THE RIGHT BOOKS

Published in 1976, George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 concludes with a chapter entitled “Can the Vital Center Hold?” in which Mr. Nash a) assesses the accuracy of Jeffrey Hart’s 1966 prediction that, while many American liberals would continue to move still further leftward, many others would inevitably turn to the Right; b) discusses the rebirth of Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz as “new conservatives”; c) speculates on the impact of the “momentous intellectual realignment” that had taken place early in the 1970s, and the possibilities for a “rejuvenation” of conservative thought by refugees from the fever swamps of contemporary leftliberalism; and d) ends with the assertion that, while conservatives had succeeded in bringing “new colors” to the American scene, they faced the enormous challenge of “defend[ing] enduring truths in a language appealing to America in the 1970s.” It is a measure of how much—and how little —has transpired over the last dozen years that The Conservative Movement (Twayne Publishers, 70 Lincoln Street, Boston, Mass. 02111; $18.95), by Paul Gottfried and Thomas Fleming (a work that is only a quarter the length of Nash’s, although it too begins with 1945), hurries through the developments of the Fifties and Sixties in two brief chapters, before plunging ahead into analyses of such jazzy topics as sociobiology, Jerry Falwell, the New Right, direct mail, political-action committees, conservative think-tanks, and the triumph of neoconservatism. Most interestingly, however, Gottfried and Fleming’s conclusion in 1988 is identical with Nash’s in 1976: “Conservatives in the 1980s might take considerable comfort from contemplating their forty-year rise to power . . . some changes were made, some impact was had upon the American experience. . . . However much doctrines may have altered, the fact remains that by the 1980s a great many Americans, perhaps more than at any other time, were willing to identify themselves as ‘conservatives.’ ”

In that reference to altered doctrines, however, is to be found the kernel of this book. “Nineteen eighty,” Gottfried and Fleming write, “was the anno domini of American conservatism.” Or was it? The election of Ronald Reagan was greeted by many conservatives as the reward of 35 years of struggle in the political wilderness. Yet, the movement that triumphed was no longer truly their movement: “Ronald Reagan’s election redefined [it], decided its priorities, and finally condemned some of its principles and causes to outer darkness.” Therefore: “One conclusion that may be drawn from this book,” the authors state, “is the increasing irrelevance of pre-war, especially non-American, traditionalist thinking for the postwar Right. A distinctive feature of the contemporary American Right is its emphasis on progress; moving beyond the past toward a future of unlimited material opportunity and social improvement.” With the exception of the Old Right and libertarian core, every component of the present-day American Right—New Right, Evangelical Right, and neoconservative— accepts the welfare state both in the reality and in the ideal. For all his brilliance, James Burnham, in Suicide of the West, failed to foresee that the liberal premises he was arguing against would, twenty years later, provide the substance of a transformed American Right. “Significantly,” Gottfried and Fleming conclude, “what have been described as conservative attitudes may no longer be relevant to what are now the dominant tendencies in American conservatism.”

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Published in 1976, George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 concludes with a chapter entitled “Can the Vital Center Hold?” in which Mr. Nash a) assesses the accuracy of Jeffrey Hart’s 1966 prediction that, while many American liberals would continue to move still further leftward, many others would inevitably turn to the Right; b) discusses the rebirth of Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz as “new conservatives”; c) speculates on the impact of the “momentous intellectual realignment” that had taken place early in the 1970s, and the possibilities for a “rejuvenation” of conservative thought by refugees from the fever swamps of contemporary leftliberalism; and d) ends with the assertion that, while conservatives had succeeded in bringing “new colors” to the American scene, they faced the enormous challenge of “defend[ing] enduring truths in a language appealing to America in the 1970s.” It is a measure of how much—and how little —has transpired over the last dozen years that The Conservative Movement (Twayne Publishers, 70 Lincoln Street, Boston, Mass. 02111; $18.95), by Paul Gottfried and Thomas Fleming (a work that is only a quarter the length of Nash’s, although it too begins with 1945), hurries through the developments of the Fifties and Sixties in two brief chapters, before plunging ahead into analyses of such jazzy topics as sociobiology, Jerry Falwell, the New Right, direct mail, political-action committees, conservative think-tanks, and the triumph of neoconservatism. Most interestingly, however, Gottfried and Fleming’s conclusion in 1988 is identical with Nash’s in 1976: “Conservatives in the 1980s might take considerable comfort from contemplating their forty-year rise to power . . . some changes were made, some impact was had upon the American experience. . . . However much doctrines may have altered, the fact remains that by the 1980s a great many Americans, perhaps more than at any other time, were willing to identify themselves as ‘conservatives.’ ”

In that reference to altered doctrines, however, is to be found the kernel of this book. “Nineteen eighty,” Gottfried and Fleming write, “was the anno domini of American conservatism.” Or was it? The election of Ronald Reagan was greeted by many conservatives as the reward of 35 years of struggle in the political wilderness. Yet, the movement that triumphed was no longer truly their movement: “Ronald Reagan’s election redefined [it], decided its priorities, and finally condemned some of its principles and causes to outer darkness.” Therefore: “One conclusion that may be drawn from this book,” the authors state, “is the increasing irrelevance of pre-war, especially non-American, traditionalist thinking for the postwar Right. A distinctive feature of the contemporary American Right is its emphasis on progress; moving beyond the past toward a future of unlimited material opportunity and social improvement.” With the exception of the Old Right and libertarian core, every component of the present-day American Right—New Right, Evangelical Right, and neoconservative— accepts the welfare state both in the reality and in the ideal. For all his brilliance, James Burnham, in Suicide of the West, failed to foresee that the liberal premises he was arguing against would, twenty years later, provide the substance of a transformed American Right. “Significantly,” Gottfried and Fleming conclude, “what have been described as conservative attitudes may no longer be relevant to what are now the dominant tendencies in American conservatism.”