[PDF] Conservatism Redefined eBook

Author : Patrick M. Garry
Publisher : Encounter Books
Page : 181 pages
File Size : 46,25 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1594033471

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Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, conservatism possessed a vibrancy that resulted from spirited intellectual inquiry and open debate. However, in the years leading up to the 2008 elections, this energy seemed to fade. It was as if the conservative movement became less concerned with ideas and more concerned with the preservation of political power. In Conservatism Redefined, Patrick Garry examines how Conservatives dug themselves into this hole, and how they can climb out. However, unlike many conservative pundits, Garry does not propose a simple, -rediscover our roots- credo. Instead, Conservatism Redefined reexamines and renews conservative ideology, explaining how the classical ideals of conservatism can be employed in new ways to address the concerns of citizens across the ethnic, generational, and economic spectrum. Conservatism in America is currently mired in its worst crisis since the 1960s. To be sure, the crisis accompanied the declining public opinion of the Bush presidency and the resurgence of liberalism and large, aggressive government in a time of crisis. But, as Patrick Garry explains, this does not mean that conservatism has been defeated as an ideology, it means it must be redefined.

Author : Patrick Garry
Publisher : Encounter Books
Page : 181 pages
File Size : 24,49 MB
Release : 2010-02-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1594034567

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After reaching high levels of public popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, political conservatism has become beset with criticism and disillusionment. As demonstrated by the 2008 election results, political conservatism has been blamed for an unpopular Iraq war, an economy nose diving into recession, and a barrage of high profile instances of corporate misbehavior. This crisis in the ideological identity of and public confidence in conservatism is partly due to conservatism itself. Contrary to the intellectual vibrancy that characterized the 1980s and 1990s, political conservatism in recent years has become complacent and dormant. It has been more focused on simply protecting political power than on reexamining its philosophical principles and policy prescriptions. Because of this failure to continually reexamine, conservatives have allowed their ideology to slip back into various ruts caused by certain historical deviations from the conservative creed. These deviations, beginning in the early twentieth century, mischaracterized conservatism as a special-interest defender of the wealthy and corporate class. The deviations also allowed conservatism to be miscast as a political creed that advocates aggressive U.S. intervention in the affairs of foreign nations. Perhaps because of all its successes, as well as the political influence it has been able to achieve, political conservatism in America has somewhat lost its foundational bearings. Its basic principles and ideological identity have been lost amidst the various political maneuverings and issues associated with partisan politics. Consequently, conservatives need to get their ideology back to a firm foundational setting, so as to allow it to once again provide a strong beacon of guidance to American society. In this book, Patrick Garry attempts to provide a clear definition and ideological identity to conservatism—an identity that not only connects conservatism to the past, but allows it to position itself for the challenges of the future. With a concise simplicity, Garry provides a definition of conservatism that relies on two fundamental propositions. Garry also argues that the focus of conservatism needs to be redirected toward the interests of the poor and disadvantaged. As Garry argues, it is conservatism and not liberalism that offers the best hope for the poor and disadvantaged to prosper in America. This new focus of conservatism will allow conservatism to flourish as a governing ideology.

Author : Steven F. Hayward
Publisher : Encounter Books
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 21,57 MB
Release : 2017-02-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1594038848

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This book is a lively intellectual history of a small circle of thinkers, especially, but not solely, Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns, who challenged the "mainstream" liberal consensus of political science and history about how the American Founding should be understood. Along the way they changed the course of the conservative movement and had a significant impact on shaping contemporary political debates from constitutional interpretation, civil rights, to the corruption of government today. Most importantly, these thinkers explain the deep reasons for patriotism—why we should love America not just because it is our country, but because it is a free and just country.

Author : Michael Lind
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 38,65 MB
Release : 2013-08-06
Category : History
ISBN : 1476761159

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For nearly a decade, Michael Lind worked closely as a writer and editor with the intellectual leaders of American conservatism. Slowly, he came to believe that the many prominent intellectuals he worked with were not the leaders of the conservative movement but the followers and apologists for an increasingly divisive and reactionary political strategy orchestrated by the Republican party. Lind's disillusionment led to a very public break with his former colleagues on the right, as he attacked the Reverend Pat Robertson for using anti-Semitic sources in his writings. In Up From Conservatism, this former rising star of the right reveals what he believes to be the disturbing truth about the hidden economic agenda of the conservative elite. The Republican capture of the U.S. Congress in 1994 did not represent the conversion of the American public to conservative ideology. Rather, it marked the success of the thirty-year-old "southern strategy" begun by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. From the Civil War to the civil rights revolution, the southern elite combined a low-wage, low-tax strategy for economic development with a politics of demagogy based on race-baiting and Bible-thumping. Now, Lind maintains, the economic elite that controls the Republican party is following a similar strategy on a national scale, using their power to shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle class while redistributing wealth upward. To divert attention from their favoritism toward the rich, conservatives play up the "culture war," channeling popular anger about falling real wages and living standards away from Wall Street and focusing it instead on the black poor and nonwhite immigrants. The United States, Lind concludes, could use a genuine "one-nation" conservatism that seeks to promote the interests of the middle class and the poor as well as the rich. But today's elitist conservatism poses a clear and present danger to the American middle class and the American republic.

Author : Gregory L. Schneider
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 18,47 MB
Release : 2003-06
Category : History
ISBN : 0814797989

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Presents forty essays, speeches, and other documents on conservatism or by conservatives, spanning 1930 to the turn of the century, including works by Seward Collins, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr., Irving Kristol, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and others.

Author : Paul Lyons
Publisher :
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 15,48 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Education
ISBN :

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This book offers a rare opportunity to read about how a scholar's teaching informs his research, in this case an examination of the nature of American conservatism. It is based on an interdisciplinary senior seminar Lyons taught in Spring 2006. His teaching log, including student comments from an electronic conferencing system, gives a vivid sense of the daily frustrations and triumphs. Lyons reflects on some of the most difficult issues in higher education today, such as how to handle racism and political passions in the classroom, as well as how a teacher presents his own political convictions. Lyons begins with the premise that most universities have been negligent in helping undergraduates understand a movement that has shaped the political landscape for half a century. In addition, in a series of essays that frame the teaching log, he makes the case that conservatives have too often failed to adhere to basic, Burkean principles, and that the best of conservatism has often appeared as a form of liberalism from thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, and George Kennan. The essays also cover the history of conservatism, conservative use of the city-on-a-hill metaphor, and an examination of how the promise of Camelot sophistication was subverted by a resurgence of right-wing populism.

Author : Jonathan Schoenwald
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 35,43 MB
Release : 2001-08-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0190285508

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How did American conservatism, little more than a collection of loosely related beliefs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, become a coherent political and social force in the 1960s? What political strategies originating during the decade enabled the modern conservative movement to flourish? And how did mainstream and extremist conservatives, frequently at odds over tactics and ideology, each play a role in reshaping the Republican Party? In the 1960s conservatives did nothing less than engineer their own revolution. A Time for Choosing tells the remarkable story behind this transformation. Where previous accounts of conservatism's rise tend to speed from 1964 through the start of the Reagan era in 1980, A Time for Choosing explores in dramatic detail how conservatives took immediate action following the Goldwater debacle. William F. Buckley, Jr.'s 1965 bid for Mayor of New York City and Reagan's 1966 California governor's campaign helped turn the tide for electoral conservatism. By decade's end, independent "splinter groups" vied for the right to bear the conservative standard into the next decade, demonstrating the movement's strength and vitality. Although conservative ideology was not created during the 1960s, its political components were. Here, then, is the story of the rise of the modern conservative movement. Provocative and beautifully written, A Time for Choosing is a book for anyone interested in politics and history in the postwar era.

Author : Alfred S. Regnery
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 19,88 MB
Release : 2008-02-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 141658840X

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Alfred S. Regnery, the publisher of The American Spectator, has been a part of the American conservative movement since childhood, when his father founded The Henry Regnery Company, which subsequently became Regnery Publishing -- the preeminent conservative publishing house that, among other notable achievements, published William F. Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale. Including many uniquely personal anecdotes and stories, Regnery himself now boldly chronicles the development of the conservative movement from 1945 to the present. The outpouring of grief at the funeral of Ronald Reagan in 2004 -- and the acknowledgment that Reagan has come to be considered one of the greatest presidents of the twentieth century -- is Regnery's opening for a fascinating insider story. Beginning at the start of the twentieth century, he shows how in the years prior to and just post World War II, expanding government power at home and the expanding Communist empire abroad inspired conservatives to band together to fight these threats. The founding of the National Review, the drive to nominate Barry Goldwater first as vice-president and later as president, the apparent defeat of the conservative movement at the hands of Lyndon Johnson, and the triumphant rise of Ronald Reagan from the ashes are all chronicled in vivid prose that shows a uniquely intimate knowledge of the key figures. Regnery shares his views on the opposition that formed in response to Earl Warren's Supreme Court rulings, the role of faith (both Roman Catholic and Evangelical) in the renewed vigor of conservatism, and the contributing role of American businessmen who attempted to oppose big government. Upstream ultimately gives perspective to how the most vibrant political and cultural force of our time has influenced American culture, politics, economics, foreign policy, and all institutions and sectors of American life.

Author : Kenneth J. Heineman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 20,70 MB
Release : 2018-10-25
Category : History
ISBN : 042985174X

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The Rise of Contemporary Conservatism in the United States offers students an accessible introduction to the history of modern American conservatism. The author provides a concise but substantial discussion of modern conservatism from its origins in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal up until the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump. The text examines electoral coalitions and politics as connected to economic and foreign policy as well as ideology. Conservative ideas and values are addressed directly, both on their own terms and in the context of contemporary political applications. A robust collection of primary documents offers students and instructors the opportunity to examine directly the views of both conservatives and their critics. Supported by range of study tools including a glossary of key figures and terms, a detailed chronology, and ample suggestions for further reading, The Rise of Contemporary Conservatism in the United States is the ideal introduction for students interested in the forging and fracturing of modern conservative coalitions and ideologies.