Download or read book American Conservatism written by Andrew J. Bacevich and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 749 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the nation stands at a crossroads, this “valuable collection” urges us to reexamine the ideas and values of the American conservative tradition—offering “a bracing tonic for the present chaos” (The Washington Post). A groundbreaking collection of mainstream conservative writings since 1900, featuring pieces by Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Joan Didion, and more What is American conservatism? What are its core beliefs and values? What answers can it offer to the fundamental questions we face in the twenty-first century about the common good and the meaning of freedom, the responsibilities of citizenship, and America’s proper role in the world? As libertarians, neoconservatives, Never Trump-ers, and others battle over the label, this landmark collection offers an essential survey of conservative thought in the United States since 1900, highlighting the centrality of four key themes: the importance of tradition and the local, resistance to an ever-expanding state, opposition to the threat of tyranny at home and abroad, and free markets as the key to sustaining individual liberty. Andrew J. Bacevich’s incisive selections reveal that American conservatism—in his words “more akin to an ethos or a disposition than a fixed ideology”—has hardly been a monolithic entity over the last 120 years, but rather has developed through fierce internal debate about basic political and social propositions. Well-known figures such as Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley are complemented here by important but less familiar thinkers such as Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, as well as writers not of the political right, like Randolph Bourne, Joan Didion, and Reinhold Niebuhr, who have been important influences on conservative thinking. More relevant than ever, this rich, too often overlooked vein of writing provides essential insights into who Americans are as a people and offers surprising hope, in a time of extreme polarization, for finding common ground. It deserves to be rediscovered by readers of all political persuasions.
Download or read book Reclaiming the American Right written by Justin Raimondo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many conservatives want to know: Where did the Right go wrong? Justin Raimondo provides the answer in this captivating narrative. Raimondo shows how the noninterventionist Old Right - which included half-forgotten giants and prophets such as Senator Robert A. Taft, Garet Garrett, and Colonel Robert McCormick - was supplanted in influence by a Right that made its peace with bigger government at home and "perpetual war for perpetual peace" abroad. First published in 1993, Reclaiming the American Right is as timely as ever. This new edition includes commentary by Pat Buchanan, political scientist George W. Carey, Chronicles executive editor Scott Richert, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute's David Gordon.
Download or read book Reclaiming Conservatism written by Mickey Edwards and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2008-03 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading figure in the American conservative movement for more than 40 years, Edwards argues loudly and clearly that conservatives today have abandoned their principles and have become champions of that which they once most feared.
Download or read book We Are Doomed written by John Derbyshire and published by Forum Books. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To his fellow conservatives, John Derbyshire makes a plea: Don't be seduced by this nonsense about "the politics of hope." Skepticism, pessimism, and suspicion of happy talk are the true characteristics of an authentically conservative temperament. And from Hobbes and Burke through Lord Salisbury and Calvin Coolidge, up to Pat Buchanan and Mark Steyn in our own time, these beliefs have kept the human race from blindly chasing its utopian dreams right off a cliff. Recently, though, various comforting yet fundamentally idiotic notions of political correctness and wishful thinking have taken root beyond the "Kumbaya"-singing, we're-all-one crowd. These ideas have now infected conservatives, the very people who really should know better. The Republican Party has been derailed by legions of fools and poseurs wearing smiley-face masks. Think rescuing the economy by condemning our descendents to lives of spirit-crushing debt. Think nation-building abroad while we slowly disintegrate at home. Think education and No Child Left Behind. . . . But don't think about it too much, because if you do, you'll quickly come to the logical conclusion: We are doomed. Need more convincing? Dwell on the cheerful promises of the diversity cult and the undeniable reality of the oncoming demographic disaster. Contemplate the feminization of everything, or take a good look at what passes for art these days. Witness the rise of culturism and the death of religion. Bow down before your new master, the federal apparatchik. Finally, ask yourself: How certain am I that the United States of America will survive, in any recognizable form, until, say, 2022? A scathing, mordantly funny romp through today's dismal and dismaler political and cultural scene, We Are Doomed provides a long-overdue dose of reality, revealing just how the GOP has been led astray in recent years–and showing that had conservatives held on to their fittingly pessimistic outlook, America's future would be far brighter. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to embrace the Audacity of Hopelessness.
Download or read book Reclaiming Conservatism written by Mickey Edwards and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading figure in the American conservative movement for over 40 years, Mickey Edwards was a prominent Republican congressman, a former national chairman of the American Conservative Union, and a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation. When he speaks, conservatives listen. Now, in this highly provocative and frank volume, Edwards argues loud and clear that conservatives today have abandoned their principles and have become champions of that which they once most feared. The conservative movement--which once nominated Barry Goldwater for President, and later elected Ronald Reagan--was based on a distinctly American kind of conservatism which drew its inspiration directly from the United States Constitution--in particular, an overriding belief in individual liberty and limited government. But today, Edwards argues, the mantle of conservatism has been taken over by people whose beliefs and policies threaten the entire constitutional system of government. By abetting an imperial presidency, he contends, so-called "conservatives" have gutted the system of checks and balances, abandoned due process, and trampled upon our cherished civil liberties. Today's conservatives endorse unprecedented assertions of government power--from the creation of secret prisons to illegal wiretapping. Once, they fought to protect citizens from government intrusion; today, they seem to recognize few limits on what government can do. The movement that was once the Constitution's--and freedom's--strongest defender is now at risk of becoming its most dangerous enemy. Edwards ends with a blueprint for reclaiming the essence of conservatism in America. Touching upon many current issues, this passionately argued book concludes that many of today's conservatives seem to have it all backwards. They have turned conservatism upside down--and this book calls them on it.
Download or read book Conservatism in America Since 1930 written by Gregory L. Schneider and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2003-06 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents forty essays, speeches, and other documents on conservatism or by conservatives, spanning 1930 to the turn of the century, including works by Seward Collins, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr., Irving Kristol, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and others.
Download or read book America s Way Back written by Donald Devine and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The solution for the modern GOP . . . Intellectual ammunition for the modern conservative movement.” —SENATOR RAND PAUL How can America recover from economic stagnation, moral exhaustion, and looming bankruptcy? Donald J. Devine shows the way. Devine, a longtime adviser to Ronald Reagan, lays out a powerful case for the philosophical synthesis of freedom and tradition that Reagan said was the essence of modern conservatism. The secret of America’s success, he shows, has been the Constitution’s capacity to harmonize the twin ideals of freedom and tradition. But today, progressivism has so corrupted modern political thinking—in both parties—that leaders keep calling for the same failed tactics: more money poured into more big-government programs. In America’s Way Back, Devine not only reveals where things went wrong, and why, but also points the way to reclaiming America’s freedom, prosperity, and creativity. The solution lies in a new “fusion” of traditional and libertarian thought.
Download or read book Reclaiming the Republic written by Robert G. Marshall and published by Tan Books. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical secularists have undermined the premise of the Founders to the detriment of our nation and its people. It's time to fight back. Reclaiming the Republic will show you how. While the election of Donald Trump as president may have slowed down the project of those who would continue to move America away from the laws of Nature and of Nature's God, the struggle is not over, and the next few elections may well prove decisive. This book shows Christians and all people of good will and traditional values how to use the levers of civil power to defeat anti-Christian and anti-Natural Law policies at all levels of government...and, what is more important, defeat the proponents of such policies before they gain access to those levers. Reclaiming the Republic pulls back the curtain on the structure of government so that motivated Christians can expose and defeat the work of secularists. Perhaps no person in the country is better qualified to write this book than Robert G. "Delegate Bob" Marshall. Having forgotten more than most Americans ever learned about our system of government, the thought of the Founders, state and local politics, and those aforementioned "laws of Nature and of Nature's God" as expressed politically, accompany Marshall as he takes readers on a crash course in Civics 101. Marshall is also uniquely qualified to write this book as he knows first-hand that the radical Left is pulling out all the stops to consolidate their gains and reverse their losses. After serving his neighbors for thirteen terms in the Virginia House of Delegates, he was defeated in 2017 by the first openly transgendered candidate to be seated in a US statehouse. His opponent received much outside help, both in terms of volunteers and out-of-state money. Why would a race for the Virginia House of Delegates attract such attention across the country? Again, the radical secularist Left knows what is at stake. Do you? Read this book, digest its lessons, share with your children and friends, and get involved.
Download or read book Conscience of a Conservative written by Jeff Flake and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it.”—David Brooks, in his New York Times column In a bold act of conscience, Republican Senator Jeff Flake takes his party to task for embracing nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and the anomalous Trump presidency. The book is an urgent call for a return to bedrock conservative principle and a cry to once again put country before party. Dear Reader, I am a conservative. I believe that there are limits to what government can and should do, that there are some problems that government cannot solve, and that human initiative is best when left unfettered, free from government interference or coercion. I believe that these ideas, tested by time, offer the most freedom and best outcomes in the lives of the most people. But today, the American conservative movement has lost its way. Given the state of our politics, it is no exaggeration to say that this is an urgent matter. The Republican party used to play to a broader audience, one that demanded that we accomplish something. But in this era of dysfunction, our primary accomplishment has been constructing the argument that we’re not to blame. We have decided that it is better to build and maintain a majority by using the levers of power rather than the art of persuasion and the battle of ideas. We’ve decided that putting party over country is okay. There are many on both sides of the aisle who think this a good model on which to build a political career—destroying, not building. And all the while, our country burns, our institutions are undermined, and our values are compromised. We have become so estranged from our principles that we no longer know what principle is. America is not just a collection of transactions. America is also a collection of ideas and values. And these are our values. These are our principles. They are not subject to change, owing to political fashion or cult of personality. I believe that we desperately need to get back to the rigorous, fact-based arguments that made us conservatives in the first place. We need to realize that the stakes are simply too high to remain silent and fall in line. That is why I have written this book and am taking this stand. —Jeff Flake
Download or read book Reclaiming the Center written by Millard J. Erickson and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2004-11-09 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reclaiming the Center is a valuable contribution to the study of contemporary evangelicalism. It is a guide for how evangelicals can move forward with wisdom and discernment without succumbing to the spirit of this age.
Download or read book Reclaiming the Enlightenment written by Stephen Eric Bronner and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1947 Horkheimer and Adorno connected the Enlightenment with totalitarianism. Since when the Left has drifted into the language and imagery of the European Counter-Enlightenment, the movement against 1776 and 1789. Bronner sets out to reclaim the heritage of progressive politics.
Download or read book Raised Right written by Jeffrey R. Dudas and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has the modern conservative movement thrived in spite of the lack of harmony among its constituent members? What, and who, holds together its large corporate interests, small-government libertarians, social and racial traditionalists, and evangelical Christians? Raised Right pursues these questions through a cultural study of three iconic conservative figures: National Review editor William F. Buckley, Jr., President Ronald Reagan, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Examining their papers, writings, and rhetoric, Jeffrey R. Dudas identifies what he terms a "paternal rights discourse"—the arguments about fatherhood and rights that permeate their personal lives and political visions. For each, paternal discipline was crucial to producing autonomous citizens worthy and capable of self-governance. This paternalist logic is the cohesive agent for an entire conservative movement, uniting its celebration of "founding fathers," past and present, constitutional and biological. Yet this discourse produces a paradox: When do authoritative fathers transfer their rights to these well-raised citizens? This duality propels conservative politics forward with unruly results. The mythology of these American fathers gives conservatives something, and someone, to believe in—and therein lies its timeless appeal.
Download or read book The Corrosion of Conservatism Why I Left the Right written by Max Boot and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “must read” (Joe Scarborough) by a New York Times– best- selling author, The Corrosion of Conservatism presents a necessary defense of American democracy. Praised on publication as “one of the most impressive and unfl inching diagnoses of the pathologies in Republican politics that led to Trump’s rise” (Jonathan Chait, New York), The Corrosion of Conservatism documents a president who has traduced every norm and the rise of a nascent centrist movement to counter his assault on democracy. In this “admirably succinct and trenchant” (Charles Reichman, San Francisco Chronicle) exhumation of conservatism, Max Boot tells the story of an ideological dislocation so shattering that it caused his courageous transformation from Republican foreign policy advisor to celebrated anti- Trump columnist. From recording his political coming- of- age as a young émigré from the Soviet Union to describing the vitriol he endured from his erstwhile conservative colleagues, Boot mixes “lively memoir with sharp analysis” (William Kristol) from its Reagan-era apogee to its corrosion under Donald Trump.
Download or read book Conservatism written by Robert Nisbet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential concerns of conservatism are the same as those that motivated Nisbet's first and most influential book. The Quest for Community. In fact, Conservatism unites virtually all of Nisbet's work. In it, Nisbet deals with the political causes of the manifold forms of alienation that underwrite the human quest for community. The sovereign political state is more than a legal relationship of a superstructure of power, it is inseparable from its successive penetrations of man's economic, religious, kinship and local allegiances, and its revolutionary dislocations of established centers of power. Nisbet holds that although political philosophers are often conceived in terms of their views of the individual and the state, a more useful approach adds the factor of social groups or communities mediating between the individual and the state. Such groups comprise "society" the protection of which is the "sole object" of the conservative tradition, according to Nisbet. This conservative ideology arose in the West as a reaction to the French Revolution and its perceived impact upon traditional society. Edmund Burke was the first spokesman of the new ideology. In this book, Nisbet argues that modern conservatism throughout the West can be seen as a widening of Burke's indictment not only of the French Revolution, but of the larger revolution we have come to call modernity. From Edmund Burke and his contemporaries such as Bonald, de Maistre, Haller, and Savigny, down to T.S. Eliot, Christopher Dawson, Michael Oakeshott, Irving Babbit, Paul Elmer More, and Russell Kirk, the essential themes of political conservatism remained the same. They are centered upon history, tradition, property, authority, liberty and religion, and attack equally the political collectivism and radical individualism that have the same irrational outcomes. Nisbet makes the point that, at present, conservatism is also in a crisis, one created in large measure by mixing in the political arena economic liberalism and welfare state socialism - a lethal mix for conservative politics.
Download or read book The Last Best Hope written by Joe Scarborough and published by Crown Forum. This book was released on 2010 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years ago, Scarborough stood alone in predicting the collapse of the Republican majority and the economic chaos that has shaken the country. Now, the author issues a challenge to his own political party: reform or die.
Download or read book Constitutional Conservatism written by Peter Berkowitz and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Berkowitz identifies the political principles social conservatives and libertarians share, or should share, and sketches the common ground on which they can and should join forces. Drawing on the writings of Edmund Burke, The Federalist, and the high points of post-World War II American conservatism, he argues that the top political priority for social conservatives and libertarians should be to rally around the principles of liberty embodied in the US Constitution and pursue reform in light of them.
Download or read book I Citizen written by Tony Woodlief and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into its culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the Left and the Right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils. The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America, it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which we ordinary citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats. This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.
