Making Sense of the New American Right

[TomSea]

Making Sense of the New American Right
Matthew Continetti

BY:  May 31, 2019 5:00 am

I like to start my classes on conservative intellectual history by distinguishing between three groups. There is the Republican Party, with its millions of adherents and spectrum of opinion from very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, and yes, liberal. There is the conservative movement, the constellation of single-issue nonprofits that sprung up in the 1970s—gun rights, pro-life, taxpayer, right to work—and continue to influence elected officials. Finally, there is the conservative intellectual movement: writers, scholars, and wonks whose journalistic and political work deals mainly with ideas and, if we're lucky, their translation into public policy.

It's a common mistake to conflate these groups. The Republican Party is a vast coalition that both predates and possibly will post-date the conservative movement. That movement has had mixed success in moving the party to the right, partly because of cynicism and corruption but also because politicians must, at the end of the day, take into account the shifting and often contradictory views of their constituents. The conservative intellectual movement exercises the least power of all. You could fit its members into a convention hall or, more likely, a cruise ship.

Ideas matter. But the relation of ideas to political action is difficult to measure and often haphazard. The line between shaping a politician's rhetoric and decisions and merely reflecting them is awfully fuzzy. The conservative intellectual movement, in addition to generating excellent writing, has had seven real-world applications since its formation after the Second World War: originalism and supply side economics in the 1970s; welfare reform and crime policy in the 1980s and '90s; educational choice and reform over the last two decades; James Burnham's anti-Communist strategies that found expression in the Reagan Doctrine; and the counterinsurgency plan known as the "surge" that prevented the defeat of American forces in the second Iraq war. There have been other successes, for sure, but also plenty of setbacks. What's important to remember is that liberals as well as Republicans, conservative activists, and conservative intellectuals contested every single one of these policies.

Read more at: https://freebeacon.com/columns/making-sense-of-the-new-american-right/

A historic piece, probably worth reflecting on, I believe he says now, may be similar to the early '70s...

[Absalom]

The Republicans were never, ever a conservative party;
born in 1856 w/Fremont of California as their candidate.
It was the party of the New England Mercantile, later Industrial class.
Our foundation conservative party was the Agrarian and Rural
Democrats of the South (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe..............)
sadly destroyed by slavery and the Civil War.

[sneakypete]

The Republicans were never, ever a conservative party;
born in 1856 w/Fremont of California as their candidate.
It was the party of the New England Mercantile, later Industrial class.
Our foundation conservative party was the Agrarian and Rural
Democrats of the South (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe..............)
sadly destroyed by slavery and the Civil War.

@Absalom

Bingo,and they lost to the European banking families that ran and still run the northeast.

The so-called Civil War was never about slavery as a moral issue. It was about who was going to control the economy of the New World. Slavery was an important side issue because if they could destroy slavery it would also at least temporarily destroy the profit margins of the wealthy southern farmers,making it easier for the northern merchants to run them into bankruptcy and take possession of their land.

[Absalom]

@Absalom

Bingo,and they lost to the European banking families that ran and still run the northeast.

The so-called Civil War was never about slavery as a moral issue. It was about who was going to control the economy of the New World. Slavery was an important side issue because if they could destroy slavery it would also at least temporarily destroy the profit margins of the wealthy southern farmers,making it easier for the northern merchants to run them into bankruptcy and take possession of their land.

--------------------------
On the mark, Sneaky.
Also, many who get their 'truth' from campaign slogans are oblivious to these political realities:
* Our Southern Founders were strong advocates of States Rights while the Republicans continually
   advanced centralized government during their political ascendancy from Johnson in 1865 till Hoover
   in 1932.
* Also our Democrat Founders strongly supported Free Trade as did Great Britain, the buyer of their
   raw cotton for their textile mills, while the Republicans were adamant Protectionists throughout their
   ascendancy signing some 100 Laws that imposed  Duties, Excises and Tariffs up to the last moment
   of the Hoover Presidency, despite the Great Depression.
   One ridiculous buffoon, McKinley of Ohio, insisted that protectionism was mandatory to protect
   our "infant industries" which included Standard Oil / Rockefeller and US Steel / Carnegie;
   at the turn of the 20th century the two largest/wealthiest corporations in the world!
Anyway, as History/Geography is no longer taught, it's hardly a surprise that so many are clueless.