The Right, the Left and Localism and Traditionalism: An Overview of Recent Scholarship on the North American Right
Books Discussed in this Essay:
Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018.
Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. London: Pelican, 2018.
Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition. New York and London: Liveright Publishing, 2017.
Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism. New York: Basic Books, 2018.
Peter Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism: From the Industrial Revolution to Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.
Given the recent proliferation in books and articles on the right-wing in the United States, and elsewhere, as well as the discussion of different branches of the right – from the “alt-right” to neo-conservatives to paleo-conservatives and anything in between – it is worth offering an overview of some recent scholarship in this area. I do this from a viewpoint that is largely, I suspect, sympathetic to readers of Voegelin View. This writer should make his perspective known: I subscribe to a view that is sympathetic to anti-interventionism in foreign policy, and sceptical of collusion between big government and big business in economic affairs. This writer largely supports the distributist and anti-capitalist views of G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and other similar writers.[1] I endorse the “localist” perspective found in much traditionalist and agrarian literature.[2] Much of the newer literature on the right interests me, as, I suspect, it does others who read this web page. Two recent texts by leftist scholars Linda Gordon and Peter Kolozi – The Second Coming of the KKK, and Conservatives Against Capitalism – dealing with the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and anti-capitalist conservatism in the United States, piqued my interest. Voegelin View readers will benefit from examining these texts. Yet, given the leftist viewpoint of both authors, readers should take both books with the proverbial “grain of salt.” I will review the Gordon and Kolozi books and I will attempt to put these texts in the context of, recent and older, historical scholarship on the North American and international right. Further, I will review three fairly recent books that express more sympathy with conservative views: Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin’s National Populism, and Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism. Concerns about globalization, job loss, loss of national identity, and the disconnection, real and perceived, of elites in government and business from the needs of ordinary people animate all of these books. Ultimately, although all of these texts are useful, the works by Deneen, Eatwell and Goodwin, and Hazony have more to say to us about positive ways to change society in the future. These three texts also suggest useful routes for new visions of political theory for localist conservatives.
Recently, more and more scholars have written accounts of what might broadly be seen as the “right” in North America, and in the United States in particular.[3] In the special case of the U.S, the strong interest in the right likely stems from the notion that the U.S. was “born free” and lacked the feudal, reactionary tradition of Europe.[4] If we accept that many Americans prior to the 20th-century subscribed to a belief in “liberal” ideologies – in the sense that most Americans believed in free markets, voting rights for “rational citizens,” and freedom of movement – then this statement has an element of truth. Historians such as Alan Lichtman have suggested that modern American conservatism begins in the 1920s as a reaction against the rise of Communism and Communist-led labor movements but also as a reaction against the ideas of liberalism and Enlightenment modernity like secularism, Progressivism,[5] government intervention, and scientific rationalism.[6] Lichtman’s treatment of the origins of American conservatism provides some useful background to inform our look into Linda Gordon’s study of the KKK in the 1920s.
Linda Gordon identifies as a liberal and a progressive. She is certainly a member of the “academic left,” which supports political correctness and multicultural viewpoints, what many now refer to as “woke-ness.” Gordon is, as she states clearly in the text, “a Jew, an intellectual, a leftist, a feminist, a lover of diversity.”[7] She has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the better known left-liberal campuses in the U.S., and at New York University. She is presently Florence Kelley Professor of History at NYU.[8] She has written a number of useful texts on U.S. history, notably the award winning Heroes of their Own Lives, about the politics of family violence.[9] As we shall see, The Second Coming of the KKK makes some interesting points on the subject. Yet – and I will repeat this critique in my analysis of the Kolozi text – Gordon’s fatal flaw stems from the fact that she has little regard for the culture – Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America – that she analyzes. Gordon does not believe that American history has any redeeming value to it. She is too quick to dismiss many, even most, white Americans as implicitly conservative and racist. As the texts of Deneen and Hazony, in particular, indicate, it is worth re-capturing ideas from earlier societies as a means of regenerating contemporary North American society.
Yet, Gordon presents some valuable ideas in her text. She notes, I think correctly, that many Americans (and Canadians), strongly identified with the main ideas of the KKK during the 1920s.[10] Thus, the KKK’s views represented a largely mainstream element within much of Protestant, North American culture at the time. Indeed, early on in the text, Gordon notes that many, perhaps most, Americans socialized in white-only and Protestant-only social spaces. Segregation represented a normal condition for most Americans of the period.[11] Moreover, Gordon suggests that the KKK was not simply strong in the states of the former Confederacy, where one might expect the Klan to be prominent, and where the first KKK was formed, in 1866, during the aftermath of the American Civil War. Indeed, the KKK of the 1920s had strong branches in Northern and Western states like Indiana, Ohio, Oregon, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The KKK also had significant support in major cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis, and Detroit.[12] Thus, the 1920s-era Klan was not simply a product of the rural Southern states. Given the Protestant majority in the U.S. during the 1920s, many KKK branches in Northern states were actually more inclusive than other fraternal groupings of the day[13]: groups like the Knights of Columbus only allowed Catholics to join, and most unions only permitted members of certain trades to join. Perhaps oddly, the Klan saw Catholics and Jews as similar: groups of people who did not subscribe to traditional American, Protestant values of thrift, sobriety, hard work, Sabbatarianism, and individualism. The Klan saw Catholics as owing their loyalty to a foreign institution – Rome – and as a group that had designs on subverting American traditions and on converting Americans to support of the Pope. Somewhat similarly, the Klan presented Jews as supporters of hedonistic Hollywood films and as bankers and Communists who wanted to subvert moral, Christian, traditionalist America.[14] The Klan saw Catholics and Jews as being linked: both were “out groups” who did not cohere to the views of the majority of the host society.[15]
Gordon correctly notes that the KKK supported a contradictory ideology. Like other movements, notably in Europe, the Klan subscribed to a view that scholars have named “reactionary modernism.” The KKK combined support for a return to an earlier, presumably 19th-century, vision of Christian, Protestant America with the use of modern media like radio and daily newspapers.[16] Similarly, the Klan used mass parades, meetings, picnics, and family events where hundreds and even thousands of people participated. Gordon notes that most Klan members were not violent: close to 90 percent of KKK members did not participate in vigilante events or in violence against minorities.[17] The point of the Klan’s lack of participation in crime and violence goes against the overall negative perception of the Klan that many have. Ron Unz has similarly noted that the actual violence that KKK members perpetrated was small in comparison to violence done by Communist-led governments.[18]
Gordon and Unz’s arguments suggest that the KKK during the 1920s functioned largely as a defensive organization, trying to “hold the line” against perceived attacks on rural, white Protestant America, rather than as an aggressive or violent organization. This is not to endorse the KKK or to say that their motives or actions were good, in any way. But it does complicate conventional views of the Klan as a fundamentally violent organization. Gordon concedes the point on the non-violent nature of most KKK supporters, but suggests that the KKK constituted a large, and negative, element within American society. Gordon implies that we can see elements of the KKK’s ideology within the movement to support Donald Trump for President.[19] Here, Gordon’s point seems out of place, especially given the prominence that Trump gave to neo-conservative and pro-globalist – not racialist – members of his administration like John Bolton.
Gordon also presents an interesting chapter on women and gender in the KKK. Historically, a significant number, albeit a minority, of women have played significant roles in rightist, reactionary, and fascist movements.[20] Throughout different periods of history, a great many women have supported ideas related to the traditional family. In particular, KKK women such as Alma White supported what we might see as a “rightist feminist” ideology. White endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and supported a larger role for American women in public life (notably the right to vote), yet favoured immigration restriction, white separatism, anti-communism, and anti-Catholicism.[21] In one instance in 1926, the Silver Lake, New Jersey branch of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK) even invited birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, a supporter of eugenics, to speak. Gordon suggests that women in the Klan had a somewhat different agenda from men in the organization, and had a measure of independence from men in the Klan.[22] Yet, like men in the movement, Klan women endorsed anti-modern and anti-urban values, and argued, somewhat paradoxically, that women needed to come out of the home to support conservative values. In some instances, KKK women fought to punish men who abused their wives and children, a part of the WKKK’s fight to restore reactionary and traditional values in gender roles.[23] Close to 500 000 women became part of the KKK, again showing the strength of right-wing values among significant sectors of women.
Perhaps unwittingly, texts like Gordon’s, along with those of other scholars of the right such as George Hawley, Kathleen Blee and Nancy MacLean, present groups like the KKK with a far less negative sheen than might be expected from liberal and leftist scholars.[24] Moreover, Gordon presents some valid criticisms of the KKK. We should all deplore the violence of the KKK. Gordon is also correct to note that much corruption and hypocrisy existed among Klan leaders, even if leftist organizations were no better. In particular, in 1925, Indiana KKK Grand Dragon David Stephenson kidnapped, raped, and murdered his secretary. He was convicted, setting off a national scandal.[25] The Stephenson case led to the decline of the Klan in many parts of the U.S.: while preaching traditional, family values, Klan leaders like Stephenson participated in illicit sex, drinking, rape, and murder.
Still, the Gordon book demonstrates a real disconnect within much leftist and liberal writing. In short, much like other leftists, Gordon argues against capitalism and the profit motive, and yet supports multiculturalism, immigration, and diversity: all elements that stem from globalization and global capitalism. Indeed, Gordon criticizes the Klan, rightly, for rhetorically supporting small businesses against corporations and large capital, and yet doing little in practical terms to combat big business. Larger businesses, then as now, often encouraged globalization, “crony capitalism,” urbanization, and the breakdown of the small-town values that the Klan favoured.[26] The Klan was rhetorically “populist,” in its opposition to Hollywood elites, large capital and corporations, and big city machine politics, yet did little in an everyday sense to support small farmers and shopkeepers against growing corporatism and urbanization. But the same criticism could be levelled against leftists like Gordon: many endorse urbanization and modernity, not seeing these as elements that stem from the capitalism, globalization, big business, and imperialism that they claim to deplore. Leftists like Gordon, and Kolozi, do not seem to realize that a genuinely socialist, “producerist” or even distributist,[27] society would likely be far less diverse than the capitalist/globalist one than they claim to despise. Leftists and liberals seem to have little time for conservative critiques of capitalism, even when these critiques go deeper than their own.[28]
The previous statement provides a good springboard into a discussion of Peter Kolozi’s Conservatives Against Capitalism. To its credit, this text does attempt to take seriously the ideas of rightists who oppose capitalism. It is perhaps unfortunate that Kolozi defines “capitalism” as a defence of a laissez-faire economic order, with low taxes, few regulations, and the absence of the state. Indeed, Kolozi numbers Ludwig Von Mises, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard as conservatives, a statement that some on the right might disagree with.[29] Capitalism as a system arguably did more to change society than any other ideology or economic system prior to it.[30] Similarly, as a number of writers have noted, capitalism, especially in its monopoly guise since the 1880s, does not function apart from the state. In fact, modern capitalism and big business depend on the state, and government subsidies, to survive and grow.[31] Much of what we now know as modern capitalism would not exist without the government. This is why conservatives like Patrick Buchanan, Thomas Fleming, Alain de Benoist, and William Lind, among others, have criticized capitalism and have called for new kinds of human relationships with business and the state. Thus, Kolozi starts with a limited, and perhaps incorrect, definition of conservatism.
Still, Kolozi discusses a number of important conservative thinkers with anti-capitalist views. He starts the text with a discussion of defenders of slavery such as John C. Calhoun, George Fitzhugh, and James Henry Hammond. While not endorsing the views of such men, modern conservatives can learn from these thinkers. Thinkers like Calhoun saw capitalism, correctly, as an unstable system that led to social and economic changes.[32] In this way, capitalism failed, and continues to fail, one of the central tenets of conservatism as a mode of thought, exemplified by such thinkers as Russell Kirk: permanent, stable systems of order, rooted in tradition and past experience.[33] For thinkers like Calhoun and Fitzhugh, capitalism introduced a wage system that brought in social disorder, upheaval, and an end to the paternalistic system that required the upper orders to have some responsibility to defend the lower classes. In effect, thinkers like Fitzhugh and Hammond emphasized that capitalism brought about rapid change for different classes of society in the United States and elsewhere. Reactionaries like Hammond and Calhoun reprimanded those who advocated “free labor,” seeing it, not without cause, as an exploitative system that reduced all human relations to the exchange of currency. Capitalism as an economic system led to the end of a stable, hierarchical, organic society, as imagined by Southern conservatives like Calhoun and Fitzhugh, and, at least theoretically, by conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke.[34] Kolozi uses former Marxist, and latter-day conservative Catholic, Eugene Genovese as a foil for his portrayal of Southern conservatives. Genovese presented thinkers like Fitzhugh as being thoughtful, eloquent and passionate defenders of their society and class, as well as being strong crusaders against capitalism as a modernizing force. Genovese argues that capitalism led to the atomization of society, and the end of universal values for all.[35] Present day conservatives, although obviously deploring slavery, might think about this conservative critique of capitalism as an economic and social system.
Kolozi’s chapter on the Southern Agrarians also provides a stimulating and interesting analysis of a thoroughly reactionary, but anti-capitalist, grouping. In this chapter, Kolozi also makes brief mention of English Distributists like Hilaire Belloc and Catholic Agrarians like John C. Rawe.[36] Other sections of the text are perhaps less useful. In chapter two, for example, Kolozi frames Brooks Adams and Theodore Roosevelt as unambiguous conservatives. It is true that Adams and “T.R.” valorized the aristocratic warrior of ancient times, masculine codes of honour, the Middle Ages, and the American frontier as ideals – values that some present-day rightists might support.[37] Yet, both Adams and Roosevelt were imperialists and statists – Roosevelt even ran on the Progressive Party’s ticket in the 1912 U.S. federal election, and was a proponent of a strong federal government and increased regulation of capitalism. Roosevelt simply wanted more federal government control of big business. Somewhat ironically, many big businesses supported immigration as an attempt to support “cheap labour” and to keep the costs of producing goods low.[38] Adams and Roosevelt did not support a rightist ideology, in the sense of maintaining traditions and the integrity of local communities. As imperialists, both Adams and Roosevelt endorsed the “invade the world, invite the world” ideology, if unwittingly.[39] Thus, Kolozi – stuck in the idea that support for a “laissez-faire” viewpoint is the same as conservatism – misinterprets the views of Adams and Roosevelt.
The same criticism holds for Kolozi’s chapter on neo-conservatism, and the views of thinkers like Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, and David Brooks. I found this chapter especially confusing and frustrating. In particular, Kolozi does not mention the leftist and Trotskyist background of many neo-conservative intellectuals.[40] The leftist background would seem to go against seeing these thinkers as, strictly speaking, conservatives. Similarly, and like much of the rest of Kolozi’s text, the author assumes that anything that uses the “state” – indeed Kolozi does not really define what he means by this term – to run the economy goes against conservative thought. As we have seen, this is not the case: many thinkers, politicians, and policy makers have been clear that their brand of capitalism depends on the state introducing laws and policies to oversee and control the economy.[41] If ever a government actually introduces a true “laissez-faire” policy, this would go against historical precedent in economics and government. Here, Kolozi’s narrow leftist ideology colours and distorts his views on conservative thinkers.
Kolozi provides a useful, if problematic, chapter on those thinkers whom he terms the “New Conservatives”: Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and Peter Viereck. He also presents a chapter on writers and thinkers known as “paleoconservatives” (Kolozi’s term) like Patrick Buchanan and Samuel Francis. Kolozi sees the Donald Trump Presidential campaign of 2016 as borrowing from the views of paleoconservatives like Buchanan and Francis.[42] In both chapters, Kolozi’s, somewhat disguised, disdain for these thinkers colours his writing. It is rather odd that Kolozi unites Peter Viereck – with his qualified support for the New Deal and for other government programs – with localists Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet – both of whom used ideas stemming from Edmund Burke. Viereck, Kirk, and Nisbet all argued that “intermediary institutions” – analogous to Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” – like the family, the church, local communities, voluntary associations and labor unions fulfilled an absolutely vital role in society. Modern American society, with the increasing ties between big government and big business, has seen a decline in the strength of these intermediate institutions.[43]
As we have seen, Viereck endorsed big government programs like the New Deal, while Kirk and Nisbet endorsed a decentralized, essentially reactionary, view of society, where “traditional institutions” like labor unions, cooperatives, churches, and mutual aid societies played key roles. Oddly, Kolozi states that Nisbet’s views may have laid the groundwork for aspects of the “conservative welfare state,” seen in Bill Clinton’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in 1996, and George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative programs.[44] There is no evidence for this beyond Kolozi’s claim and, to my knowledge, Nisbet never endorsed these kinds of programs. The Clinton policy, in particular, although it did devolve federal welfare programs to state and local authorities, was equally as bureaucratic as federal welfare programs. Kolozi mentions, but does not spend much time on, Kirk and Nisbet’s dissention from a laissez-faire vision of politics and economics.[45]
In spite of the idea that Kirk is one of American conservatism’s “Founding Fathers,” his ideas do not seem to have a strong following among many sectors of mainstream American conservatism today.[46] The non-economic, cultural critiques of capitalism that Kirk and Nisbet, and even Viereck, put forward, might have some relevance to some sectors of the modern right.[47] Here, Kolozi, perhaps unknowingly, lays out some important ideas for modern conservatism.
The same might be said of Kolozi’s chapter on the paleoconservatives. As noted, Kolozi focuses largely on Patrick Buchanan and Samuel Francis. Kolozi correctly notes that writers like Buchanan and Francis are non-interventionist (Kolozi says “isolationist,” perhaps indicating his left-liberal objection to this ideology)[48] in foreign policy, and critical of global capitalism as being unmoored from local communities and institutions. The author remarks that the paleoconservatives like Francis saw Middle American Radicals (MARs) – working and middle-class, white, Christian Americans – as being a deprived and forgotten group of people, whom modern, corporate capitalism had often left behind.[49] Kolozi is probably correct that men like Buchanan, Francis, and Joseph Sobran have supported a kind of “white racial nationalism” against global capitalism.[50] But Kolozi does not acknowledge that the paleo-conservatives might have presented a number of valid points in their critiques of capitalism.
Further, the author fails to note that the left has not added much of substance to debates over immigration, ethnicity, and capitalism of late. In earlier decades, the labor movement, and many on the left, opposed mass immigration as going against the advancement of the white working and middle-classes.[51] I think that Kolozi is incorrect to argue that the paleoconservatives defend “economic inequality.”[52] As populist rightists, men like Buchanan and Francis want their fellow Americans to share in the spoils of a “private” economy. In many senses, the paleos had, and have, a stronger critique of capitalism than the left and liberals. This explains the success of Donald Trump, at least to some degree: middle and working-class, mostly white, Americans turned to Trump out of a feeling of abandonment by the left in the areas of immigration and globalized capitalism. Kolozi hints at this point in the book’s conclusion, but implies that the left needs to embrace new ideas about “freedom,” “democracy,” and “inequality.”[53] It is an ambiguous ending to a useful, if flawed, text. I would argue that the Kolozi book is of more use to the right today than the Gordon book, since Kolozi writes in a relatively dispassionate tone, and brings many rightist ideas into the mainstream of academic life. The Gordon text provides a good overview of an earlier American rightist movement, but the author’s tone is more judgmental and provides a less useful overview of current issues.
We can see more useful arguments from conservatives such as Patrick Deneen. His Why Liberalism Failed provides a useful overview of recent debates on liberalism and modernity. Deneen presents insights into why modern liberalism, particularly in the United States, failed to provide democracy and equality to a majority of citizens. Deneen argues that liberalism has failed, not because it did not live up to its’ stated values but because it “was true to itself.”[54] Deneen suggests that liberalism, in separating humanity from traditional relationships – such as those with family and church – left individual people weakened and with no power to control the political, economic, and educational tools of society. The author implies that the state continually interferes into the lives of humans to ensure liberation.[55] Yet, this situation has led to people, particularly in the United States, with no true freedom at all, with the growth of the state into more and more areas of public and private life.
Deneen provides a useful history of liberal ideology and thought, discussing how liberalism, was conceived initially by thinkers such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes but continued into the 18th and 19th-centuries with thinkers like Rousseau, Marx, Mill, Dewey, and Richard Rorty. Liberalism, in this viewpoint, was based on mastery over nature, a rejection of human limitations in terms of class and social status, and a rejection of human nature as being “fixed.” Modern liberalism, distinct from an earlier, ancient form of liberalism that focused on self-governance and self-legislation, emphasized individualism and choice, as well as separation from nature. Positive law should not constrain humans in this view.[56] The author further states that both “classical” liberalism, with its more anti-statist focus, and “progressive” liberalism, with the focus on the state as the means to improve society, share the same end goal of individual liberation from tradition and custom.[57] Deneen argues that this vision of liberalism, with its focus on immediate self-gratification in personal relationships and the economy, is unsustainable.
Why Liberalism Failed addresses some of the same issues that Peter Kolozi does, even if Deneen does so more directly. In particular, Deneen builds on Robert Nisbet and Alexis de Tocqueville to demonstrate how the atomization of society and the increasing presence of an individualized culture in the United States led to a stronger state presence. Further, Deneen uses Tocqueville, Wendell Berry, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, among other thinkers, to suggest that community, traditions, and roots in a particular place might set limits upon the growth of the state. Similarly, localism might help to ameliorate the atomization and demoralization in society that we see with the triumph of modern liberalism in its statist and individualist modes.[58] Deneen suggests that some sort of movement toward a localist, community-based culture, perhaps centered on the family and the local town, might offer a way forward for political movements in the future.
In effect, Deneen’s books presents solutions to the issues of atomization, the power of big business and consumerism and the domination of the state and large cities at the expense of small towns, smaller businesses, and rural areas. Both the KKK in Gordon’s book, and the anti-capitalist conservatives in Kolozi’s text spoke out against modern capitalism for similar reasons, even if these groups used different, at times abhorrent, methods. Deneen concludes that we cannot return to an earlier vanished time in history as a solution. He posits Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” – with the creation of communities separate from the dominant liberalism and a focus on doing practical tasks for oneself and for one’s family – as a way of building up new local communities, an extension of Tocqueville’s view of township government.[59] Deneen’s text provides more of a practical guide to the issues inherent within modern liberalism, and a solution to the problems of liberalism. Yet, Deneen’s work fits profitably alongside the texts of Gordon and Kolozi.
Both a practical guide to the future of politics and an academic perspective on the problems of modern democracy will be found in Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin’s National Populism: The Revolt against Liberal Democracy. The authors note that they conceived and wrote the book in the context of Donald Trump’s successful Presidential campaign in 2016, and the Brexit vote in the same year. The authors also mention the increasing popularity in some circles of politicians such as Marine Le Pen in France, Matteo Salvini in Italy, and Viktor Orban in Hungary.[60] In short, the authors define “national populism” as an ideology that gives priority to the culture and interests of the “nation” and a promise to give a voice to groups of people who have been left out of political power and whom elites have often held in contempt.[61] Eatwell and Goodwin attempt to offer explanations as to why Brexit, the Trump victory, and other manifestations of national populism occurred. They argue that national populism will have staying power in the future in various national contexts.
Eatwell and Goodwin make a cogent argument that the “four Ds” explain why national populism has grown among the populace in a number of nations. First, the authors note how distrust of mainstream liberal democratic politicians has led some voters toward national populism as a potential solution. Second, Eatwell and Goodwin discuss how immigration and ethnic change had led to fears surrounding the potential destruction of a nation’s historic identity and way of life. Some voters have come to believe that mainstream politicians, transnational organizations and globalized financial elites have supported mass immigration and “political correctness” at the expense of ordinary voters. Third, the authors discuss how some voters feel a sense of relative deprivation in relation to others in their respective countries. Some citizens feel that they have become economically disadvantaged relative to others in their nations. The sense of deprivation has led to a fear of the future for some. Finally, Eatwell and Goodwin mention a weakening of bonds between voters and many mainstream political parties: a vision of de-alignment from older political loyalties and parties.[62] These four “Ds” have created room for national populists to sweep in and gain votes and supporters for a different kind of politics.
Eatwell and Goodwin do a fine job of challenging some of the myths that have built up around support for national populism. Working-class and more affluent voters, as well as some minority voters, have supported Trump and Brexit, going against the idea that only poor, mostly white, voters endorse national populism. The authors show that simply seeing national populism as only being supported by older, conservative white men is not accurate. In countries like France, Germany, Sweden, and Greece, we see substantial support for right-wing and populist political movements among younger and middle-aged people.[63] It was more often levels of education that led to voters to embrace Trump or leaving the European Union.[64] Like Deneen’s text, the authors argue that national populism resulted from the contradictions of liberal democracy. While liberal democracy is theoretically based on rule by and for the people, in practice, a “pragmatic” vision of liberalism has developed whereby technocratic elites presume to make laws that govern the lives of people whom elites have little in common with, or sympathy for. Eatwell and Goodwin imply, in agreement with Deneen, that an increasingly powerful state has brought in more and more laws to ensure “liberal” governance, leaving many citizens behind.[65]
Eatwell and Goodwin discuss varied, and linked, issues like fears of immigration and white “replacement,” economic deprivation, differences among “left” and “right”-wing populism, and the “de-alignment” of significant numbers of voters from the mainline political parties in various countries.[66] As with the Deneen text, Eatwell and Goodwin implicitly contend with issues raised in the Gordon and Kolozi books. Put simply, how do ordinary people and intellectuals, like those involved in the KKK and as rightist activists and ideologues, contend with a vision of capitalism that went against traditional values? As we have seen, the KKK, although some members weighed in against capitalism and consumerism, focused on a racially-based solution to society’s problems. The conservative intellectuals in Kolozi’s text offered varied solutions to capitalism, with some supporting racialist ideas or racial restrictionism, and others endorsing a larger welfare state, or a localist solution. Eatwell and Goodwin, as political scientists and researchers, do not offer a political solution to the issues that they raise. In the book’s conclusion, dealing with what the authors call “post-populism,” they suggest that more mainstream, usually right-of-centre, parties like the UK Conservative Party or the Austrian People’s Party may well take on “national populist lite” positions such as a harder line on immigration. The “national populist lite” position has proven effective in the recent past for winning elections for mainstream, but right-of-center, political parties. In this way, Eatwell and Goodwin suggest that national populism will continue to influence various countries, perhaps by becoming more palatable to mainstream voters.[67]
We can see a more vehement and direct recommendation for political and ideological change in Yoram Hazony’s much-discussed text The Virtue of Nationalism. Like the Deneen and Eatwell and Goodwin texts, Hazony puts his book in the context of the move toward globalization, with large “supra-national” states like the European Union having more and more power over individual nations and local communities. Hazony argues that an order of individual national states offers the best chance to create a future order of economic productivity, peace, and tolerance of diverse views.[68] Hazony sees nationalism as having a different definition than “imperialism.” Rather than imposing particular views on others, Hazony’s vision of nationalism would protect rights for those deemed as part of the national community, regardless of racial or ethnic origin. Hazony defines “nation” as being a number of different groups of people who share a common language or religious background, and a shared history of acting for each other’s common defence. The author borrows from Old Testament ideas related to the notion of a common nation.[69] Hazony stresses that his definition of a nation does not correspond with ideas of biological race. Indeed, for Hazony, a number of different races could theoretically exist under the banner of a particular nation, if these different races agreed to accept shared values based on religion, defence, and sense of history.[70]
Hazony presents Protestant theology, and thinkers such as John Selden, and, especially, John Locke as foregrounding modern nationalism and liberal ideas about nationhood. The author posits that Protestantism, in the context of emerging, independent nation states like England, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, endorsed two particular, although not completely new, ideas. First, Protestant nations, and other developing nation states such as Catholic France, argued that the sovereign or ruler had to devote themselves to the well-being of their people and to the public recognition of one God. These were the minimal requirements for establishing a legitimate government. Second, the Protestant conception of government required that all nations should determine for themselves how they wished to be governed and what religious affiliation they wished for themselves. In short, all nations had the right to govern themselves with whatever constitution or church they saw fit to use, without foreign control.[71]
Hazony endorses the above view of the nation state as the best form of political arrangement. He criticizes John Locke’s view of “liberalism” as being excessively focused on individualism. In Hazony’s view, Lockean liberalism does not account for obligations for members of a national community, based on traditions, common historical memories, language, and rites that carry over from one generation to the next. Hazony sees Lockean liberalism as explicitly leading to modern liberal notions of the “supra-state” like the United Nations and, implicitly, as connected to ideologies like Marxism.[72] Although he does not use the term, Hazony offers a critique of “woke-ness.” He argues that university campuses, in particular, have become sites of a kind of “liberal imperialism” whereby only liberal views on issues like homosexuality and gender identity, Islam, and the Israel-Palestine conflict are permitted.[73]
Hazony suggests that a kind of “traditionalist” nationalism might offer a way forward to combat the liberal dominance of today’s politics. He argues that an “international order of national states” based on the two Protestant principles mentioned above might offer a blueprint for the modern world. Hazony sees this as descending from an “Anglo-American Conservative Tradition,” borrowing from thinkers like John Fortescue, John Selden, and Edmund Burke.[74] Hazony sees this tradition as having the potential to save humanity from liberalism, as well as from the negative elements of imperialism, which caused disastrous events like the First World War.[75] Hazony views imperialism, liberalism, and, implicitly, Marxism and socialism as being ideologies with similar goals, if not stemming from the same roots. Hazony also views Nazi fascism as being part and parcel of the same drive to impose a certain ideological view on hostile populations.[76] In this sense, Hazony’s views dovetail with those of Deneen, who sees local control of policy and the economy as being the way forward in terms of ensuring a post-liberal future for humanity. Hazony would likely sympathize with the anti-globalist views of those in Kolozi’s book and even with some elements of the anti-big business views present in the KKK, even if Hazony would, of course, deplore the KKK’s methods. Hazony presents a useful theory for anti-imperialist conservatives who wish to use new ideas about nationalism and local patriotism to combat both neo-conservative globalists and liberal imperialists.[77] Taken together, the texts by Deneen, Eatwell and Goodwin, and Hazony provide much “food for thought” for those interested in new visions of conservative ideology as well as possible blueprints for future political movements.
We should end with questions that were implied earlier. What do the writings of leftists like Gordon and Kolozi have to say to those who identify as on the right? Why am I comparing and contrasting Gordon and Kolozi’s views with those of writers like Deneen and Hazony? In short, all of these authors take their subjects seriously and present compelling analyses of their topics. Gordon and Kolozi may have set out ideas that might bring in more people to a revised conservative, localist movement. There are a number of rightist ideas contained in these books, by leftist authors, that might prove useful to present-day conservatives. Both Gordon and Kolozi, although not sympathetic to the right, do note that their respective subjects spoke to real issues – the effects of global capitalism and job loss and poverty – that leftists movements did not always address clearly. As implied above, this writer believes that the ideas of Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet might be of use to the conservative movement today. Moving back to a truly locally controlled economy and government might allow those of the right and the left to choose their own, smaller communities.[78] The texts by Deneen and Hazony, in particular, speak to the pro-localist, anti-globalization movement among the right.
Similarly, the ideas of writers like Russell Kirk and Deneen and Hazony go alongside those of Canadian conservatives like George Grant, Marshall McLuhan, Donald Creighton, and Hilda Neatby. It would take a much longer article than this one to properly explain the views of these thinkers. In brief, writers like Grant, similar to Kirk, Nisbet, and the paleoconservatives, critiqued global capitalism and imperialism, viewing these elements as destructive of local traditions of family, church, the rural land, and local, organic communities.[79] In the context of Canada, this “Tory” ideology had a strong pro-British connection, given the close ties that most English-speaking Canadians had with Britain, until quite recently.[80] The “Tory,” pro-British tradition in Canadian society and culture has largely died off, leading to the more populist, and pro-American, regionalist Reform Party tradition of the 1990s and the early 2000s.[81] Modern Canadian conservatives have mostly left behind a regionalist perspective, but it is worth reconsidering as we grapple with mass immigration, environmental concerns, and job loss in recent decades. Although not explicitly stated, the views of the old Tories, and the Reform Party in Canada, came directly from the tradition of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, British Canada; we can see a link with Hazony’s focus on the Protestant tradition of the conservative nation here.[82] It is this tradition that would be worth re-invigorating, in both Canada and in the American context. The works of Deneen, Eatwell and Goodwin, and, perhaps most clearly, Hazony offer conservatives a way forward to contending with current issues in society, and a political program to endorse in the future. We can see the same, localist paradigm in the writings of many other conservatives, notably that of the late philosopher Roger Scruton.[83]
In general, those who identify as “conservative” or “right-wing” can only be grateful for the amount of attention that writers – often leftists and liberals but coming from a variety of perspectives – are increasingly paying to rightist viewpoints. Writers have looked at the right from the perspective of racial and ethnic studies,[84] religious history,[85] libertarianism,[86] women’s studies,[87] comparative studies of the left and right,[88] sociology and social history,[89] regional history,[90] labor studies,[91] and political history.[92] Right-wing and “populist” views have moved to the centre of debate in North America and Europe.[93] These many modes of looking at the right suggest that it is a serious subject of study for scholars and activists alike. The rightist movement is, rather ironically, “diverse” and made up of many different viewpoints and ideologies, which do not always work in tandem with each other.[94] In some cases, the right has looked back to an earlier period of history to valorize. In others, the right has focused on the future as a mode of thought and hope. Some variants of conservatism looked to other nations, such as Britain, as a model to follow. Others borrowed from ideas that we might see as being on the “left” of the political spectrum.[95] Some variants of the right have focused on race, while others less so. In the end, while writers of the left like Gordon and Kolozi are worth examining for the problems that they identify, I would encourage Voegelin View readers to seek out the texts by Deneen, Eatwell and Goodwin, and Hazony for specific advice on how to approach contemporary issues on the right in the context of economic uncertainty and “woke-ness.”
Notes
[1] See especially Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State (orig. 1913. Tempe, AZ: New Classic Books, 2018); G.K. Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity (orig. 1926. Norfolk, VA: IHS Books, 2002); Bill Kauffman, Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006); Jeff Taylor, Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013), 37-40 and passim; Paul M. Weyrich and William Lind, The Next Conservatism (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2009). See also many articles at frontporchrepublic.com, The American Conservative, The Imaginative Conservative, and Voegelin View. Speaking as a Canadian, I am afraid that the conservative intellectual tradition is poorer, on the whole, than in the United States. For a general overview of Canadian conservatism, see Ron Dart, The Red Tory Tradition: Ancient Roots, New Routes (Dewdney, B.C.: Synaxis Press, 1999).
[2] In addition to the works cited in the previous footnote, see Allan Carlson, The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2000); Paul V. Murphy, The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 1-10, 227-37, 254-75
[3] A number of texts could be cited here. See, in particular, Damon T. Berry, Blood and Faith: Christianity in American White Nationalism (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2017); Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plainfolk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012); George Hawley, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2016); Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015); Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). In Canada, as noted, the numbers and quality of texts on the right are smaller but see John Boyko, Bennett: The Rebel Who Challenged a Nation (Fredericton, N.B.: Goose Lane Editions, 2010) and the present author’s From Left to Right: Maternalism and Women’s Political Activism in Postwar Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2016).
[4] See especially Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, revised ed. (orig. 1955; Boston: Mariner Books, 1991).
[5] I mean “Progressive” in the sense of humanity inexorably moving toward positive, liberal gains, and the possibility of perfecting human institutions and humanity through using (federal) government programs. Of course, most “Progressives” from the Progressive Era of 1890-1917 only wanted progress for white, Anglo-Saxon Americans. See Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925, revised ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
[6] Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), 2-5 and passim.
[7] Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York and London: Liveright Publishing, 2017), 7.
[8] Linda Gordon, “The New Deal was a Good Idea: We Should Try It,” History News Network, April 15, 2009, History News Network, http://hnn.us/articles/80896.html/.
[9] Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
[10] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 7 and passim. For the Canadian situation, the best, somewhat dispassionate, treatment is still Martin Robin, Shades of Right: Nativist and Fascist Politics in Canada, 1920-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). Like Gordon, Robin suggests that the Canadian branch of the KKK, especially strong in rural parts of Ontario and in provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta, represented part of mainstream WASP culture in Canada.
[11] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 19.
[12] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 21. See also Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992).
[13] Gordon concedes this point. See The Second Coming of the KKK, 30-31.
[14] See Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What that Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Universit Press, 1998); Kevin B. MacDonald, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 1998). The author does not endorse MacDonald’s view of Jews. On Catholics see David J. O’Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); Geoffrey S. Smith, To Save A Nation: American ‘Extremism, The New Deal, and the Coming of World War II, revised ed. (New York: Ivan R. Dee, 1992), 122-5.
[15] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 45-51.
[16] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 63-64. For “reactionary modernism,” see Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, revised ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
[17] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 93-98.
[18] Ron Unz, “American Pravda: The KKK and Mass Racial Killings,” The Unz Review, September 19, 2016, http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-kkk-and-mass-racial-killings/. To be clear, the “first” KKK from 1866-1871 was much more violent, especially against blacks in the American South. See Michael Fellman, In the Name of God and Country: Reconsidering Terrorism in American History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 97-142.
[19] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 7, 208-209.
[20] See, for example, Julie V. Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923-1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003); Glen Jeansonne, Women of the Far Right: The Mothers’ Movement and World War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (London: Routledge, 2014); Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism; Margaret Power, Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964-1973 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002); Thorn, From Left to Right.
[21] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 122-123.
[22] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 130-131.
[23] On KKK women see also Kathleen Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, revised ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008); Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
[24] See the works cited in fn 21 as well as Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); Hawley, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism; Hawley, The Alt-Right: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
[25] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 192-4.
[26] Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK, 35.
[27] For a description of “distributism,” see Belloc, The Servile State; Pope Leo Blessed XIII and G.K. Chesterton, The Third Way: Foundations of Distributism As Contained in the Writings of Pope Blessed Leo XIII and Gilbert K. Chesterton (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012).
[28] For rightist critiques of capitalism, see Samuel T. Francis, “Capitalism, the Enemy,” Chronicles, July 3, 2000. http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org;. Murphy, The Rebuke of History. The present author does not endorse Francis’s racialist views.
[29] Peter Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism: From the Industrial Revolution to Globalization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 2-3.
[30] Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 278.
[31] A number of texts could be cited here. See Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: The Free Press, 1977); H.V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines, and Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941, second edition (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005).
[32] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 22-23.
[33] Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7th ed. (orig. 1953; Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publications, 2016).
[34] Although many scholars have presented different views of Burke, portraying him as anything from a liberal reformer to a conservative anti-imperialist, to a localist and decentralist thinker. See Richard Bourke, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015); Robert Nisbet, Conservatism: Dream and Reality, revised ed. (orig. 1986; Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction Books, 2002), 70-7.
[35] See especially Eugene Genovese, The Southern Tradition: The Achievements and Limitations of an American Conservatism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Murphy, The Rebuke of History, 255-64.
[36] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 77-105. See also Herbert Agar and Allen Tate, eds., Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence (orig. 1936; Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1999); Kauffman, Look Homeward, America, 38-51; John Crowe Ransom et al., I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (orig. 1930; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977)
[37] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 65-8.
[38] This was an international phenomenon. See Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia, third ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002).
[39] The phrase comes from conservative blogger Steve Sailer, notably in “Invade the World, Invite the World, Gag the American Public,” Steve Sailer, iSteve, September 16, 2012, https://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/09/invade-world-invite-world-gag-american.html.
[40] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 155-156.
[41] See the works cited in fn 28 as well as Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
[42] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 169-70.
[43] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 117-134.
[44] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 136.
[45] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 137-138. On Kirk, see Bradley J. Birzer, Russell Kirk: American Conservative (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015). On Nisbet, see Brad Lowell Stone, Robert Nisbet: Communitarian Traditionalist (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001).
[46] See Thomas E. Woods Jr., Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion (Middletown, DE, 2014), 26-29.
[47] A recent, useful example of a conservative viewpoint that we might see as extending the views of thinkers like Kirk and Nisbet is Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies: A Manual For Christian Dissidents (New York: Sentinel Publishing, 2020). We can also see this in websites like The Imaginative Conservative.
[48] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 172.
[49] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 173.
[50] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 184.
[51] Hispanic activist Cesar Chavez and the anarchist Edward Abbey come to mind. For Abbey’s view, see “Immigration and Liberal Taboos,” The Compass Rose, (orig. 1988), October 29, 2009, http://compassrosebooks.blogspot.com/2009/10/edward-abbey-on-immigration.html. On Chavez, see Jose-Antonio Orosco, Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Non-Violence (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 11, 18-24.
[52] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 189.
[53] Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 195-196.
[54] Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018), 3.
[55] Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, 4-18.
[56] Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, 31-8.
[57] Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, 47.
[58] Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, 59-63, 74-84.
[59] Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, 182-3, 191-7. The quotation is from pg. 193. For other views related to the lack of community in modern liberal democracy, with a focus on the United States, see Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991); Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).
[60] Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (London: Pelican, 2018), x.
[61] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism, ix.
[62] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism, xxi-xxiii.
[63] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism, 4-18.
[64] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism, 26-8.
[65] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism, 48.
[66] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism, 50-222 passim.
[67] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism, 269-92.
[68] Yoram Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 11-13.
[69] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 18-19.
[70] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 20.
[71] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 23-8
[72] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 31-7.
[73] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 47.
[74] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 53-4.
[75] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 117-9.
[76] Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism, 227-9.
[77] We might compare Hazony’s work with texts like Bill Kaufman, Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008); Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975); Taylor, Politics on a Human Scale.
78 Here, see Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017); Hawley, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism, 74-101; Weyrich and Lind, The Next Conservatism, 77-9, 82-3.
[79] See especially Dart, The Red Tory Tradition; Philip Massolin, Canadian Intellectuals, the Tory Tradition, and the Challenge of Modernity, 1939-1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).
[80] C.P. Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada: The Liberals and Canadian Nationalism, 1964-68 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010); Jose E. Iguartua, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945-71 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007).
[81] The Reform tradition, in turn, has become subsumed in the modern Canadian Conservative Party, established in 2003, and largely indistinguishable from Canada’s Liberal Party on many issues of substance. See Faron Ellis, The Limits of Participation: Members and Leaders in Canada’s Reform Party (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2005).
[82] Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada.
[83] Many of Scruton’s books could be cited here. See, most notably, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism (London: Oxford University Press, 2012).
[84] Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983).
[85] Barry, Blood and Faith; Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).
[86] Justin Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right: Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, second ed. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008).
[87] See the works mentioned in fn 18 as well as Mary C. Brennan, Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade Against Communism (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2008).
[88] Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Thorn, From Left to Right.
[89] Trevor Harrison, Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995); Klatch, A Generation Divided.
[90] Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt; Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
[91] Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009).
[92] Boyko, Bennett; Donald T. Critchlow, Republican Character: From Nixon to Reagan (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Richard J. Gwyn, Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times (Toronto: Vintage, 2012)
[93] Eatwell and Goodwin, National Populism.
[94] George Hawley notes that the three major views of American conservatives – economic libertarianism, a strong national defence, and “traditional” values – were sometimes mutually exclusive. See Hawley, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism, 6-19.
[95] As Kolozi implies in his chapter on the paleoconservatives. See Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism, 167-189.
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