Movement conservatism
Encyclopedia
The term movement conservatism was an inside term describing conservatism in the United States and New Right. According to Nash (2009) the movement comprises a coalition of five distinct impulses. From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, libertarians, traditionalists, and anticommunists made up this coalition, with the goal of fighting the liberals' New Deal
. In the 1970s, two more impulses were added with the addition of neoconservatives and the Religious Right.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, a prominent writer on the right, says, "the conservatism that, when it made its appearance in the early 1950s, was called the New Conservatism and for the past fifty or sixty years has been known as 'movement conservatism' by those of us who have espoused it." Political scientists Doss and Roberts say that "The term movement conservatives refers to those people who argue that big government constitutes the most serious problem.... Movement conservatives blame the growth of the administrative state for destroying individual initiative." Historian Allan J. Lichtman traces the term to a memorandum written in February 1961 by William A. Rusher
, the publisher of the National Review to William F. Buckley, Jr.
, envisioning the National Reviewas not just "the intellectual leader of the American Right," but more grandly of "the Western Right." Rusher envisioned philosopher kings would function as "movement conservatives".
Recent examples of conservative writers using the term "movement conservatism" include Sam Tanenhaus
, Paul Gottfried
, and Jonathan Riehl. Liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
devotes chapter 6 of his The conscience of a liberal (2009) to an attack on the group.
, called Nixon the lesser of two evils. Historian William Link, in his biography of Jesse Helms
, reports that "By the mid-1970s, these movement conservatives wanted to control the Republican Party and, ultimately, the national government." Phyllis Schlafly
, who mobilized conservative women for Reagan, boasted after the 1980 election that Reagan won by riding "the rising tides of the Pro-Family Movement and the Conservative Movement. Reagan articulated what those two separate movements want from government, and therefore he harnessed their support and rode them into the White House.".
However, movement conservatives had to compete for President Reagan's attention with fiscal conservatives, businessmen, and traditionalists. Nash (2009) identifies a tension between middle-of-the-road republicans and "movement conservatives.: Conservative historian Stephen Hayward says, "Movement conservatives bristled at seeing the GOP establishment so well represented in Reagan's inner circle", and they did not realize how well this arrangement actually served Reagan. To sabotage movement plans, the fiscal conservatives sometimes would leak movement conservatives' plans to the press. New Left historian Todd Gitlin
finds that, "movement conservatives of a religious bent had to be willing to accept a long-term strategy for limiting abortion (via legislation banning partial-birth abortion, and certain statewide bans), rather than go for broke with a probably doomed constitutional amendment."
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
. In the 1970s, two more impulses were added with the addition of neoconservatives and the Religious Right.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, a prominent writer on the right, says, "the conservatism that, when it made its appearance in the early 1950s, was called the New Conservatism and for the past fifty or sixty years has been known as 'movement conservatism' by those of us who have espoused it." Political scientists Doss and Roberts say that "The term movement conservatives refers to those people who argue that big government constitutes the most serious problem.... Movement conservatives blame the growth of the administrative state for destroying individual initiative." Historian Allan J. Lichtman traces the term to a memorandum written in February 1961 by William A. Rusher
William A. Rusher
William Allen Rusher was an American lawyer, author, activist, speaker, debater, and conservative syndicated columnist. He was one of the founders of the conservative movement and was one of its most prominent spokesmen for thirty years.- Early life :Rusher was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1923...
, the publisher of the National Review to William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, envisioning the National Reviewas not just "the intellectual leader of the American Right," but more grandly of "the Western Right." Rusher envisioned philosopher kings would function as "movement conservatives".
Recent examples of conservative writers using the term "movement conservatism" include Sam Tanenhaus
Sam Tanenhaus
Sam Tanenhaus is an American historian, biographer, and journalist.-Biography:Tanenhaus received his B.A. in English from Grinnell College in 1977 and a M.A. in English Literature from Yale University in 1978. He is currently the editor of The New York Times Book Review and Week in Review...
, Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried is Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient...
, and Jonathan Riehl. Liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
devotes chapter 6 of his The conscience of a liberal (2009) to an attack on the group.
Political roles
Scholars have traced the political role of movement conservatives in recent decades. Political scientist Robert C. Smith reports that in 1960, "While movement conservatives supported Nixon against Kennedy, the support was half-hearted." Smith notes that the National Review, edited by William F. Buckley, Jr.William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, called Nixon the lesser of two evils. Historian William Link, in his biography of Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
, reports that "By the mid-1970s, these movement conservatives wanted to control the Republican Party and, ultimately, the national government." Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly is a Constitutional lawyer and an American politically conservative activist and author who founded the Eagle Forum. She is known for her opposition to modern feminism ideas and for her campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment...
, who mobilized conservative women for Reagan, boasted after the 1980 election that Reagan won by riding "the rising tides of the Pro-Family Movement and the Conservative Movement. Reagan articulated what those two separate movements want from government, and therefore he harnessed their support and rode them into the White House.".
However, movement conservatives had to compete for President Reagan's attention with fiscal conservatives, businessmen, and traditionalists. Nash (2009) identifies a tension between middle-of-the-road republicans and "movement conservatives.: Conservative historian Stephen Hayward says, "Movement conservatives bristled at seeing the GOP establishment so well represented in Reagan's inner circle", and they did not realize how well this arrangement actually served Reagan. To sabotage movement plans, the fiscal conservatives sometimes would leak movement conservatives' plans to the press. New Left historian Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin is an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications.-New Left activist:...
finds that, "movement conservatives of a religious bent had to be willing to accept a long-term strategy for limiting abortion (via legislation banning partial-birth abortion, and certain statewide bans), rather than go for broke with a probably doomed constitutional amendment."
Movement conservative publications and institutes
- American Enterprise InstituteAmerican Enterprise InstituteThe American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
- The American SpectatorThe American SpectatorThe American Spectator is a conservative U.S. monthly magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From its founding in 1967 until the late 1980s, the small-circulation magazine featured the writings of authors...
magazine, a conservative political magazine - Cato InstituteCato InstituteThe Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the largest privately held...
, a libertarian think tank - Chronicles magazineChronicles (magazine)Chronicles is a U.S. monthly magazine published by the Rockford Institute. Its full current name is Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. The magazine is known for promoting anti-globalism, anti-intervention and anti-immigration stances within conservative politics, and is considered one of...
, a paleoconservative publication - City Journal, official publication of the Manhattan InstituteManhattan InstituteThe Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...
- First ThingsFirst ThingsFirst Things is an ecumenical journal focused on creating a "religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society". The journal is inter-denominational and inter-religious, representing a broad intellectual tradition of Christian and Jewish critique of contemporary society...
, magazine on religion - FreedomWorksFreedomWorksFreedomWorks is a conservative non-profit organization based in Washington D.C., United States. FreedomWorks trains volunteers, assists in campaigns, and encourages them to mobilize, interacting with both fellow citizens and their political representatives....
, a conservative activist group - HumanitasHumanitas (journal)Humanitas is an interdisciplinary journal published by the National Humanities Institute. It is known for its affiliation with traditionalist conservatism....
, a traditionalist conservative publication - Independence InstituteIndependence InstituteThe Independence Institute is a conservative think tank based in Golden, Colorado. Founded in 1985, the Institute " expertise education, the environment, transportation, personal freedom, government reform, local government, and criminal justice."- Current Staff :As of June 2010, the Independence...
, a conservative think tank - Intercollegiate Studies InstituteIntercollegiate Studies InstituteThe Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
, a traditionalist conservative academic organization - Leadership InstituteLeadership InstituteThe Leadership Institute is a 501 non-profit organization located in Arlington, Virginia that teaches "political technology.".The Institute was founded in 1979 by conservative activist Morton C. Blackwell...
, an organization for conservative activists - Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
- Modern Age, a traditionalist conservative intellectual journal
- National ReviewNational ReviewNational Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
magazine, a conservative political magazine; founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley, Jr.William F. Buckley, Jr.William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for... - Policy ReviewPolicy ReviewPolicy Review is one of America's leading conservative journals. It was founded by the Heritage Foundation and was for many years the foundation's flagship publication. In 2001, the publication was acquired by the Stanford University-based Hoover Institution, though it maintains its office on...
magazine, a conservative academic magazine - Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative think tank
- The American ConservativeThe American ConservativeThe American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
, a paleoconservative publication - The Heritage FoundationThe Heritage FoundationThe Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
, a conservative think tank - The Weekly StandardThe Weekly StandardThe Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...
magazine, a neoconservative publication - Townhall.comTownhall.comTownhall.com is a web-based publication primarily dedicated to conservative United States politics. It was previously operated by the Heritage Foundation, but is now owned and operated by Salem Communications...
, conservative news, information, and commentary
Further reading
- Frohnen, Bruce et al. eds. American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (2006) ISBN 1-932236-44-9
- Perlstein, Rick. "Thunder on the Right: The Roots of Conservative Victory in the 1960s," OAH Magazine of History, Oct 2006, Vol. 20 Issue 5, pp 24-27