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Title details for American Conservatism by Andrew J. Bacevich - Available

American Conservatism

Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition

by Andrew J. Bacevich
ebook
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As the nation stands at a crossroads, this “valuable collection” urges us to reexamine the ideas and values of the American conservative tradition—offering “a bracing tonic for the present chaos” (The Washington Post).

A groundbreaking collection of mainstream conservative writings since 1900, featuring pieces by Ronald Reagan, Antonin Scalia, Joan Didion, and more
What is American conservatism? What are its core beliefs and values? What answers can it offer to the fundamental questions we face in the twenty-first century about the common good and the meaning of freedom, the responsibilities of citizenship, and America’s proper role in the world?
As libertarians, neoconservatives, Never Trump-ers, and others battle over the label, this landmark collection offers an essential survey of conservative thought in the United States since 1900, highlighting the centrality of four key themes: the importance of tradition and the local, resistance to an ever-expanding state, opposition to the threat of tyranny at home and abroad, and free markets as the key to sustaining individual liberty.
Andrew J. Bacevich’s incisive selections reveal that American conservatism—in his words “more akin to an ethos or a disposition than a fixed ideology”—has hardly been a monolithic entity over the last 120 years, but rather has developed through fierce internal debate about basic political and social propositions. Well-known figures such as Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley are complemented here by important but less familiar thinkers such as Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, as well as writers not of the political right, like Randolph Bourne, Joan Didion, and Reinhold Niebuhr, who have been important influences on conservative thinking.
More relevant than ever, this rich, too often overlooked vein of writing provides essential insights into who Americans are as a people and offers surprising hope, in a time of extreme polarization, for finding common ground. It deserves to be rediscovered by readers of all political persuasions.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 7, 2020

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781598536577

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781598536577
      • File size: 835 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      February 1, 2020
      A collection of essays and speeches--mostly from the 20th century--that argue tacitly that today's conservatism needs an intellectual reboot. Bacevich (The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, 2020, etc.), who served as an officer in the Army, doesn't include any of his own work in this wide-ranging volume. In the introduction, he makes patent his anti-Trump attitude, calling the president a "sleaze, narcissist, chronic dissembler, unscrupulous tycoon, [and] tax cheat." The book is arranged thematically, and each section comprises pieces organized chronologically. Most of the contributors, drawn from a variety of disciplines and eras, are familiar: William F. Buckley Jr., Walter Lippmann, Whittaker Chambers, Reinhold Niebuhr, Zora Neale Hurston, John Crowe Ransom, Wendell Berry, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Joan Didion, Antonin Scalia, Milton Friedman, and Shelby Steele. The unspoken theme of many pieces is that conservatism once had a scholarly, articulate, even elitist foundation, but anyone who peruses today's news knows that this has evanesced. Also present throughout the book are themes that have long occupied conservative thought: American power and war, anti-communism, religion in public life, isolationism versus intervention, regional rights, and free markets. In an essay from 1947, James Burnham argues that while race is a significant issue in America, it is not nearly as bad as it would be under a totalitarian regime. Unfortunately, many of the Southern writers ignore slavery and Jim Crow in their discussions of liberty. Also troubling: A number of writers urge the reining in of what they see as hurried social changes, a position that seems to suggest a desire to maintain the status quo. Bacevich acknowledges that most of his contributors are white males, but he doesn't want to "falsify history" by including minority voices that were not prominent thinkers during their eras. Eloquent if tendentious historical snapshots of the conservative tradition in American thought.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

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Languages

  • English

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