The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism

  Lately, I have found my historical interest gravitating towards American political history, specifically that of the conservative movement of the 20th century. I believed my knowledge of the topic was serviceable, yet incomplete, in comparison to the more accessible history of the American left that one naturally receives reading about the New Deal or the tumult of the mid century. The rise of Barry Goldwater in the 1960s and the culmination of the Reagan presidency two decades later were what I understood to be the conservative movement in its entirety. Something rather impactful, but short lived, before it matured into something else.  What I uncovered through reading Matthew Continetti’s The Right is that the modern conservative movement has been one hundred years in the making, highly variable, and intellectually robust. While Goldwater and Reagan conservatism did not stay “pure” for all too long, what came before and after is very much a part of American conservatism’s history and should be studied if a true sense of American politics today is desired. 

The book starts in the 1920’s, profiling the Republican presidents of that era discussing how the presidencies began to share a new era of conservative thinking that emerged out of the progressivism of earlier decades. It is natural to think of American history previous to this period as one dominated by conservative thought, because so much of our political past would be considered “conservative” by today’s standards. Continettii does not get that expansive, and while he does mention the key influence of enlightenment thinkers such as Edmund Burke, he classifies the rise of “The Right” as a purely twentieth century feature, being honed aggressively by political opposition to the New Deal and aggressive debate over American entrance into WWII. What emerged in the 1950s was a counter narrative to the political direction of the United States, a resistance of social upheaval, and a crystallization of the strongest anti-communist rhetoric that had emerged with the rise of the USSR. The book spends a number of pages detailing the contributions of mid century giants on the conservative cause, such as Whtittaker Chambers and of course William F. Buckley Jr. This is where I found a lot of interest in the narrative Continetti built, not only because of my own personal interest in the era in which those men were writing, but in how vehement the disagreement within the conservative movement became as different facets reacted to the events of the day. Vietnam, civil rights, and nuclear proliferation were fiercely debated within the movement, with a sharp lack of consensus often being the product of back and forth snipings and essays. This internal debate grew the American Right and made it into an intellectually robust and cunning group of individuals who would soon wield their power. The high water mark of the 1980s and election of Ronald Reagan followed, but the movement just as quickly shape-shifted once again, as the demands of the growing economy and foreign policy strains birthed the neo-cons and their various mouthpieces, yet also produced more hard line critics. Political figures like George W. Bush and John McCain were often at odds with “purists” like Pat Bucahnan and “populists” like Newt Gingrich. Continetti ends the book discussing what the Trump era has meant for “The Right” and where it appears to be headed from here. 

The book is broad strokes history, do not expect any lengthy discussion on any one subject matter or individual, yet Continetti weaves together enough detailed vignettes to lay down a solid narrative and inform the reader on a subject that is admittedly difficult to solidify. I came away from the text both informed and curious, as there were chapters that sparked a desire to dig in deeper on moments of importance to the movement. Altogether, The Right is a serviceable work of history that accomplishes what it sets out to do.