American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition
672
American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition
672Hardcover
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Overview
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 themes: 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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781598536560 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Library of America |
| Publication date: | 03/23/2020 |
| Pages: | 672 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
From the Introduction
The modern American conservative tradition—roughly dating from the dawn of the twentieth century—emerged in reaction to modernity itself. Modernity meant machines, speed, and radical change—taboos lifted, bonds loosened, and, according to Max Weber, “the disenchantment of the world.” It induced, and perhaps required, centralization. States accrued power. Bureaucracies thickened. Banks, corporations, rail systems, and industrial enterprises grew to mammoth proportions. War became more destructive.
Modernity promised liberation and for many did improve the quality of everyday life. Yet it also subjected individuals to immense and only dimly comprehended forces. In exchange for choice, it demanded conformity. Modernity demolished tradition or rendered it irrelevant. What remained of the past might retain interest as artifact but was drained of substantive relevance.
Liberals, progressives, leftists—choose what label you will—have tended to embrace modernity, seeing it, on balance, as a positive force. By comparison, conservatives have typically viewed modernity as a threat, responding to it with a mixture of apprehension, alarm, and horror. This anthology collects in a single volume noteworthy examples of the American conservative critique prompted by the encroachments of modernity.
That said, I am not suggesting that in the long, contentious, at times bitter debate about America’s purpose and destiny, proponents of conservatism have necessarily gotten things right. The issues being contested are too complex to allow for reductive judgments of right or wrong, good or bad. Yet in the crisis that has enveloped twenty-firstcentury America—a crisis made starkly manifest by Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president in 2016—conservative principles deserve a second look, even, or especially, from those who bridle at the very use of the term.
Skeptics might respond that Americans today already have more than ample exposure to conservative perspectives, whether coming directly from Trump’s White House, from megaphone-wielding House and Senate Republicans, or from outlets such as FoxNews, AM talk radio, and right-wing websites. Yet all of these qualify as conservative only in the sense that blue-chip recruits at a football factory qualify as “student-athletes.” Any resemblance to the real article is superficial and manufactured.
Donald Trump is not a conservative. Nor are the leaders of the Republican Party over which Trump presides. Prominent GOP figures such as Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell seem to adhere to no worldview worthy of the name. As for the provocateurs who inhabit the sprawling universe of rightwing media, their principal motive is not to promote genuine conservative values but to rabble-rouse and line their own pockets. Indeed, allowing Trump, McConnell, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh et al. to present themselves as exemplary conservatives testifies to the pervasive corruption of contemporary American political discourse.
So except among the multitudes who sport MAGA hats and look to the likes of Sean, Laura, and Rush for instruction, the conservative brand has of late been badly tarnished and even degraded. As a result, conservatism today has become synonymous with meanness, bigotry, and retrograde attitudes. The contents of this book suggest that this condescending characterization is wildly off the mark.
Table of Contents
Introduction Andrew J. Bacevich xiii
First Principles: Three Responses
Conservatism Defined Russell Kirk 5
Notes Toward an Empirical Definition of Conservatism William F. Buckley Jr. 12
The Recrudescent American Conservatism Frank S. Meyer 28
The Fundamentals: Tradition, Religion, Morality, and the Individual
The Dynamo and the Virgin (1900) Henry Adams 47
From "Journalism and the Higher Law" Walter Lippmann 57
Materialism and Idealism in American Life George Santayana 62
From American Individualism Herbert Hoover 75
How It Feels To Be Colored Me Zora Neale Hurston 84
What I Believe: Rousseau and Religion Irving Babbitt 89
The Choice Before Civilization William Henry Chamberlin 104
Foreword in the Form of a Letter to My Children Whittaker Chambers 119
The Most Precious Heirloom Frank Chodorov 140
E Pluribus Unum: The American Consensus John Courtney Murray 148
From The Conservative Affirmation Willmoore Kendall 163
On the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty: Reflections on the Centennial of the Gettysburg Address Harry V. Jaffa 188
The Women's Movement Joan Didion 205
Our Ignorance Allan Bloom 213
Here Comes the Groom: A (Conservative) Case For Gay Marriage Andrew Sullivan 228
Affirmative Action: The Price of Preference Shelby Steele 233
Can Atheists Be Good Citizens? Richard John Neuhaus 244
From The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Michael Novak 256
The Soul of Man under Secularism Christopher Lasch 278
Leadership Failure and the Loyalty Trap Glenn Loury 291
Dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges Antonin Scalia 303
Liberty and Power: The State and the Free Market
From The State Randolph Bourne 313
From Our Enemy, The State Albert Jay Nock 337
The Great Stereopticon Richard Weaver 347
From The Road Ahead John T. Flynn 364
Capitalism and Freedom Milton Freedman 369
"When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness": Some Reflections on Capitalism and "the Free Society" Irving Kristol 383
From For a New Liberty Murray Rothbard 397
Unsustainable Liberalism Patrick Deneen 415
The Ties that Bind: The Local and Familiar
Reconstructed but Unregenerate John Crowe Ransom 431
The Loss of Community Robert Nisbet 450
From The Southern Tradition Eugene Genovese 468
Local Knowledge in the Age of Information Wendell Berry 481
The Exceptional Nation: America and the World
The Strenuous Life Theodore Roosevelt 495
Speech in the U.S. Senate on the League of Nations Henry Cabot Lodge 506
Giddy Minds and Foreign Quarrels: An Estimate of American Foreign Policy Charles Beard 534
From The Struggle for the World James Burnham 558
From A Foreign Policy for Americans Robert A. Taft 574
From The Irony of American History Reinhold Niebuhr 584
Address to Members of Parliament Ronald Reagan 590
From The Irony of Manifest Destiny William Pfaff 602
Sources and Acknowledgments 613
Index 617