Conservative movement

The election of Ronald W. Reagan to the presidency in 1980 represented the growth of a powerful conservative movement that emerged in America following World War II. Conservatism as a political force, however, was not a single movement per se, but a confluence of a variety of individuals, groups, and organizations with differing ideological, cultural, and political perspectives on the meaning of the word “conservative.” What conservatives shared, however, was a general distrust of centralized government, New Deal liberalism, and marxism, and a faith in individual endeavor, property rights, and the rule of law.

Throughout the 1950s conservatives remained generally isolated and without great political influence. The primary focus of conservatives remained anticommunism directed toward the Soviet Union. In the 1950s conservatives generally fell into two camps: traditional conservatism and libertarianism. Traditional conservatives were represented by William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review; scholar Richard Weaver; political philosopher Leo Strauss; and historian Russell Kirk. These traditional conservatives expressed a belief in transcendent values and maintained that American culture had become increasingly relativistic. Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, published in 1953, argued for the importance of tradition, community, and organic society, as articulated by political philosopher Edmund Burke in the 18th century.

Libertarianism, although sharing many values of traditional conservatism, emphasized the importance of the free market and individualism. In this respect, libertarians attributed less importance to tradition and the transcendental values found in Judeo-Christianity. Libertarians were influenced by economists such as Friedrich von Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom (1948), which warned of encroaching state socialism in the West and in the United States. Influenced by Hayek, Frank Chodorov founded the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists in 1952 to promote the libertarian cause and free-market economics. University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman promoted free-market economics through his writings, which led to his receiving a Nobel Prize in 1976. In addition, many libertarians were influenced by Ayn Rand, a Russian emigre author whose best-selling novels, Atlas Shrugged (1957) and The Fountainhead (1943), promoted the virtues of individualism and capitalism and savagely attacked Judeo-Christian values.

In the 1950s conservatives and libertarians united in their opposition to communism. Anticommunism emerged as a potent force during the 1950s and would be carried into the 1960s. In the early years of the COLD WAR, the grassroots anticommunist movement was composed of a number of separate organizations and leaders including Christian Anticommunist Crusade, headed by Australian physician Fred Schwarz; the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, founded by Phyllis Schlafly and her husband, Fred Schlafly; and the opportunistic Christian Crusade founded by Billy Hargis. In 1958 candy manufacturer Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society, but many conservatives shied away from the organization when it was revealed that Robert Welch had accused President Eisenhower of being a conscious agent of the Soviet Union.

This anticommunist movement laid the foundation for the modern conservative movement, which came fully of age with the nomination of U. S. senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) on the Republican presidential ticket in 1964. Although Goldwater was easily defeated by incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, conservatives gained important organizing and fund-raising experience. Goldwater won 23 million votes. The political and social upheavals of the 1960s, especially the extension of the welfare state under President Johnson’s Great Society, racial riots and the Black Power movement, the Vietnam War, and student protests fed the growth of political conservatism.

This political backlash against the Great Society enabled conservatives to win elections and gain national visibility. In 1968 Richard M. Nixon won the White House. The Nixon administration, however, disappointed conservatives with his support for detente, the opening of relations with mainland China, arms control treaties with the Soviet Union, and the expansion of the federal government with economic and environmental legislation and civil rights. Conservatives sought to challenge Nixon in 1972 by backing Representative John Ashbrook (R-Ohio) in the primaries, but this campaign failed to get off the ground. Following the Watergate scandal, which forced Nixon to resign from office, conservatives were demoralized and isolated.

Conservatism revived, however, as activists seized upon two critical issues: abortion and feminism. In 1972 Congress passed the EquAL Rights Amendment (era). The STOP-ERA movement, led by Phyllis Schlafly, mobilized conservative women across the country to prevent state ratification of this amendment. In this campaign, evangelical Christian women and Mormons became politically involved. The U. S. Supreme Court’s decision, Roe V. Wade (1973), which found abortion to be a constitutional right, created a backlash among Roman Catholics and other religious groups and led to a grassroots pro-life movement. Finally, environmental protection legislation enacted in the Nixon administration activated American business, as well as western ranchers and farmers. In 1973 the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D. C., was founded by Paul Weyrich, Edwin J. Feulner, and Joseph Coors.

The Gerald R. Ford administration further disappointed conservatives, and in Republican primaries in 1976, Ronald W. Reagan challenged Ford, leaving the GOP sharply divided between its liberal and conservative wings. This division, along with a weak economy, Watergate, and Ford’s gaffes during the campaign, helped James Earl Carter, JR., the Democratic nominee, win the presidency.

During the Carter administration, conservatives mobilized to take control of the Republican Party, bringing new constituencies into the party from evangelical Christian voters and white voters in the South, as well as making inroads among Catholic voters in the North. In doing so, conservatives sought to tie social issues such as abortion, prayer in schools, and the ERA to traditional Republican issues of free-market economics, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and strong military and national defense positions. In response to what was perceived as a weak and vacillating foreign policy toward the Soviet Union, including defense cutbacks and arms control treaties such as the STRATEGIC Arms Limitation Treaties, intellectuals like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Gertrude Himmelfarb attacked what they called the “culture of appeasement.” New organizations were established such as the Committee for the Free World and the Committee on the Present Danger to promote a tougher stance toward the Soviet Union. This movement became known as NEoconservatism. Neoconservatism was characterized by its interest in foreign policy and defense policy and, in general, showed less interest in social issues.

The mobilization of a New Christian Right, led by televangelists Jerry Falwell (the Moral Majority) and Pat Robertson (the Christian Coalition, directed by Ralph Reed), imparted further momentum to the conservative movement. The Christian Right attacked secular humanism, moral relativism, and sexual permissiveness, which were perceived as leading to the breakdown of the traditional family. Concerns with the American family’s breakdown led to the creation of a pro-family movement represented by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council. These new organizations and groups were labeled by the press as the New Right.

Critics accused the New Right of introducing religion into politics and ignoring the constitutional separation between church and state. Furthermore, they charged that the New Right was exploiting racial anxieties of whites and fears about changing gender roles that had been brought about by the feminist movement. In doing so, critics argued, the New Right was creating a politics of “intolerance” that failed to recognize ethnic and religious diversity in a pluralistic society.

Reagan’s election as president in 1980 brought conservatives to power, culminating a 40-year effort. Reagan pursued a conservative agenda of tax cuts, economic deregulation, and a defense buildup. In doing so, Reagan became a hero to the conservative movement. The Reagan administration, however, did not achieve everything that conservatives wanted, especially on the so-called social issues—abortion and prayer in schools. Nonetheless, the success of the conservative agenda on fiscal matters and economic deregulation pushed the Democratic Party in the 1990s to the right on these issues, even while the party moved generally to the left on many social issues, especially reproductive rights for women.

Discord arose among conservatives after Reagan left office in 1988. Many conservatives remained suspicious of George H. W. Bush, whom Reagan designated as his heir apparent. This discord was reflected in journalist PATRICK Buchanan’s unsuccessful primary challenges to George H. W. Bush in 1988 and 1992 on a program of economic protectionism, immigration restriction, and cultural issues. Bush’s loss of the White House to William J. Clinton in 1992 suggested that the “Reagan revolution” had failed to produce a political realignment. Conservatives rejoiced, however, when Republicans, under Newton L. Gingrich, (R-Ga.) swept the off-year election and captured control of Congress in 1994, but it was not until the election of George W. Bush in 2000 that conservatives regained the White House, although some conservatives initially supported his primary rival, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for the nomination.

During the 1990s, fissures within the conservative movement became evident. The different agendas among conservatives led to divisions among the neoconservatives (who were primarily Jewish), Roman Catholics and southern Protestants of the Old Right, and libertarians. In the 1990s, with the end of the cold war social issues became dominant for some conservatives. Cultural conservatives such as former Reagan official William Bennett and constitutional scholar Robert Bork denounced what they saw as the cultural and moral decay of basic American values. Allan Bloom’s best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind (1987) argued that “political correctness” had distorted American education, subverting society’s moral and spiritual traditions. As a student of Leo Strauss, Bloom attacked modernism for eroding traditional values. Former radical David Horowitz, in a series of books and articles, indicted radicals of the 1960s as a “destructive generation” that had fostered racial tensions and cultural disorder.

As the conservative movement entered the 21st century, conservatives often divided over a wide range of issues— American military intervention, abortion, gay rights, immigration, and free trade—but they agreed upon fundamental issues concerning the need to downsize the federal government, the need for a strong military and national defense, and policies that they believed would promote family values, individual responsibility, and economic opportunity. The conservative movement changed American politics, moved both parties to the right on fiscal issues, and stirred debate about cultural and moral order in society.

Further reading: David Brooks, ed., Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing (New York: Vintage Books, 1996); George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976).

—Donald T. Critchlow