The Rise of Conservatism Since World War II Author(S): Dan T
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The Rise of Conservatism since World War II Author(s): Dan T. Carter Source: OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 17, No. 2, Conservatism (Jan., 2003), pp. 11-16 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163574 Accessed: 30-10-2016 00:54 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Organization of American Historians, Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to OAH Magazine of History This content downloaded from 199.73.44.216 on Sun, 30 Oct 2016 00:54:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Dan T. Carter The Rise of Conservatism Since World War II In the 1964 presidential election, Republican presidential of that conservative resurgence?centered politically in the nominee Barry Goldwater suffered a decisive defeat at the Republican Party but extending throughout American soci hands of Lyndon Johnson. ety?is one of the most critical developments in the last half of Goldwater, the dream candi the twentieth century. date of his party's conservative The rise of this conservative wing, had offered a "choice not movement had its roots in the an echo" in his campaign and three decades before the the American people seemed Goldwater campaign, drawing to have little doubt about their upon two powerful and interre choice. Goldwater carried only lated impulses. The first was an his home state of Arizona and unambiguous defense of laissez five Deep South states where faire capitalism. Such conserva opposition to the Civil Rights tive ideas ran deep in American movement was at high tide. history, but they had been badly Johnson took the rest with discredited during the 1930s by sixty-one percent of the popu the fact that most Americans at lar vote and his coattails in tributed the Depression to the creased the Democratic excesses of the capitalist system majority by thirty-eight House in general and the rapacious greed members and two new sena of corporate and business inter tors. By all the traditional mea ests specifically. During the 1930s, surements of American most Americans seemed to ac politics, the election of 1964 cept the argument that the fed was a disaster for American eral government had an obligation conservatism. Not only was to protect the American people their choice decisively rebuffed against those whom Franklin by the voters, but the over Roosevelt described as "malefac whelming Democratic victory tors of great wealth" by regulating Senator Barry Goldwater, in his first public appearance since his defeat for gave Johnson the opportunity the presidency, faces journalists and television cameras at Camelback Inn and controlling these financial in to enact his "Great Society" near Phoenix, Arizona, 4 November 1964. His defeat allowed Lyndon B. terests. At the same time, the programs, collectively the most Johnson to enact his Great Society programs. (AP photo) establishment of a limited na far-reaching liberal legislation tional welfare system?symbol since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. ized most concretely by the Social Security Act of 1935?represented If 1964 was a decisive political defeat for Barry Goldwater, it a new and expanded role for the national state. was only a temporary setback in the steady growth of a conser Despite the popularity of these measures, a vocal and articulate vative movement which would reach new heights in the election minority of Americans maintained their hostility to the national of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the creation of a Republican government (1). Apart from their complaint that the welfare state majority in both houses ofCongress in 1994. The complex story led to idleness and undermined the work ethic of its recipients, OAH Magazine of History January 2003 11 This content downloaded from 199.73.44.216 on Sun, 30 Oct 2016 00:54:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms they argued that the heavy hand of be other magazines and other con government thwarted the wealth-pro servative institutions created, but ducing force of individual entrepre the National Review remained, in neurs with its stifling red tape and many ways, the "Mother Church" of burdensome taxes. this new movement. The second conservative impulse Still, the arguments of intellectu came from the linking of the "welfare als did not create an electoral major state" (and the Democratic Party that ity anymore than either businessmen's created it) with fears of international distaste for government bureaucrats communism. Since the Bolshevik or the angry passions of McCarthyism. Revolution, American conservatives While Republicans won the presi warned of the threat of international dency in 1952 and again in 1956, it communism, but in the aftermath of was not with their longtime conserva World War II, their arguments fell tive standard-bearer, Robert Taft of upon particularly receptive ears. Jo B^^^^^^M^^*'^*'-. .Mm ^^^ B Ohio, but with the soothing and dis seph Stalin's ruthless suppression of tinctly moderate war hero, Dwight democratic governments in eastern Eu Eisenhower. To the despair (and dis rope after World War II and their gust) of the conservative faithful, absorption behind the Iron Curtain, Eisenhower made little effort to chal the Soviet Union's emergence as a lenge the basic contours of the na Eisenhower supporters shout "We Like Ike!" during a campaign nuclear power in 1949, and the victory stop in Baltimore. Eisenhower was a popular president, but tional state created during the of Mao Tse Tung's Communist forces did not appear to significantly challenge the Roosevelt/ Roosevelt and Truman years. While China that same year stunned and Truman legacy. (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library) Richard Nixon, the unsuccessful 1960 alarmed Americans. At the same time, Republican nominee, was more stri the disclosure that a number of Americans had spied and passed dent in his anticommunist rhetoric, he also expressed little inter on nuclear and other defense secrets, launched the great Red est in rolling back the changes of the previous three decades. Scare ofthe late 1940s and 1950s. Anticommunism?most dra If the foundation for a conservative resurgence was being laid for matically reflected in the emergence of Senator Joseph the future (even as the national political movement suffered re McCarthy?was undoubtedly inflamed by politics. Although peated political setbacks through the 1950s), conservatives usually there were spies and homegrown subversives operating within the captured the attention ofthe media and academics only in its most United States, the heated political context ofthe Cold War vastly bizarre and extreme forms. There were the dozens of fanatical exaggerated their numbers. By charging that the "liberal" admin anticommunist ideologues, many combining religious enthusiasm istrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman sheltered with their hatred ofthe "Red Menace." At the violent fringe could traitors and thus strengthened America's Cold War adversaries, be found Robert Pugh's Minutemen, with their storehouses of conservatives could strike a blow at their political enemies. automatic weapons and their plans for guerilla war once the commu But these arguments were more than simply crude political nists who controlled the United States government had removed tools. In the decade from 1943 to 1953, conservative intellectu the mask of liberalism and shown their true face. And there were the als?led by the Austrian born economist and social philosopher marginally more respectable spokesmen for the new Right and their Frederick Hayek?argued that the flaws of "Rooseveltian" liber organizations: the Rev. Carl Mclntire's Twentieth Century Refor alism went far deeper than the question of spies or internal mation, Dr. Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, subversion. There was, argued Hayek, a philosophical affinity the Rev. Billy James Hargis's Christian Crusade, Edgar Bundy's between any "collectivist" political movement (like the New League of America, Dean Clarence Manion's American Forum, Deal) and the forces of totalitarianism. Communism and German Texas oilman H.L. Hunt's nationwide radio "Life Line" broadcasts National Socialism were simply the mature results of all forms of and, of course, Robert Welch's John Birch Society. The title of three "collectivism." As he argued in his brief but influential 1944 book, of the most influential works of this period give some sense of the The Road to Serfdom, any attempt to control the economic perspective of what we might call "establishment" attitudes: The freedom of individuals inevitably led (as his title suggested) to Radical Rights edited by Daniel Bell; Arnold Forster and Benjamin serfdom and barbarism (2). Hayek's book was one of several works Epstein's Danger on the Right, and Richard Hofstadter's The that would prove to be critical in the thinking of a new generation Paranoid Style in American Politics (4). of conservative intellectuals (3). These groups were, however, the extreme right of a far broader Even more important in creating an intellectual founda movement that was often unnoticed or, in many instances, simply tion for the new conservatism was the creation ofthe National described indiscriminately as "extremist." One critical building Review magazine under the editorial leadership of William F. block for that new conservative movement was laid in the bur Buckley Jr. Founded in 1964 and bankrolled by wealthy busi geoning suburban development of postwar America. In her study ness conservatives, the new magazine soon became the cross of Orange County, California, historian Lisa McGirr has given us roads through which most intellectual and political a portrait of this emerging constituency?the "Suburban War conservatives passed.