Abstract
It was December 1961. As the first year of the Kennedy administration came to a close, all seemed from the outside to be well with the liberal consensus. Willem Visser’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, posed for Time magazine’s cover story—a detailed exposition on “The Second Reformation” of liberal, ecumenical world Christianity. Inside Time’s pages, however, lurked evidence that society’s seemingly solid consensus was riddled with growing cracks. A profile on “The Ultras” spoke of a recent resurgence in ultraconservative anticommunism. Hundreds of anticommunist groups were springing up across the United States, in some cases mushrooming into formidable organizations seemingly overnight. The South and Southwest, in particular, were hotbeds of organization—Dallas alone was home to more than one hundred anticommunist study groups. Despite their prevalence in the South, these groups were a national phenomenon with national political implications. Politicians backed by these groups, which ranged from the John Birch Society to the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, were planning runs for Congress in 1962.
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Notes
For an example of this interpretation, see Steven F. Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964–1980 (Roseville, CA: Forum, 2001).
For early studies of the 1960s focusing on liberalism and the New Left without extensive treatment of conservatism, see Jim E Heath, Decade of Disillusionment: The Kennedy-Johnson Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975);
Alan Matusow, The Unraveling ofAmerica: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper and Row, 1984)
Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987). For an early study of Goldwater’s campaign that treated it as an anomaly in presidential politics,
see Bernard Cosman, Five States for Goldwater: Continuity and Change in Southern Presidential Voting Patterns (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1966). For more recent studies of Goldwater’s 1964 campaign and its enduring influence on the conservative movement,
see Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001);
J. William Middendorf II, A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater’s Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement (New York: Basic Books, 2006);
and Jeffrey J. Volle, The Political Legacies of Barry Goldwater and George McGovern: Shifting Party Paradigms (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). For Reagan’s growing connections to the conservative movement,
see Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 187–216. For a sampling of the extensive scholarship on Richard Nixon’s influence on conservatism,
see Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008);
and Robert Mason, Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). For more on Wallace’s relationship to the conservative movement,
see Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
Jonathan Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 243–49.
See, for example, Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing; McGirr, Suburban Warriors; Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994);
Ann Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);
Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995);
Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007);
and John A. Andrew III, The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
For a collection of recent scholarship on conservatism in the 1960s, see David Farber and Jeff Roche, eds., The Conservative Sixties (New York: Peter Lang, 2003).
George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
See, for instance, Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade against the New Deal (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009);
Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009);
Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007);
Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008);
Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009);
and Gregory L. Schneider, The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009). Our summary of conservatives’ main concerns is partly drawn from
David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 2–3.
Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequence since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976);
Earl Black and Merle Black, Politics and Society in the South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); Carter, Politics of Rage; Perlstein, Nixonland; Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right;
Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006);
Nancy MacLean, “Neo-Confederacy versus the New Deal: The Regional Utopia of the Modern American Right,” in The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism, ed. Matthew D. Lassiter and Joseph Crespino (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 308–330;
Joseph Crespino, In Search of another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007);
Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005);
Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
For more on Reagan and General Electric, see Thomas W. Evans, The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). Samuel Brenner’s chapter in this volume highlights the early 1960s as representing the height of anticommunist movement activity; movement leaders, too, have made this observation
(see, for example, Fred Schwarz, Beating the Unbeatable Foe: One Man’s Victory over Communism, Leviathan, and the Last Enemy [Washington, DC: Regnery, 1996]).
Brenner’s chapter also analyzes the relationship between Buckley and the John Birch Society. Some of the leading representations of the ideology of the liberal consensus include Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949);
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958);
and Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to ED.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955). For intellectuals’ dismissal of conservative ideas during the years of the liberal consensus,
see Daniel Bell, ed., The New American Right (New York: Criterion, 1955);
and Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1963).
For histories of liberal and mainline religion in the 1960s, see Ronald B. Flowers, Religion in Strange Times: The 1960s and 1970s (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984);
Robert S. Ellwood, The Sixties Spiritual Awakening: American Religion Moving from Modern to Postmodern (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994);
and Patrick Allitt, Religion in America since 1945: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 43–147.
For examples of the emerging scholarship in this area, see Patrick Allitt, Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993);
Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005);
Steven P. Miller, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009);
Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010);
and Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011).
For the effects of international developments on American politics in the 1960s, see, for example, Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004);
Julian Zelizer, Arsenal of Democrary: The Politics of National Security from World War II to the War on Terrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2009);
and Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). For more on the 1960 presidential election,
see Laura Jane Gifford, The Center Cannot Hold: The 1960 Presidential Election and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 2009).
Christopher A. Preble contributes an excellent study of the missile gap debate in John E Kennedy and the Missile Gap (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004). Few historians have produced book-length studies of the effect of international developments on the conservative movement in the 1960s, but for some examples of important new studies that touch on this subject,
see Colin Dueck, Hard Line.• The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010);
Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 2012);
and Ann Ziker, “Race, Conservative Politics, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Postcolonial World, 1948–1968” (PhD diss., Rice University, 2008).
In addition to Suri, Power and Protest, see Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005) includes a concise and accessible account of the changing world of the 1960s.
Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) provides a useful context for understanding the changing postcolonial world. For more on the impact of Western European and Japanese economic recovery on the United States from the 1960s onward,
see Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the 1970s (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).
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© 2012 Laura Jane Gifford and Daniel K. Williams
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Gifford, L.J., Williams, D.K. (2012). Introduction: What Happened to Conservatism in the 1960s?. In: Gifford, L.J., Williams, D.K. (eds) The Right Side of the Sixties. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014795_1
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