The Conservative Movement

by Paul Edward Gottfried

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805797491
• ISBN13: 9780805797497
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Twayne Publishers
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Conservative Wars, Circa 1992

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard that there is a political movement called "neoconservatism" which pushed for the current war in Iraq. What is neoconservatism and how does it differ from conservatism? And who are the "paleoconservatives"? I don't know of a recent book that discusses this question, but this 1992 work by paleoconservative theoretician Paul Gottfried is a good place to start. To simplify matters considerably, paleoconservatism is a political theory that traces its roots back to the Old Right and lions of that movement such as Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbett and Richard Weaver. The paleocons, however, have a populist edge that wasn't found in the Old Right. The paleocons support free enterprise (although not dogmatically), advocate a non-interventionist foreign policy (again not dogmatically) and oppose most immigration (dogmatically). The taxonomy of the neocons is more difficult. At least some were influenced by political philosopher Leo Strauss and had roots in the left (and at times far left). Many of the neocons operate from more liberal presuppositions, namely universalism and egalitarianism. They support free enterprise (although not dogmatically), a "globalist" foreign policy (generally dogmatically), and immigration (with various degrees of religious fervor). Often it seems as if neoconservatives are the classic case of liberals "mugged by reality": things were fine until about 1968, when all hell broke loose. The neoconservatives are highly influential in what's left of the conservative movement. One periodical of the Old Right now runs foreign policy articles claiming "creative destruction is our [the U.S.'s] middle name" and praising the growth of "expressive individualism" in Middle East music videos. The neoconservatives are more numerous, but I agree with the late Russell Kirk that you have to wonder how much of their writing will be read 15 years hence. The dispute between the neos and paleos came to the forefront in the first Iraq war. Many of the paleos, feeling that the Cold War was over, thought it was time to take a less interventionist foreign policy. The neocons supported the war. During the Clinton years, most of the neocons advocated involvement in the Balkan wars supporting, of all things, a war for "human rights" and cultural diversity. Things spun further out of control with the Second Iraq War, which saw the neocons taking the lead and advocating an explicitly Wilsonian foreign policy. Unfortunately, some of the paleos attacked the neos (many of whom are Jewish) for their support for Israel, neos attacked the paleos for being "unpatriotic" and an intelligent dialogue on these issues has became all but impossible.

The Conservative Movement.

_The Conservative Movement_ by Paul Gottfried and Thomas Fleming is an account of the conservative political philosophy and its growth in post World War America featuring the conflict between rival factions of the conservative vision. The authors note how this movement consists of several different, sometimes discordant, features. These include libertarianism and individualism (often carried out to extremes) which emphasizes anti-statism and resistance to the welfare/managerial state of the post New Deal era as well as isolationism as a general principle. This philosophy originally upheld by certain segments of the "Old Right" rose to prominence with the publication of Friedrich Hayek's book _The Road to Serfdom_ which argued against the controlled economy. In addition, certain segments of the original conservative movement were traditionalist in aspect, often composed of Catholics or Anglo-Catholics, and advocates of traditional morality, religion, and classical literature. Traditionalists including Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver as well as a whole host of Southern agrarians played an important part in shaping the philosophy of conservativism (rooting it in the writings of Edmund Burke or in Platonic philosophy or neo-Thomism under the influence of Aristotle). These two aspects of the conservative movement were combined in the early years of the journal _National Review_ put out by William F. Buckley. Buckley's journal maintained a virulently anti-communist stance (Buckley at one time wrote an apologetic piece for Joseph McCarthy) and advocated an interventionist foreign policy against communist tyranny. However, as the authors note, conservativism came to lose sway in the universities as the original mentors of the right abandoned their posts for more practical endeavors. With the social unrest during the Sixties, conservativism completely lost hold of academia which was abandoned to social protest and subsequently political correctness. While certain parts of academia, especially including key areas of the social sciences which lend themselves to an hereditarian interpretation (as opposed to environmentalist), may be interpreted in a conservative manner, those who have discovered these key features of the human animal have been almost unanimously shunned. The authors then note how conservativism subsequently underwent a split, possibly brought about by conflicting elements within its philosophy and the decline of the Soviet empire. On the one hand, a new brand of "conservative", remnants from the Old Left who no longer upheld the radical tendencies of the newer Left, came to the fore. This was the neoconservative, a primarily Jewish sect centered in New York, but which subsequently came to take hold of the Republican Party. Alternatively, a more populist approach was advocated by those on the New Right, composed almost entirely of Evangelical Christians (with some Catholics) and focusing almost completely on single issues, such

So who are the *real* conservatives?

Conservatism, especially since World War II, has meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people: economic libertarianism, traditionalism, anti-communism and American nationalism, for example. Different combinations of "conservative" values and reasoning might lead one to different conclusions on key issues -- for example, certain "conservative" values (economic libertarianism, traditionalism) point toward isolationism, while others (anti-communism, American nationalism) point toward military interventionism. In another twist, the Cold War made it possible for a person to support the welfare state but still be accepted as a conservative if he was a staunch anti-communist. Gottfried's book explains the different strains of American "conservatism" since WWII (not just one "conservative movement" but many of them), and why different groups of people who call themselves "conservatives" actually agree on very little, pretty much despise each other, and do not acknowledge each other as true conservatives.Although "The Conservative Movement" is a scholarly and well documented political history book, in a way it's also an insider's guide to some bitter struggles within the American "Right." The faction that Gottfried sympathizes with has done poorly in elections and has no voice in, for example, the "conservative" Bush administration. It is noteworthy that Gottfried never goes out of his way to defend the views of his own faction, but instead offers insightful criticisms of that faction's failed political strategies. If you're interested in modern American politics, "The Conservative Movement" (as well as Gottfried's "After Liberalism") will make your brain happy.