Getting the Right Right

In the historical scholarship of the recent past, conservatism is simply a black hole. This is partly because so few historians are themselves conservative. Many despise conservatism. Just as most biologists don’t want to specialize in slime molds, hardly any modern historians want to spend their careers examining a subject they find so distasteful. They would much rather write about the Port Huron Statement, antiwar protesters, or the 1968 Democratic convention—in other words, the interests and activities of the Left. By turning their gaze away from the Right, however, they have succeeded in missing one of the most important developments since the end of World War II: the rise of organized conservatism as a political force in American life.

A few members of the profession have noticed this—and called for a reassessment. “American conservatism has been something of an orphan in historical scholarship,” confessed Columbia University’s Alan Brinkley in a 1994 essay in The American Historical Review. “Scholars have redefined their categories and paradigms repeatedly in recent decades to help them understand areas of the past they have previously neglected. It may be time for us to do so again.”