Conservative Intellectual Movement In America Research Articles

IN SEARCH OF A USABLE PAST: CONSERVATIVE THOUGHT IN AMERICA

There is no conservative thought in America, only “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas,” wrote Lionel Trilling in 1950, thus providing a generation of historians with a convenient set piece to demonstrate the inadequacies of mid-century liberalism and its blindness to the nascent conservative intellectual movement gathering strength and purpose just as Trilling wrote. Two excellent new books about American intellectual history cast this quote in yet another light. Patrick Allitt's The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History carefully documents a centuries-long tradition of conservative thought in America, from the founding era through the end of the twentieth century. In The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism, Michael Kimmage asserts that Trilling himself be considered a source of conservative ideas in postwar America. Taken together, the books by Allitt and Kimmage indicate that a new cycle of writing about conservative thought has reached full flower. For far too long, the field of conservative intellectual history has been dominated by the figure of George Nash, author of the classic 1976 The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945. These books provide an updated and more critically sophisticated way to examine the terrain Nash strode alone for so long. More significantly, they indicate that intellectual historians are ready to consider conservatism in dialogue with liberalism, bringing new balance to the study of American ideas. Furthermore, both books, Kimmage's in particular, suggest that some of what we are calling conservative and liberal might be flying under the wrong flag. The key to sorting out the confusion will be drawing a more careful distinction between conservatism as a “movement” and as a body of ideas, and looking at both conservatisms as part of a typically American response to historical change, rather than as an exotic and abberant specimen.

In Retrospect: George Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945

It is a rare work of history that remains the authoritative treatment of its subject nearly thirty years after publication, cited by numerous contemporary historians for its content and scholarship rather than as an historiographical curio. Rarer still is the work of history that appears pre-publication as a fortyseven-page insert in National Review, the centerfold of the magazine's twentieth anniversary issue.1 But then, George H. Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, first published in 1976, is an unusual book in many ways, not least because it gives serious consideration to American history's so-called orphan, conservatism. If conservatism is the orphan, as Alan Brinkley famously declared in 1994, then conservative intellectual history is a veritable foundling.2 Although studies of the American right have become almost fashionable as of late, most of these remain explicitly political or social examinations, with little concern paid to the intellectuals who articulated the formal strategy and concerns of the movement and laid the groundwork for electoral success. In the face of this lacuna, Nash's book, based on his Harvard dissertation, has become literally the first and last word on the topic.3 Nearly three decades later, a look back at the text reveals that Nash's work achieved this dominance because he was the first historian to

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, by George H. Nash

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, by George H. Nash

Book Review

Book reviewed in this article:George F. Will The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering ThoughtsCharles F. Doran, Myth, Oil and PoliticsGeorge H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945Jude Wanniski, The Way the World Works: How Economics Fail and Succeed

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George H. Nash (Basic Books; 463 + xv pp; $20.00) - The Superfluous Men edited by Robert M. Crunden (University of Texas; 289 + xx pp; $14.95)

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George H. Nash (Basic Books; 463 + xv pp; $20.00) - The Superfluous Men edited by Robert M. Crunden (University of Texas; 289 + xx pp; $14.95) - Volume 22 Issue 1-2

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.George H. Nash

<i>The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945.</i>George H. Nash

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945, by George H. Nash

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945, <i>by George H. Nash</i>

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945