Reconstructing Conservatism?

Reconstructing Conservatism? PDF Author: Richard Hayton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 152613022X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Why did it take the Conservative Party so long to recover power? After the landslide defeat in 1997, why was it so slow to adapt, reposition itself and rebuild its support? How did the party leadership seek to reconstruct Conservatism and modernise its electoral appeal? Of vital interest to anyone interested in British politics, this highly readable book addresses these questions through a contextualised assessment of Conservative Party politics between 1997 and 2010. It traces debates over strategy amongst the party elite and scrutinises the actions of the leadership. It also considers four particular dilemmas for contemporary Conservatism: European integration; national identity and the ‘English Question’; social liberalism versus social authoritarianism; and the problems posed by a neo-liberal political economy. The book argues that the ideological legacy of Thatcherism played a central role in framing and shaping these intraparty debates, and that an appreciation of this is vital for explaining the nature and limits of the Conservatives’ renewal under Cameron.

Reconstructing Conservatism?

Reconstructing Conservatism? PDF Author: Richard Hayton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 152613022X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why did it take the Conservative Party so long to recover power? After the landslide defeat in 1997, why was it so slow to adapt, reposition itself and rebuild its support? How did the party leadership seek to reconstruct Conservatism and modernise its electoral appeal? Of vital interest to anyone interested in British politics, this highly readable book addresses these questions through a contextualised assessment of Conservative Party politics between 1997 and 2010. It traces debates over strategy amongst the party elite and scrutinises the actions of the leadership. It also considers four particular dilemmas for contemporary Conservatism: European integration; national identity and the ‘English Question’; social liberalism versus social authoritarianism; and the problems posed by a neo-liberal political economy. The book argues that the ideological legacy of Thatcherism played a central role in framing and shaping these intraparty debates, and that an appreciation of this is vital for explaining the nature and limits of the Conservatives’ renewal under Cameron.

Christian Reconstruction

Christian Reconstruction PDF Author: Michael J. McVicar
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469622750
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This is the first critical history of Christian Reconstruction and its founder and champion, theologian and activist Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001). Drawing on exclusive access to Rushdoony's personal papers and extensive correspondence, Michael J. McVicar demonstrates the considerable role Reconstructionism played in the development of the radical Christian Right and an American theocratic agenda. As a religious movement, Reconstructionism aims at nothing less than "reconstructing" individuals through a form of Christian governance that, if implemented in the lives of U.S. citizens, would fundamentally alter the shape of American society. McVicar examines Rushdoony's career and traces Reconstructionism as it grew from a grassroots, populist movement in the 1960s to its height of popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. He reveals the movement's galvanizing role in the development of political conspiracy theories and survivalism, libertarianism and antistatism, and educational reform and homeschooling. The book demonstrates how these issues have retained and in many cases gained potency for conservative Christians to the present day, despite the decline of the movement itself beginning in the 1990s. McVicar contends that Christian Reconstruction has contributed significantly to how certain forms of religiosity have become central, and now familiar, aspects of an often controversial conservative revolution in America.

The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right PDF Author: Max Boot
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631495682
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
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.

The Conservative Sensibility

The Conservative Sensibility PDF Author: George F. Will
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316480916
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist's "astonishing" and "enthralling" New York Times bestseller and Notable Book about how the Founders' belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition (Booklist) -- "easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written" (Jonah Goldberg). For more than four decades, George F. Will has attempted to discern the principles of the Western political tradition and apply them to America's civic life. Today, the stakes could hardly be higher. Vital questions about the nature of man, of rights, of equality, of majority rule are bubbling just beneath the surface of daily events in America. The Founders' vision, articulated first in the Declaration of Independence and carried out in the Constitution, gave the new republic a framework for government unique in world history. Their beliefs in natural rights, limited government, religious freedom, and in human virtue and dignity ushered in two centuries of American prosperity. Now, as Will shows, conservatism is under threat -- both from progressives and elements inside the Republican Party. America has become an administrative state, while destructive trends have overtaken family life and higher education. Semi-autonomous executive agencies wield essentially unaccountable power. Congress has failed in its duty to exercise its legislative powers. And the executive branch has slipped the Constitution's leash. In the intellectual battle between the vision of Founding Fathers like James Madison, who advanced the notion of natural rights that pre-exist government, and the progressivism advanced by Woodrow Wilson, the Founders have been losing. It's time to reverse America's political fortunes. Expansive, intellectually thrilling, and written with the erudite wit that has made Will beloved by millions of readers, The Conservative Sensibility is an extraordinary new book from one of America's most celebrated political writers.

The Politics of Rage

The Politics of Rage PDF Author: Dan T. Carter
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807125977
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 604

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Book Description
Combining biography with regional and national history, Dan T. Carter chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of George Wallace, a populist who abandoned his ideals to become a national symbol of racism, and later begged for forgiveness. In The Politics of Rage, Carter argues persuasively that the four-time Alabama governor and four-time presidential candidate helped to establish the conservative political movement that put Ronald Reagan in the White House in 1980 and gave Newt Gingrich and the Republicans control of Congress in 1994. In this second edition, Carter updates Wallace’s story with a look at the politician’s death and the nation’s reaction to it and gives a summary of his own sense of the legacy of “the most important loser in twentieth-century American politics.”

The Roots of Modern Conservatism

The Roots of Modern Conservatism PDF Author: Michael D. Bowen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807834858
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Between 1944 and 1953, a power struggle emerged between New York governor Thomas Dewey and U.S. senator Robert Taft of Ohio that threatened to split the Republican Party. In The Roots of Modern Conservatism, Michael Bowen reveals how this two-man b

Mothers of Conservatism

Mothers of Conservatism PDF Author: Michelle M. Nickerson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069116391X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Mothers of Conservatism tells the story of 1950s Southern Californian housewives who shaped the grassroots right in the two decades following World War II. Michelle Nickerson describes how red-hunting homemakers mobilized activist networks, institutions, and political consciousness in local education battles, and she introduces a generation of women who developed political styles and practices around their domestic routines. From the conservative movement's origins in the early fifties through the presidential election of 1964, Nickerson documents how women shaped conservatism from the bottom up, out of the fabric of their daily lives and into the agenda of the Republican Party. A unique history of the American conservative movement, Mothers of Conservatism shows how housewives got out of the house and discovered their political capital.

The Reactionary Mind

The Reactionary Mind PDF Author: Corey Robin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190692006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Now updated to include Trump's election and the rise of global populism, Corey Robin's 'The Reactionary Mind' traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution.

Rightward Bound

Rightward Bound PDF Author: Bruce J. Schulman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674027572
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Often considered a lost decade, a pause between the liberal Sixties and Reagan’s Eighties, the 1970s were indeed a watershed era when the forces of a conservative counter-revolution cohered. These years marked a significant moral and cultural turning point in which the conservative movement became the motive force driving politics for the ensuing three decades. Interpreting the movement as more than a backlash against the rampant liberalization of American culture, racial conflict, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, these provocative and innovative essays look below the surface, discovering the tectonic shifts that paved the way for Reagan’s America. They reveal strains at the heart of the liberal coalition, resulting from struggles over jobs, taxes, and neighborhood reconstruction, while also investigating how the deindustrialization of northern cities, the rise of the suburbs, and the migration of people and capital to the Sunbelt helped conservatism gain momentum in the twentieth century. They demonstrate how the forces of the right coalesced in the 1970s and became, through the efforts of grassroots activists and political elites, a movement to reshape American values and policies. A penetrating and provocative portrait of a critical decade in American history, Rightward Bound illuminates the seeds of both the successes and the failures of the conservative revolution. It helps us understand how, despite conservatism’s rise, persistent tensions remain today between its political power and the achievements of twentieth-century liberalism.

Consuming Life

Consuming Life PDF Author: Zygmunt Bauman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745655823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer society, individuals become simultaneously the promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote. They are, at one and the same time, the merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the travelling salespeople. They all inhabit the same social space that is customarily described by the term the market. The test they need to pass in order to acquire the social prizes they covet requires them to recast themselves as products capable of drawing attention to themselves. This subtle and pervasive transformation of consumers into commodities is the most important feature of the society of consumers. It is the hidden truth, the deepest and most closely guarded secret, of the consumer society in which we now live. In this new book Zygmunt Bauman examines the impact of consumerist attitudes and patterns of conduct on various apparently unconnected aspects of social life politics and democracy, social divisions and stratification, communities and partnerships, identity building, the production and use of knowledge, and value preferences. The invasion and colonization of the web of human relations by the worldviews and behavioural patterns inspired and shaped by commodity markets, and the sources of resentment, dissent and occasional resistance to the occupying forces, are the central themes of this brilliant new book by one of the worlds most original and insightful social thinkers.