[The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism. By Matthew Continetti. Basic Books, 2022. 503 pages, Amazon Kindle Edition.] Why should we be interested in this book? At first glance, it appears that we shouldn’t be.
Lost Continetti - LewRockwell lewrockwell.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lewrockwell.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In the mid-1950s, the danger of an ever-expanding state was clear, but conservatives could not agree on an appropriate response, including whether the greater danger lay at home or abroad. The three main branches of conservatism traditional conservatives appalled by secular mass society, libertarians repelled by the Leviathan state, and ex-Leftists alarmed by international Communism led by the Soviet Union remained divided. Noting that “The few spasmodic victories conservatives are winning are aimless, uncoordinated, and inconclusive…because many years have gone by since the philosophy of freedom has been expounded systematically, brilliantly, and resourcefully,” William F. Buckley Jr. resolved to change that. His vision of ordered liberty shaped and guided American conservatism from its infancy to its maturity, from a cramped suite of offices on Manhattan’s East Side to the Oval Office of the White House, from a set of “irritable mental gestures” to a political force that
The following chapter appeared in "The March of Freedom: Modern Classics in Conservative Thought," a publication of The Heritage Foundation featuring essays from 15 writers, scholars, and statesmen.