The Right
The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism
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4.5 • 10 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A magisterial intellectual history of the last century of American conservatism
When most people think of the history of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan. Yet this narrow view leaves many to question: How did Donald Trump win the presidency? And what is the future of the Republican Party?
In The Right, Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism’s evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures, resembling national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism’s past, the more one becomes convinced of its future.
Deeply researched and brilliantly told, The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand American conservatism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Continetti (The Persecution of Sarah Palin), the founding editor of the Washington Free Beacon, traces the evolution of American conservativism from Warren Harding to Donald Trump in this informative if one-sided history. Identifying the driving force of conservatism as the "endless competition between populism and elitism," Continetti contends that Trump's politics draws on the "Americanism" of 1920s Republicans including Harding, who appealed to "our onward, normal way," rejected internationalism, cut taxes, and championed traditional morality. Trump's innovation was to add to these traditional conservative viewpoints the dark populist vision of Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and Pat Buchanan, according to Continetti. In doing so, he argues, Trump collapsed the creative tension between elitism and populism and tore down the safeguards that have historically excluded conspiracy mongers and other fringe elements. Emphasizing that populism has always been an essential element of American conservatism, Continetti recasts Ronald Reagan's free market policies and aggressive foreign policy as the high-water mark of "Cold War conservatism" and delves into libertarianism, neoconservatism, and other strands of the movement. Though Continetti overstates Trump's successes and dubiously claims that 1960s leftists "celebrated" the violence of the decade as "just, necessary, and beneficial," this is a worthy analysis of how free market policies and nativist populism make for a potent political mix.
