CONSTITUTING CONSERVATISM: the GOLDWATER/PAUL ANALOG by Eric Edward English B. A. in Communication, Philosophy, and Political Sc
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by D-Scholarship@Pitt CONSTITUTING CONSERVATISM: THE GOLDWATER/PAUL ANALOG by Eric Edward English B. A. in Communication, Philosophy, and Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, 2001 M. A. in Communication, University of Pittsburgh, 2003 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Eric Edward English It was defended on November 13, 2013 and approved by Don Bialostosky, PhD, Professor, English Gordon Mitchell, PhD, Associate Professor, Communication John Poulakos, PhD, Associate Professor, Communication Dissertation Director: John Lyne, PhD, Professor, Communication ii Copyright © by Eric Edward English 2013 iii CONSTITUTING CONSERVATISM: THE GOLDWATER/PAUL ANALOG Eric Edward English, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2013 Barry Goldwater’s 1960 campaign text The Conscience of a Conservative delivered a message of individual freedom and strictly limited government power in order to unite the fractured American conservative movement around a set of core principles. The coalition Goldwater helped constitute among libertarians, traditionalists, and anticommunists would dominate American politics for several decades. By 2008, however, the cracks in this edifice had become apparent, and the future of the movement was in clear jeopardy. That year, Ron Paul’s campaign text The Revolution: A Manifesto appeared, offering a broad vision of “freedom” strikingly similar to that of Goldwater, but differing in certain key ways. This book was an effort to reconstitute the conservative movement by expelling the hawkish descendants of the anticommunists and depicting the noninterventionist views of pre-Cold War conservatives like Robert Taft as the “true” conservative position.
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