested in assisting and dealing with injustices on a micro level and just as often simply being and letting be.

I have willfully avoided Conservatism and as I start to move to a more Centrist political centre needed and craved a brief education on. this area of political thinking. I am so very glad I have and I feel more centered in the centre...sorry I could not resist. Here, in the entitled West, we have become a society of whiners where everybody has rights and nobody has responsibilities...anyhow I digress....

This is a collection of essays, chapters, and speeches on American Conservatism from 1900 onwards and covers a huge plethora of themes and topics. The true average of this collection is 3.14 but due to the high regard I have for the curation and my education(on these topics) I cannot award this book less than four stars.

Here are some of the topics covered and I will end by focusing on the five most impactful pieces for me: (44 works in all)

-Conservatism defined
-Subtypes of Conservatism
-differences between traditionalist and libertarian strands
-mysteries and progress with technology
-journalism
-psychology of America
-American individualism
-being black, female or queer in Conservative circles
-role of religion in Conservatism
-evils of totalitarianism whether communist, fascist or royalist
-libertarianism as an antidote to Western demise
-role of religious plurality
-nature of civil and religious liberty
-the dangers of affirmative action
-atheism vs theism
-how liberal elites have led to many societal ills....here here !
-victim mentality and lack of responsibility
-pacifism vs interventionism in substrands of Conservatism
-the falseness of media
-spiritual decay under liberalism
-Southern Conservatism
-power of agricultural living

A brief word on my five favorite essays

5. Zora Neale Hurston ....How It Feels to be Colored Me....1978...reflections on being Black and female and alive and free....4.5 stars

4. William Henry Chamberlin...The Choice Before Civilization....1937....an excellent essay on the inevitable evils of totalitarian regimes whether they be communist, fascist or royalist... 4.5 stars

Bronze. Murray Rothbard...For a New Liberty...1973... a fascinating libertarian analysis of the mutually sycophantic relationship between the state and the intellectual elite in the oppression of the masses....4.5 stars

Silver. Whittaker Chambers...Forward in the Form of a Letter to My Children...1952...a beautiful preface of a father explaining to his children about the evils of both communism and atheism...one of the most powerful pieces of writing I have ever read...5 stars

Gold. Randolph Bourne...The State....1918....a very long piece on the politics and sociology of war...I have been a lifetime pacifist and this work solidified and put into words what I truly believe...I spent a week reading and re-reading this one....5 stars

A very impactful five months spent on this political education !

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Conservatism In The Library Of America

The books published by the Library Of America offer an outstanding way to explore the breadth of American literary and cultural accomplishment, an important achievement in itself in troubled times. This recent volume, "American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition" fulfills the goals of the LOA and more in presenting a large anthology of conservative thought in the United States from the beginning of the 20th Century. Andrew Bacevich edited the volume and prepared the introduction. Bacevich, a highly respected scholar in his own right, served in the U.S. Army for twenty-three years and is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. Among his many books is "The Limits of Power" (2008), which became influential for its critique of the Iraq War. "The Limits of Power" makes use of the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian also included in this volume of writings on American conservatism.

This lengthy anthology makes for slow, dense reading. It shows the varied character of the intellectual part of American conservatism. The individual selections are sufficiently long to present a position as opposed to being mere snippets. Most of the selections show a great deal of breadth as opposed to focusing on a particular issue. Some of the essays are more specific, such as Joan Didion's "The Women's Movement", Andrew Sullivan's essay, "Here Comes the Groom: A (Conservative) Case for Gay Marriage", and Shelby Steele's "Affirmative Action: The Price of Preference."

Bacevich's Introduction stresses the difficulty of defining American conservatism. He sees conservatism as more of a mood and a critique of modernity than a particular ideology. His anthology collects "noteworthy examples of the American conservative critique prompted by the encroachments of modernity." Somewhat brusquely and probably too harshly, Bacevich excludes President Trump, most Republican members of Congress, and the popular right-wing media from his understanding of conservatism. He sees the need to "reclaim" conservatism as an "intellectual tradition" in part from what he sees as its current political debasement. Bacevich also excludes "neo-conservatism" from the American conservative tradition for reasons which to me are unclear. At the outset, Bacevich critiques conservatism for the positions it generally adopted on several large 20th Century issues: it opposed Federal intervention in the economy during the Great Depression, it opposed United States entry into WW II until the attack on Pearl Harbor, and, somewhat later, it took positions adverse to desegregation in the South. Still, Bacevich rightly resists over-simplification. Mistakes are not the within the sole purview of any political tradition. Bacevich's volume has the goal of showing that conservative intellectuals have a great deal to contribute to American thought and that the liberal tradition tended to ignore its insights to its detriment.

Broadly, conservatism encourages understanding and respecting tradition and the lessons of the past. Bacevich sees conservatism, in general, as involving a commitment to individual liberty, a belief in limited government and the rule of law, veneration for America's cultural inheritance, a reluctance to tamper with traditional social arrangements, a cautious respect for the free market, and a strong wariness of utopianism. The anthology includes several essays by writers not generally regarded as conservative but whose work tends to support certain conservative themes, including, among others Christopher Lasch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Walter Lippmann.

The anthology consists of five parts. The first, "First Principles: Three Responses", includes three
essays by leaders of American conservatism in the mid-twentieth century on the nature of conservatism, all of which stress its non-ideological character. Russell Kirk's opening essay develops six conservative principles but warns that "they are to be taken as a rough catalog of the general assumptions of conservatives and not as a tidy system of doctrines for governing a state." William F. Buckley Jr's essay discusses the varied forms of conservatism within the context of his founding and editing the "National Review". Buckley points to various strands in conservatism while suggesting that "the symbiosis may yet be a general consensus on the proper balance between freedom, order, and tradition." The concluding essay by Frank Meyer works to reconcile the traditionalist and the libertarian elements in conservative thought, elements which are often seen as at odds.

The second and longest part of this anthology is titled "The Fundamentals: Tradition, Religion, Morality, and the Individual". This part includes the earliest work in the book, Henry Adams chapter on "The Dynamo and the Virgin from "The Education of Henry Adams" (1900). There also is an eloquent selection from the philosopher George Santayana on "Materialism and Idealism in American Life." The authors in this part that I particularly enjoyed include Zora Neale Hurston ("How it Feels to be a Colored Me"), Irving Babbitt, a once-well known figure who deserves to be more read, Whittaker Chambers, the historian Harry Jaffa, with reflections on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Allan Bloom, and Christopher Lasch, in a chapter titled "The Soul of Man under Secularism."

The third part of the anthology, "Liberty and Power: The State and the Free Market consists of eight contributions on the nature of the state and on economics. Richard Weaver was an influential figure in the development of modern conservatism. He is represented by "The Great Stereopticon" from his 1948 book "Ideas have Consequences" which warns of the prevalence of shallow thinking in the daily media and of the dangers of ignoring history and philosophy. Other notable contributors to this part are Milton Friedman, Irving Kristol, and Patrick Deneen.

Regionalism and localism as a partial antidote to centralization are explored in the fourth part of the anthology, "The Ties that Bind: The Local and the Familiar". The sociologist Robert Nisbet's essay "The Loss of Community" discusses the importance of communitarianism to overcome the alienation and mechanization of much contemporary life. The three essays in this part by John Crowe Ransom, Eugene Genovese, and Wendell Berry, each explore the lessons that might be learned from agrarianism in the South.

The final part of this anthology, "The Exceptional Nation: America and the World" offers views on the nature of the United States and of its relationship to other nations. A variety of positions are offered most of which, with the exception of Theodore Roosevelt's "The Strenuous Life" counsel a degree of caution in the over-extension of the United States' overseas commitments. The contributors to this section include Henry Cabot Lodge, James Burnam, Robert Taft, Ronald Reagan, and Reinhold Niebuhr from his 1952 book, "The Irony of American History".

Many of the highly thoughtful essays in this volume may offer guidance to the United States in a difficult, divided time. The goal of the volume is less to convert readers to a form of conservatism and more to encourage reflection and the life of the mind in addressing critically important matters that sometimes tend to be slighted. As Bacevich states in his Introduction: "My firm conviction is this: to understand how the United States arrived at its present confused and divided straits -- and perhaps even to begin navigating back toward less troubled waters -- the American conservative tradition offers insights worth considering. I invite readers of this volume to consider that proposition." The Library of America and Bacevich deserve thanks for this volume and for their effort to revitalize consideration of conservative thought.

Robin Friedman

[Stephen Morrissey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a slog of a book, in every sense. Andrew Bacevich's "American Conservatism" is a collection of essays, chapters, and other writings and speeches from conservative intellectuals and leaders throughout American history. From a literary and readers' perspective, many of the essays are incredibly dense, chock-full of jargon and flee from memory as soon as the last page is turned (and this comes from a reader well acquainted, and often infatuated with, dense prose and intellectual arguments). While there are some nuggets buried within the mass - notably Andrew Sullivan's take on gay marriage; the later essays by Robert taft and others on the overreach of American foreign policy - most fall flat and do not promote any greater understanding of what it means, in American society, to be a conservative.

Frankly, reading "American Conservatism" in the Age of Trump is akin to staring into the sun, hoping to make out its texture, its features, its nuclear physics in real time. Whatever an American conservative may be, there is hardly anything left of the ideology in practice now. If conservatism contributed even one bit to the rise of Trump, McConnell, and their ilk, it deserves more searching analysis than a collection of writings that ring supremely hollow in 2020.

[Cherri]

this book is incredibly dense, and, i don't know what i learned from this besides one woman disliking that the feminist movement of the 70s took away women from their husbands, and that a gay man claimed that legalizing gay marriage would actually be the most conservative thing

[Lukas Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

What intellectual tradition ?

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a huge Andrew Bacevich fan, so I'm glad that the book of his I give three stars to wasn't really written by him so much as compiled by him. Frankly, his introduction was stellar. That said, the rest didn't quite go where I expected. I won't belabor you with the nitty-gritty of each essay, considering this is a behemoth of an anthology. Bacevich organizes the essays into "First Principles", "The Fundamentals" (tradition, religion, morality), "Liberty and Power", "The Ties That Bind", and "The Exceptional Nation", populating each section with various authors. His choice of sources was decently diverse, although you could tell that his own definition of conservatism, which I quite like, infused the work. Christopher Lasch, Wendell Berry, Patrick Deneen, Richard Weaver, Zora Neale Hurston-- the tradition's more interesting writers if you ask me. Of course, there's also Buckley, Kendall, Meyer, Reagan, Novak, and more.

Too many of the essays were older 1950s writings about the threat of communism. The reader is left not quite knowing what is to be reclaimed from these. Not to say that skepticism of statism is unwarranted on the American right, but that doesn't seem to be the chief problem facing American society at the moment. While the organization makes sense on a broad level, it's still a bit scattered throughout each section. Bacevich would've done better to choose fewer (I know, it must be hard to narrow down) but more pointed selections that promote his vision. It's somewhere in between "here's a giant tome of all modern American conservatism" and "here's what conservatism is at its best, which needs to be reclaimed". I wish it would lean more in the latter direction. Nonetheless, I found myself nodding along with authors who I didn't expect to appreciate and often shaking my head too. Bacevich provides a great list of conservative classics, one perhaps best to isolate a few essays you love from to focus on.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bacevich a West Point graduate and retired Army officer, and professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. He is writer-at-large for The American Conservative, but his views on war and foreign policy make him the typical toady for left-wing publications including The Nation, The Baffler, and the London Review of Books, among others. he is typical of the higher echelon officers in the US military these days -- left-wing politicos who have sold out their country for personal gain and posture as "conservative" brandishing their military credentials. If you are a real conservative, ignore him; if you are liberal rejoice.

[TandVLehmeier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started out well, but quickly started sprouting "facts" without any references.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful and often very thought provoking (and large) volume of American conservative thought on politics, sociology, and foreign policy. Bacevich seems to be putting together an alternative body of conservative ideas from both Trumpist nationalism and neoconservative triumphalism, although some thinkers in those veins are in this volume. Instead, Bacevich is foregrounding the themes of cautious, ground-up politics, the rule of law, the avoidance of providential or universalist attitudes toward, localism and regionalism, skepticism of large government, the need for community, and restraint in foreign policy. Some of the thinkers here I thought were brilliant, others I disagreed with but found worthwhile, and some I found intellectually hollow and or morally repugnant. Still, this book definitely broadened my understanding of American conservatism, and it will be a great resource as a teacher of US foreign policy and history.

[Brian S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up to try to understand how we got to where we are today. What were the issues being discussed a few decades ago? The truth is that the deep divide in our country, and world, is just that . . . deep. It's rooted in fundamental understandings of what a human being is, and what the world is. Several of the essays in this collection are really good at explaining what underlies the debates of our age. The first half of the book is stronger than the second, which deals with a lot of foreign policy questions.

[Shannon Heaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept coming up with questions, which I know are not the editor's responsibility to answer for, but the questions were valid nevertheless.
How the ideas in the book engage with large populations of the country, and indeed the world, never really come up in any of the essays. A political philosophy just doesn't work if it erases the lived experiences and histories of those populations, and too many of the writers contributing essays just would rather sweep those populations under the rug.

[David Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book - provides insights on traditional and modern conservative ideas over time through essays by politicians, journalists, members of the clergy, activists, academics, policy analysts, etc.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition by Andrew J. Bacevich to be an interesting read. I am giving four stars.

[Charity]

ooh should read