Socialism . . . But?

For once, conservatives were ahead of the curve.

American conservatism functioned as a political mass movement in the postwar era not because of the rhetorical gifts of its chief expositors (William F. Buckley Jr. et al.) nor because of the intellectual prowess of its best and most creative minds (ask George Nash for his list) but because of the threat presented by the Soviet Union and the worldwide Communist enterprise. The effort to link Soviet socialism abroad with the New Deal and the welfare state at home was always destined to fail, and it did fail as soon as the Soviet Union failed.