Post Conservative America

The conservative theorist who blueprinted Nixon's "Southern Strategy," coined the term "Sun Belt," and wrote the prophetic Emerging Republican Majority, analyzes the origins and make-up of the Reagan electoral coalition, which he now sees as extremely unstable and not at all the Republican majority he once envisioned, arriving at a conclusion that will astonish the left and infuriate the right. -- Book cover.

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.

Liberal media activists beware! Richard A. Viguerie, venture capitalist of the conservative movement (described as funding father of the right) and David Franke, a founder of the conservative movement, detail how conservatives-shut out by the liberal mass media of the 1950s and '60s-came to power by utilizing new and alternative media, and then created their own mass media.

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 award-winning journalist reveals the untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided in this groundbreaking book. Armed with startling demographic data, Bill Bishop demonstrates how Americans have spent decades sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities—not by region or by state, but by city and neighborhood. With ever-increasing specificity, we choose the communities and media that are compatible with our lifestyles and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so ideologically inbred that people don't know and can't understand those who live just a few miles away. In The Big Sort, Bishop explores how this phenomenon came to be, and its dire implications for our country. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

This book offers an original interpretation of the achievement of Leo Strauss, stressing how his ideas and followers reshaped the American conservative movement. The conservative movement that reached out to Strauss and his legacy was extremely fluid and lacked a self-confident leadership. Conservative activists and journalists felt a desperate need for academic acceptability, which they thought Strauss and his disciples would furnish. They also became deeply concerned with the problem of 'value relativism', which self-described conservatives thought Strauss had effectively addressed. But until recently, neither Strauss nor his disciples have considered themselves to be 'conservatives'. Contrary to another misconception, Straussians have never wished to convert Americans to ancient political ideals and practices, except in a very selective rhetorical fashion. Strauss and his disciples have been avid champions of American modernity, and 'timeless' values as interpreted by Strauss and his followers often look starkly contemporary.

The march to the Trump presidency began in 1988, when Rush Limbaugh went national. Brian Rosenwald charts the transformation of AM radio entertainers into political kingmakers. By giving voice to the conservative base, they reshaped the Republican Party and fostered demand for a president who sounded as combative and hyperbolic as a talk show host.

Once on the wings of the American political stage, conservatism now plays a leading role in public life, thanks largely to the dynamic legacy of Ronald Reagan. But despite conservatism’s emergence as a powerful political force in the last several decades, misunderstandings abound about its meaning and nature—economically, internationally, philosophically, politically, religiously, and socially. In examining these misunderstandings, The Future of American Conservatism: Consensus and Conflict in the Post-Reagan Era reveals the forces that unite, and the tensions that divide, conservatives today. Edited by noted Reagan scholar Charles W. Dunn, this collection casts conservatism as a collage of complexity that defies easy characterization. Although it is commonly considered an ideology, many of conservatism’s foremost intellectuals dispute this notion. Although it is thought to embody a standard set of principles, its principles frequently conflict. Although many leading intellectuals, liberal and conservative, believe that conservatism lacks a significant tradition in America, it has contributed more to American life than the credit lines indicate. And although it is usually thought to create homogeneity among its adherents, in truth conservatism is marked by a great deal of heterogeneity in both its adherents and its ideas. In fact, conservatism’s complexity may well be its strength—or so the essays gathered here suggest. In painting a bright picture of the prospects for conservatives, The Future of American Conservatism is a timely and thought-provoking volume.

"Street provides a crucial critical and cultural service by not only studying Eastwood's individual films in sharp detail but also by providing a close and serious analysis of the cultural and historic times of the films."--Sam B. Girgus, author of Clint Eastwood's America "By far the most comprehensive, sustained, and detailed discussion of the Dirty Harry phenomenon. A thorough and engaging account of how a fictitious renegade cop became an enduring icon of the angry conservative backlash that sought to halt 1960s liberalism in its tracks."--Nick Heffernan, author of Culture, Environment and Ecopolitics Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry became the prototype for a new kind of movie cop--an antihero in pursuit of his own vision of justice. The Dirty Harry series helped cement Eastwood and his character, Harry Callahan, as central figures in 1970s and 1980s Hollywood cinema. In Dirty Harry's America, Joe Street argues that the movies shed critical light on the culture and politics of the post-1960s era and locates San Francisco as the symbolic cultural battleground of the time. Across the entire series, conservative anger and moral outrage confront elitist liberalism and moral relativism. Paying particular attention the films' representation of crime, family and community, sexuality, and race, Street maintains that through referencing real events and political struggles, the films themselves became active participants in the culture wars. Unapologetic carrier of right and might, Harry Callahan becomes America's Ur-conservative: "unbending, moral, incorruptible, and most important, always right." Long after the series, Callahan's legacy remains strong in American political discourse, cinema, and pop culture, and he continues to shape Eastwood's later political and cinematic career.