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Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement

Author: Peter Schweizer

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2007-03-06

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1585445983

As Ronald Reagan declared, the conservative banner is one of bold, unmistakable colors, not “pastel shades.” Since World War II, the American conservative movement has changed the colors of the national political landscape. Here, in its own words, is the body of thought and rhetoric that has painted the movement’s banner. Award-winning authors Peter Schweizer and Wynton C. Hall have gathered an authoritative collection of speeches representing the modern conservative movement. Beginning with Whittaker Chambers’s 1948 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and continuing through the speeches of such conservative icons as Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, Ronald Reagan, and Barbara Bush, the editors assemble an all-star line-up of conservative thought. Newt Gingrich, champion of conservatism, said that, in this volume, “Peter Schweizer and Wynton Hall have captured the key moments in the emergence of modern conservatism.” Steve Forbes also praised this work as a "timely, much-needed reminder of what the movement is truly about." Without a doubt, Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement is a book that will interest anyone with a passion for politics, the spoken word, or history. The thirteen speeches in this volume powerfully capture the principles, images, and causes that constitute modern American conservatism. Drawing on such thinkers as Russell Kirk and Richard M. Weaver, Schweizer and Hall vividly illustrate the ideas that have moved the conservative movement from the margins of society to the citadels of power. An introduction to each speech explains the context in which it was first delivered and notes the impact of each statement on the movement and the nation. The perfect gift for those who value conservatism or seek to understand it, Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement offers food for thought and action. For historians, political scientists, and students of public communication, the book is an essential source for the ideas that have shaped American society since 1945.

JFK, Conservative

Author: Ira Stoll

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0547585985

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For the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy comes a sure-to-be-controversial argument that by virtually any standard, JFK was far more conservative than liberal.

The Reagan Paradox

Author: Editors of TIME Magazine

Publisher: Time Home Entertainment

Published: 2014-09-20

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1618939890

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Becoming Ronald Reagan

Author: Robert Mann

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2019-10

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1640122532

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In the 1960s transitioning from acting to politics was rare. Ronald Reagan was not the first to do it, but he was the first to jump from the screen to the stump and on to credibility as a presidential contender. Reagan's transformation from struggling liberal actor to influential conservative spokesman in five years--and then to the California governorship six years later--is a remarkable and compelling story. In Becoming Ronald Reagan Robert Mann explores Reagan's early life and his career during the 1950s and early 1960s: his growing desire for acclaim in high school and college, his political awakening as a young Hollywood actor, his ideological evolution in the 1950s as he traveled the country for General Electric, the refining of his political skills during this period, his growing aversion to big government, and his disdain for the totalitarian leaders in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. All these experiences and more shaped Reagan's politics and influenced his career as an elected official. Mann not only demonstrates how Reagan the actor became Reagan the political leader and how the liberal became a conservative, he also shows how the skills Reagan learned and the lessons he absorbed from 1954 to 1964 made him the inspiring leader so many Americans remember and revere to this day. Becoming Ronald Reagan is an indelible portrait of a true American icon and a politician like none other.

The Conservative Revolution

Author: Lee Edwards

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1999-07-23

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 0684844214

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The triumph of the conservative movement in reshaping American politics is one of the great untold stories of the past fifty years. At the end of World War II, hardly anyone in public life would admit to being a conservative, but as Lee Edwards shows in this magisterial work, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a small group of committed men and women began to chip away at the liberal colossus, and their descendants would scale the ramparts of power in the 1980s and 1990s. Not even the fall of Newt Gingrich has changed the indisputable fact that the movement has truly rewritten the rules of American political life, and the republic will never be the same. Edwards tells the stories of how conservatives built a movement from the ground up by starting magazines, by building grass-roots organizations, and by seizing control of the Republican party from those who espoused collaboration with the liberals and promised only to manage the welfare state more efficiently and not to dismantle it. But most of all he tells the story of four men, four leaders who put their personal stamp on this movement and helped to turn it into the most important political force in our country today: * Robert Taft, "Mr. Republican," the beacon of conservative principle during the lean Roosevelt and Truman years * Barry Goldwater, "Mr. Conservative," the flinty Westerner who inspired a new generation * Ronald Reagan, "Mr. President," the optimist whose core beliefs were sturdy enough to subdue an evil empire * Newt Gingrich, "Mr. Speaker," the fiery visionary who won a Congress but lost control of it By their example and vision, these men brought intellectual and ideological stability to an often fractions conservative movement and held the high ground against the pragmatists who would compromise conservative principles for transitory political advantage. And through their efforts and those of their supporters, they transformed the American political landscape so thoroughly that a Democratic president would one day proclaim, "The era of big government is over." Political history in the grand style, The Conservative Revolution is the definitive book on a conservative movement that not only has left its mark on our century but is poised to shape the century about to dawn.

Becoming Ronald Reagan

Author: Robert Mann

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1612349684

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In the 1960s transitioning from acting to politics was rare. Ronald Reagan was not the first to do it, but he was the first to jump from the screen to the stump and on to credibility as a presidential contender. Reagan’s transformation from struggling liberal actor to influential conservative spokesman in five years—and then to the California governorship six years later—is a remarkable and compelling story. In Becoming Ronald Reagan Robert Mann explores Reagan’s early life and his career during the 1950s and early 1960s: his growing desire for acclaim in high school and college, his political awakening as a young Hollywood actor, his ideological evolution in the 1950s as he traveled the country for General Electric, the refining of his political skills during this period, his growing aversion to big government, and his disdain for the totalitarian leaders in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. All these experiences and more shaped Reagan’s politics and influenced his career as an elected official. Mann not only demonstrates how Reagan the actor became Reagan the political leader and how the liberal became a conservative, he also shows how the skills Reagan learned and the lessons he absorbed from 1954 to 1964 made him the inspiring leader so many Americans remember and revere to this day. Becoming Ronald Reagan is an indelible portrait of a true American icon and a politician like none other. Purchase the audio edition.

Russell Kirk

Author: Bradley J. Birzer

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2015-11-09

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 0813166195

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Emerging from two decades of the Great Depression and the New Deal and facing the rise of radical ideologies abroad, the American Right seemed beaten, broken, and adrift in the early 1950s. Although conservative luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin all published important works at this time, none of their writings would match the influence of Russell Kirk's 1953 masterpiece The Conservative Mind. This seminal book became the intellectual touchstone for a reinvigorated movement and began a sea change in Americans' attitudes toward traditionalism. In Russell Kirk, Bradley J. Birzer investigates the life and work of the man known as the founder of postwar conservatism in America. Drawing on papers and diaries that have only recently become available to the public, Birzer presents a thorough exploration of Kirk's intellectual roots and development. The first to examine the theorist's prolific writings on literature and culture, this magisterial study illuminates Kirk's lasting influence on figures such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., and Senator Barry Goldwater—who persuaded a reluctant Kirk to participate in his campaign for the presidency in 1964. While several books examine the evolution of postwar conservatism and libertarianism, surprisingly few works explore Kirk's life and thought in detail. This engaging biography not only offers a fresh and thorough assessment of one of America's most influential thinkers but also reasserts his humane vision in an increasingly inhumane time.

Watch on the Right

Author: J. David Hoeveler

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780299128104

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The ascendancy of conservatism in the last twenty years is an unprecedented episode in American intellectual and political history. In Watch on the Right, J. David Hoeveler Jr. gives us enlightening, often immensely entertaining, portraits of the key thinkers behind this "revolution." As Hoeveler writes, "conservative thinkers hang their hats on many different racks," and this book dramatizes for us the breadth of the conservative coalition as exemplified by the eight writers surveyed: William F. Buckley Jr. George Will, Robert Nisbet, Irving Kristol, Hilton Kramer, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., and Michael Novak. These eight "gurus" of the right represent a very wide spectrum of conservative thought, but Hoeveler also considers the present-day conservative renaissance against the literary background that has given the movement its identity since Edmund Burke. Amid the multiple voices unifying themes do emerge. American conservatives share a hostility toward the liberal "new class"--the professional media and academic elites and the entrenched government bureaucracies that still believe in the perfectibility of society by enforced social engineering. Moreover, conservatives of all persuasions are united in struggling to sustain traditional values against the onslaught of revolutionary capitalism and technology, and all are profoundly hostile to imperialistic communism on the Soviet model. Despite the existence of a generic conservatism, however, Hoeveler's portraits provide us with a fascinating tour of the shifts and turns in modern social thought from the decline of liberalism in the late 1960s to the current era--a path that leads through such diverse areas as the Cold War, bourgeois culture, art and aesthetics, civil rights and the welfare state, New Age culture, and the gender revolution. To a whole generation that has never known anything but conservative leadership, Watch on the Right will explain, in clear accessible prose, how the movement flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. For readers who saw it happen (but never thought it would) and for liberals (who are feverishly trying to recover "their " mandate), this book as no other pulls the ideological threads of the story together. Watch on the Right is illustrated with delightful pen-and-ink caricatures.

Messengers of the Right

Author: Nicole Hemmer

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-09-22

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0812248392

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Messengers of the Right tells the story of the media activists who built the American conservative movement and transformed it into one of the most significant and successful movements of the twentieth century—and in the process remade the Republican Party and the American media landscape.

The Right Nation

Author: John Micklethwait

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2005-05-31

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 0143035398

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The Right Nation is not "for" liberals, and it's not "for" conservatives. It's for any of us who want to understand one of the most important forces shaping American life. How did America's government become so much more conservative in just a generation? Compared to Europe-or to America under Richard Nixon-even President Howard Dean would preside over a distinctly more conservative nation in many crucial respects: welfare is gone; the death penalty is deeply rooted; abortion is under siege; regulations are being rolled back; the pillars of New Deal liberalism are turning to sand. Conservative positions have not prevailed everywhere, of course, but this book shows us why they've been so successfully advanced over such a broad front: because the battle has been waged by well-organized, shrewd, and committed troops who to some extent have been lucky in their enemies. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, like modern-day Tocquevilles, have the perspective to see this vast subject in the round, unbeholden to forces on either side. They steer The Economist's coverage of the United States and have unrivaled access to resources and-because of the magazine's renown for iconoclasm and analytical rigor-have had open-door access wherever the book's research has led them. And it has led them everywhere: To reckon with the American right, you have to get out there where its centers are and understand the power flow among the brain trusts, the mouthpieces, the organizers, and the foot soldiers. The authors write with wit and skewer whole herds of sacred cows, but they also bring empathy to bear on a subject that sees all too little of it. You won't recognize this America from the far-left's or the far-right's caricatures. Divided into three parts-history, anatomy, and prophecy-The Right Nation comes neither to bury the American conservative movement nor to praise it blindly but to understand it, in all its dimensions, as the most powerful and effective political movement of our age. Chapter One FROM KENNEBUNKPORT TO CRAWFORD Sir Lewis Namier, the great historian of English politics in the age of George III, once remarked that "English history, and especially English parliamentary history, is made by families rather than individuals." The same could be said of American political history, especially in the age of George I and George II. There is no better introduction to the radical transformation of Republicanism in the past generation-from patrician to populist, from Northeastern to Southwestern, from pragmatic to ideological-than the radical transformation of Republicanism's current leading family, the Bushes. Grandfather Prescott The Bushes began political life as classic establishment Republicans: WASPs who summered in Kennebunkport, educated their children at boarding schools and the Ivy League and claimed family ties to the British royal family (Queen Elizabeth II is the thirteenth cousin of the first President Bush). George W.'s paternal great-grandfather, Samuel P. Bush, was a steel and railroad executive who became the first president of the National Association of Manufacturers and a founding member of the United States Chamber of Commerce. His maternal great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, was even grander. The cofounder of W. A. Harriman, Wall Street's oldest private investment bank, Walker's stature was summed up by his twin Manhattan addresses: his office at One Wall Street and his home at One Sutton Place. There was certainly muck beneath this brass: both Walker and Bush had their share of Wall Street shenanigans and cozy government deals, but in the age...