American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia

this book is the best put together conservative reference book i have ever seen,it is well put together and a delight as just a read.a must for your conservative collection.

~American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia~ is an insightful encyclopedic compendium offering a survey of the American conservative movement and its diverse elements. The publisher Intercollegiate Studies Institute makes it clear that the focus is upon a distinctively American conservative movement, particularly in its postwar mold following the Depression and World War II. This insightful reference book covers a litany of iconic personalities, people, events, organizations, and concepts of major importance to the American conservative movement. One thing ISI does surprisingly well is achieve a balance while allowing for a profile of an older traditional conservative thought. In the twentieth century, the political fortunes of conservatism are too often measured merely by the successes of the Republican Party. This encyclopedic reference, however, points readers to a diverse, broad conservative movement within the United States. To many outsiders, the conservative movement suffers from a crisis of identity as avowed neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, traditionalists, libertarians, and those who simply call themselves "conservatives," cling to the conservative movement. However, as this encyclopedia makes clear, the diversity of the movement is its strength, and the ensuing debates between its varied elements, has contributed to the advancement of the nation. The American conservative movement will perhaps allow for a brighter future for ordered liberty, a renewed culture and a more vibrant civil society. Herein, this volume, the student finds an erudite window into that American conservative movement. Understanding the movement, its history, and its impact, is integral to sustaining its impact on society for the better in the twenty-first century. This powerful tome features articles from one of my former professors Dr. S.A. Samson as well.

In this highly interesting and informative book, the reader will be introduced to the main currents in conservative thought, and in a manner that is objective and with only a few exceptions free from an excess of bias. There are many names and ideas associated to American conservatism, and readers may find that they hold much more in common with it than they might have first realized. Its history and content have been tarnished greatly in recent years, due mostly to the popularity of `neoconservatism' (which is discussed in the book), and the current regime in Washington. This book will hopefully assist in putting conservative thought into its proper perspective, and illustrate to the uninitiated reader its great diversity in ideas. The average reader will probably not read every article in the book, but will instead concentrate on those of interest. There is a fair representation of the major (and minor) philosophical trends that have dominated American conservatism, along with those that have or are losing credence. By far the best article in the book is the one entitled `Liberalism' and written by Peter Augustine Lawler. In spite of its length, it gives a fair and interesting overview of what constitutes liberal thought and some of its intersections with conservative thinking. It is a refreshing alternative to the vituperation that so frequently occurs in discussions of liberal philosophy. The author does refer to `liberalism' as being `elitist' but this is put in the context of its belief that individuals must be liberated from religion, morality, and other traditional beliefs in order to become fully human. In this sense it is `elitist' in that it makes special and frequently exclusive claims to knowledge about what it means to be fully human. Also interesting (and it is fair to say accurate) is the author's statement that American liberalism has been a mixture of conservatism and liberalism. There is fairly good evidence that suggests even more so, namely that liberals have actually switched places with conservatives in recent decades. Both liberals and conservatives will deny this vociferously of course, but the conservative thought of George Will, who is also included in the book, is a good example of this crossover effect, with his notion of "statecraft through soulcraft", which sounds suspiciously like the belief from liberalism that governmental institutions should be used to promote beneficial social change. The next article entitled `Liberalism, Classical' offers more insight into the nature and philosophy of liberalism, and in fact reinforces this `crossover' effect between the liberal and conservative camps, albeit in a much longer time scale (on the order of a few centuries rather than decades). It is very surprising to see an article on Ayn Rand appear in this book, given that she chose to distance herself from `conservative' thought throughout her lifetime. She also despised `Whittaker Chambers' due to his extremely negative

This encyclopedia of conservativism actually deals mostly with what Podhoretz called the 'paleo-conservatives' those who came of age during the time of Taft, before the era of Geingrich, and truly in some ways do not take into account the true diversity of conservative opinion as it morphed into something else in the 1980s. It is more about William F. Buckley than Norman Podhoretz. This book is mostly about the academic conservatives, not its political manifestations such as Barry Goldwater. Nevertheless this is an important work, and a needed contribution.

No other book provides such a rich survey of the intellectual history of American conservatism. With almost 1,000 pages of entries written by some of the most prominent American conservatives (people such as Russell Kirk, M. E. Bradford, and Murray Rothbard), this is now the one book that must be read if one wants to understand American conservatism. This comes at a good time, because American conservatives are wondering about the future of conservatism in America. The current debate over whether President George Bush and his neoconservative supporters have betrayed the conservative movement manifests this new period of conservative self-examination. This book will help conservatives to reconsider their complex history and their possible future. My judgment might be biased because I was involved in the original launching of this project by Greg Wolfe in 1990. I have five articles in the book--on "Intelligent Design Theory," "The Scopes Trial," "Social Darwinism," "Sociobiology," and "Herbert Spencer." My articles reflect a desire to persuade conservatives that Darwinian science supports conservative social thought. But that is a minority view in this book. The more common conservative scorn for modern science is stated in M. D. Aeschliman's article on "Science and Scientism." The one clear weakness in this book is that it does not really cover the full history of the American conservative movement. It stresses the intellectual or academic side of conservatism as dominated by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (the publisher of the book) and NATIONAL REVIEW. It gives almost no attention to the most populist elements of the conservative movement. For example, there is not a single reference to Billy James Hargis, to John Stormer's book NONE DARE CARE IT TREASON, or to J. Evett Haley's book A TEXAN LOOKS AT LYNDON. Hargis was a Christian conservative who once broadcast his radio program in the 1960s on over 200 radio stations. Hargis's book A COMMUNIST AMERICA, MUST IT BE? was widely distributed. The books by Stormer and Haley sold millions of copies in 1964, during the Goldwater presidential campaign against LBJ. People like Hargis, Stormer, and Haley were far more popular than William Buckley or Russell Kirk in the 1960s. I understand, however, that the editors of this enclyclopedia want to make the history of American conservatism intellectually respectable by concentrating on the more purely academic levels of the movement. In any case, no one can think seriously about the intellectual history of American conservatism without reading this book. And in helping us to understand the past history of conservatism, this book could help us to foresee the future promise of conservatism in America.