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Movement conservatism

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Movement conservatism is a term used by political analysts to describe conservatives in the United States since the mid-20th century and the New Right. According to George H. Nash (2009) the movement comprises a coalition of five distinct impulses. From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists 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.[1]: 344 

R. Emmett Tyrrell, a prominent right-wing writer, 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."[2] 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."[3] Historian Allan J. Lichtman traces the term to a memorandum written in February 1961 by William A. Rusher, the publisher of National Review, to William F. Buckley Jr., envisioning National Review as 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".[4]

Recent examples of writers using the term "movement conservatism" include Sam Tanenhaus,[5] leading paleoconservative Paul Gottfried,[6] and Jonathan Riehl.[7] New York Times columnist Paul Krugman devoted a chapter of his book The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) to the movement, writing that movement conservatives gained control of the Republican Party starting in the 1970s and that Ronald Reagan was the first movement conservative elected president.[8]

  1. ^ Nash, George H. (2009). Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism. ISI Books. ISBN 978-1-935191-65-0.
  2. ^ Tyrrell, R. Emmett (2010). After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery. Thomas Nelson. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-59555-272-3.
  3. ^ Doss, Marion T.; Roberts, Robert North (1997). From Watergate to Whitewater: The Public Integrity War. Bloomsbury Academic. p. xiv. ISBN 978-0-275-95597-7.
  4. ^ Lichtman, Allan J. (2008). White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 240. ISBN 978-0-87113-984-9.
  5. ^ Tanenhaus, Sam (2010). The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences. Random House Publishing. p. 10 and book title. ISBN 978-0-8129-8103-2.
  6. ^ Gottfried, P. (2009). Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-230-61479-6.
  7. ^ Riehl, Jonathan (2007). The Federalist Society and Movement Conservatism: How a Fractious Coalition on the Right Is Changing Constitutional Law And the Way We Talk and Think About It (PhD thesis). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. doi:10.17615/32hd-y571.
  8. ^ Krugman, Paul (2007). The Conscience of a Liberal. W. W. Norton Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-393-06069-0.