Up From Conservatism

For nearly a decade, Michael Lind worked closely as a writer and editor with the intellectual leaders of American conservatism. Slowly, he came to believe that the many prominent intellectuals he worked with were not the leaders of the conservative movement but the followers and apologists for an increasingly divisive and reactionary political strategy orchestrated by the Republican party. Lind's disillusionment led to a very public break with his former colleagues on the right, as he attacked the Reverend Pat Robertson for using anti-Semitic sources in his writings. In Up From Conservatism, this former rising star of the right reveals what he believes to be the disturbing truth about the hidden economic agenda of the conservative elite. The Republican capture of the U.S. Congress in 1994 did not represent the conversion of the American public to conservative ideology. Rather, it marked the success of the thirty-year-old "southern strategy" begun by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. From the Civil War to the civil rights revolution, the southern elite combined a low-wage, low-tax strategy for economic development with a politics of demagogy based on race-baiting and Bible-thumping. Now, Lind maintains, the economic elite that controls the Republican party is following a similar strategy on a national scale, using their power to shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle class while redistributing wealth upward. To divert attention from their favoritism toward the rich, conservatives play up the "culture war," channeling popular anger about falling real wages and living standards away from Wall Street and focusing it instead on the black poor and nonwhite immigrants. The United States, Lind concludes, could use a genuine "one-nation" conservatism that seeks to promote the interests of the middle class and the poor as well as the rich. But today's elitist conservatism poses a clear and present danger to the American middle class and the American republic.

The Conservative Establishment’s consensus of the past two generations has almost totally broken down. Conservatism was unable to stop or even slow the Left’s rolling revolutions in nearly every sector of American society—from classrooms to boardrooms, from the military to the culture at large. The Left has successfully transformed the nation over the past few generations, racking up victory after victory, with no clear end in sight. This is not sustainable for the country or the constituency represented by the Republican Party. For the Right to have a serious future, it needs to rethink its positions and think more deeply about the essential policy questions which will define the future of the country: race, men and women, sexuality, religion, the economy, foreign policy, and other major issues. This collection of essays, written by some of the Right’s most interesting thinkers and practitioners, seeks to reframe the ideological and policy direction of the American Right.

William Frank Buckley Jr.’s third book, originally published in 1959, is an urbane and controversial attack on the manners and meaning of American Liberalism in the 1950s. His thesis is that the leading American liberals can be shown, in their speeches and statements, in the tacit premises that underlie their words and deeds, to be suffering from a long, but definable list of social and philosophical prejudices. “Up From Liberalism” examines the root assumptions of the Liberalism of his era and asks the startling question: do the actions of prominent liberalism derive from the attributes of Liberalism? “This book of mind and heart, wit and eloquence, by the chief spokesman for the young conservative revival in this country, must be read and understood, to understand what is going on in America.”—Senator Barry Goldwater “A guide for Americans who want to stay free in a country where pressures against individual freedom are coming from every direction.”—Charleston Nines & Courier “He is at top form...clear and penetrating...A slashing attack against the thinking of today’s pseudo-liberals.”—Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph “The most exciting book of the Fall.”—New York Mirror “Mr. Buckley is one of the most articulate of the critics of today’s liberalism and deserves to be heard.”—Washington Star “Buckley brilliantly excoriates a philosophy he calls liberalism.”—Newsweek “A skilled debater, a trenchant stylist...a man of agile and independent mind...He belongs in the great American tradition of protest and he deserve his audience.”—New York Herald Tribune

The Fall of Paul Martin and the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism. Shakespeare isn’t around to write it — so we have Paul Wells! Think of it. Two men on an opposite yet parallel trajectory. In the space of only three years, one man, a huge success as the Minister of Finance, goes from his new role as the leader of an all-powerful party with a huge majority all the way down to a retired also-ran. The other one reluctantly steps in to salvage a dying party, links it to another dying party, “unites the right,” becomes its leader, goes through trying times, and inside three years rises to become prime minister, against all odds. It’s an amazing drama, told here in three acts. First, Paul Wells takes us through all of the events (from Martin’s assassination of Chrétien onward) that led up to the election campaign of January 2006. The second act deals with the campaign itself, where the Harper armies conquered, with the assistance of an RCMP cavalry raid, and less-than-brilliant opposing campaigns: “We’re not allowed to make this stuff up.” Full of new, amazing inside details. The final part answers the What now? that so many Canadians are asking about Stephen Harper’s "new conservatism." Nobody can answer that question better than Paul Wells. Witty, irreverent, opinionated, personal, and very, very funny, this book launches Wells’s career as an author. From the Hardcover edition.

Mothers of Conservatism tells the story of 1950s Southern Californian housewives who shaped the grassroots right in the two decades following World War II. Michelle Nickerson describes how red-hunting homemakers mobilized activist networks, institutions, and political consciousness in local education battles, and she introduces a generation of women who developed political styles and practices around their domestic routines. From the conservative movement's origins in the early fifties through the presidential election of 1964, Nickerson documents how women shaped conservatism from the bottom up, out of the fabric of their daily lives and into the agenda of the Republican Party. A unique history of the American conservative movement, Mothers of Conservatism shows how housewives got out of the house and discovered their political capital.

Following up his 10 Books That Screwed Up the World, author Benjamin Wiker brings you 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read: Plus Four Not to Miss and One Impostor. Offering a guide to some of the most important literary works of our time, Wiker turns his discerning eye from the great texts that have done so much damage to Western Civilization to the great texts that could help rebuild it. 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read features a range of works from classics such as Democracy in America and The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, to more "pop" classics like Sense and Sensibility and The Tempest. Through these works, Wiker reveals some of the most important lessons for our time as well as the true meaning of conservatism. Written with an educational purpose and witty tone, this is a must-read for conservatives, Republicans, and booklovers everywhere!