Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism

by George Hawley

The American conservative movement as we know it faces an existential crisis as the nation's demographics shift away from its core constituents—older white middle-class Christians. It is the American conservatism that we don’t know that concerns George Hawley in this book. During its ascendancy, leaders within the conservative establishment have energetically policed the movement's boundaries, effectively keeping alternative versions of conservatism out of view. Returning those neglected voices to the story, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism offers a more complete, complex, and nuanced account of the American right in all its dissonance in history and in our day.

The right-wing intellectual movements considered here differ both from mainstream conservatism and from each other when it comes to fundamental premises, such as the value of equality, the proper role of the state, the importance of free markets, the place of religion in politics, and attitudes toward race. In clear and dispassionate terms, Hawley examines localists who exhibit equal skepticism toward big business and big government, paleoconservatives who look to the distant past for guidance and wish to turn back the clock, radical libertarians who are not content to be junior partners in the conservative movement, and various strains of white supremacy and the radical right in America.

In the Internet age, where access is no longer determined by the select few, the independent right has far greater opportunities to make its many voices heard. This timely work puts those voices into context and historical perspective, clarifying our understanding of the American right—past, present, and future.

Genres: Politics, Political Science, American History, Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2016

About the author

I am an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama. My research interests include demography, electoral behavior, political parties, immigration policy, and the conservative movement in America.

I earned my Ph.D in political science from the University of Houston and my undergraduate degrees in political science and print journalism from Central Washington University.

Before entering graduate school, I worked in politics in Washington, DC, for multiple groups and individuals. While my teaching and academic research keep me busy, I am also an active consultant and media commentator (and always looking for new projects).

Although I am a proud native of the Pacific Northwest, I presently enjoy life with my wife and children here in the heart of Dixie.

Reviews

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, doubly excellent in that the writer, George Hawley, has written a book both even-handed and superbly accurate in detail about a difficult and controversial topic. I am personally deeply familiar with nearly all the facts covered in this book, and Hawley has not fallen into any significant error. Moreover, his analysis is generally excellent, so as a package, this book is a valuable contribution to understanding what I call the Great Fragmentation—the splintering, and reforming, of what until recently was a relatively monolithic instantiation of mainstream American conservatism. Finally, this book implicitly poses a fascinating question—should the Right adopt a new principle, in imitation of the Left, that there are no enemies on the right?

Hawley’s project is three-fold. One part is to parse and narrate different groupings, historical and otherwise, that are not within the conservative mainstream. The second is to discuss, if it is applicable, how and why they were removed from the conservative mainstream. And the third is to offer thoughts about the future of conservative electoral politics. The author, a professor at the University of Kansas, appears to have positioned himself as an expert on the numerous movements that constitute “conservatism.” "Right-Wing Critics" was published in 2016, but written in 2015, so Donald Trump does not appear at all, and the so-called alt-right was not yet perceived as a grouping. This may seem like a lack, but it is not. “Alt-right” was popularized in 2016, as all admit, as a propaganda term of infinitely flexible meaning, magicked up to aid Hillary Clinton. Since then, though, it has evolved to roughly accurately characterize the modern incarnations of some of the “right-wing critics” Hawley profiles in this book, so really, Hawley prefigures today in this book. In fact, since 2016 (a short time, but life comes at you fast), Hawley has published a book I have not read, "Making Sense of the Alt-Right," presumably bringing some of the open topics in this book forward in time and updating his analysis.

Hawley begins with definitions, something critical in a book of this nature. He assumes minimal knowledge on the reader’s part, a smart move, since most readers of this book are going to be liberal. He also sketches a long-term history of American conservatism, pointing out that European-type conservatism has always been very different, and that a country born largely of the Enlightenment was bound to have a different path in political philosophy. Outlining his own thoughts, he notes Thomas Sowell’s crucial distinction between progressives (Hawley’s chosen general term for the Left, because of ambiguity in “liberals’) and conservatives as having either an unconstrained or a constrained vision of man and the world, and he discusses other attempts to distinguish the two. The author settles on “the political Left will be defined as containing all ideological movements that consider [universal] equality the highest political value.” He explains why at length, but I think this is an excellent definition. Critically for some thoughts of mine below, the Left may disagree on methods and speed, but all elements share that ultimate goal. Conservatives, in this taxonomy, are those who “while not necessarily rejecting equality as a social goal, do not rank it at the top of the hierarchy of values. The right [therefore] fights the left in all cases where the push for equality threatens some other value held in higher esteem.” Again, this definition works well—it may not be perfect, and it calls some people “conservative” who would reject the label themselves, but for the book’s purposes, it is well-done.

Next Hawley turns to the general structure of modern American conservatism. Prior to the 1950s, there was a heterogeneous grouping of men lacking political power, the “old Right.” By this term, Hawley does not mean the people the Left prefers to talk about from this period, like Charles Coughlin, because he believes they do “not appear to have much influence on the later conservative movement,” although a better reason would be that Coughlin was a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and a socialist, hardly someone opposed to universal equality, at least in the economic sphere, and his anti-Semitism is more a characteristic of the modern Left than Right. Instead, Hawley means men like Albert Jay Nock and Ralph Adams Cram; he also notes José Ortega y Gasset’s influence. But around 1950, several people of crucial later importance to the conservative movement began writing, notably Richard Weaver, who wrote the extremely influential "Ideas Have Consequences" in 1948; Russell Kirk, who published "The Conservative Mind" in 1953; and William Buckley, who published "God and Man at Yale" in 1951. These men began the modern movement, whereas the old Right had little lasting impact. Hawley incisively parses their and others’ basic ideas, then moves on to sketching neoconservatives and their history, touching on Irving Kristol, Allan Bloom, and Leo Strauss. Then he discusses political impact, beginning with Barry Goldwater and continuing through the 2014 midterm elections, concluding “At present, the neoconservatives remain a dominant power within the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement.” As I say, life comes at you fast.

Here and throughout the book, I find it a little difficult to summarize what Hawley says, not because his writing is bad, but because I already know everything he says, and more, so it is hard for me to tell what might interest a non-expert. This is because for thirty-five years, since my early teens, I have been intimately involved in the conservative movement, both on an intellectual level and, in my earlier years, as an activist. I have read most of the books Hawley mentions (well, not "The Turner Diaries"). I was a passing acquaintance of Russell Kirk as a young man and met many of the figures in this book. I was also a national board member and state director of Young Americans for Freedom—I started and ran what at that time, in the late 1980s, was one of the largest chapters of that organization in the country. So when pulling out instances to summarize Hawley’s thought, it’s a bit hard for me to pick what to relate to those who don’t know anything about the topic. I can also say that though Hawley entirely omits quite a few individuals in his discussion, as he freely admits, I think the choices he made of whom to cover are precisely right, and a longer book would not have been a better book.

Anyway, next Hawley turns to “Defining Conservative Boundaries,” where he introduces the most important theme of his book, the purging by conservatives of unacceptable beliefs within the movement. This, of course, distinguishes the Right from the modern Left, whose bedrock principle (which I discuss below) has always been “No enemies to the left.” (Purges have characterized most ideological movements, most famously in the original Terror of the French Revolution, but the modern Left has, for somewhat opaque reasons, avoided such self-immolation.) Hawley notes that “fusionism,” the association of otherwise disparate beliefs but only within certain limits, characterized the Right’s gradual modern rise to political power. (Oddly, it is spelled “fushionism” throughout the book—I don’t know what’s up with that.) He expertly talks about Robert Welch and the John Birch Society; Ayn Rand and Objectivism; arguable racists like Mel Bradford; certain racists like David Duke; and outriders like Sam Francis (who appears a lot in this book) and Joseph Sobran. In all these purges, the key element was William Buckley, who acted as judge, jury, and executioner, from his perch atop National Review. As to more recent times, Hawley covers Pat Buchanan, the 2003 attack by neoconservatives on “unpatriotic” conservatives who opposed the Iraq War, and the purging of individuals such as John Derbyshire—although today’s purges of individual writers are less complete and final in these Internet days. All this is excellent, and while I might have small quibbles, Hawley’s basic points and analysis are completely sound.

Hawley also addresses why conservative leaders felt it necessary to conduct these purges. This is often debated, with some believing it was to curry favor with the socially dominant, and others believing it was necessary for conservatives to maintain any political influence and avoid marginalization. I tend to favor the former explanation, which still holds true today—since who is in society’s Inner Ring (in the C. S. Lewis sense) is determined by the Left, and has been since the 1920s (Hawley notes Lionel Trilling’s famous dismissal of conservatism as lacking any intellectual basis), and Buckley and his lineal successors have always lived in big cities where the social scene is dictated by the Left. Since nobody likes to be an outcast pariah, spat on by those one regards as one’s peers, the Left has always been able to dictate the limits of acceptability—the basic principle being the Right can have enough power to be a lightweight opposition, but not enough that it might actually threaten any Left interest or prevent any fresh Left demand. Hawley favors the latter explanation, that purges were necessary to avoid being marginalized, to attract those moderately to the left of the mainstream Right. But that answer is begging the question, since we never found out whether conservatives would have had more influence had they not continually purged their movement. I think there is another explanation, too—the haughty moral sense that tends to characterize many conservatives is fed by deciding that some people are too immoral to be one’s compatriots, and the Left, on the other hand, has almost no moral sense that dictates they do anything other than fulfil their desires, so the morality of compatriots is by definition irrelevant to the Left.

From this history, Hawley turns to “right-wing critics of conservatism” relevant today who are generally acknowledged to still be part of the conservative movement. The group first up is localists, a disparate team that includes Southern Agrarians, Wendell Berry, Robert Nisbet, Christopher Lasch, Wilhelm Röpke, E. F. Schumacher, and more recently Rod Dreher. Naturally, these men had many differences; what links them is a focus on the “alienating effects of modern life” and a focus on decentralization, which generally implies a hostility to strong central government and the militarized state, and a fondness for rural and small-town life, or at least their virtues. They also tend to be hostile to crony capitalism and giant corporations in general, and in some cases are associated with the Left to a degree for that reason, though in Hawley’s taxonomy they are clearly Right, since equality is not the highest goal for any of them.

After a brief chapter on atheist conservatives, ranging from George Will to Charles Krauthammer, and their sometimes tense relationship with the usually religious, or at least pseudo-religious, broader conservative movement, Hawley turns to libertarians, noting that among the challenges conservatism has always faced is how to “find the correct balance between liberty and order.” He covers mainstream libertarians first: Milton Friedman; the Mont Pelerin Society; the Koch brothers and their funding of libertarians; the Cato Institute and Reason magazine; Ron and Rand Paul; Young Americans for Freedom; and the Tea Party (with the conclusion, as to the latter, that it is a mainstream conservative movement, and therefore not a focus of this book). Then he covers less mainstream libertarians, more aggressively opposed to the state: Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, Hans-Herman Hoppe, and Lew Rockwell, thought that shades in the direction of “right-wing anarchism.” He also covers the relationship of Austrian economics to libertarians and organizations such as the Libertarian Party and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Again, both history and current influence are skillfully and accurately described.

Next up are paleoconservatives, including Pat Buchanan, Thomas Fleming and Chronicles magazine, Sam Francis, Joseph Sobran, and Paul Gottfried. Hawley’s take is that paleoconservatives have certain radical beliefs, including a tendency to reject modern society root and branch, and “thus it is necessary to take a revolutionary stance that attacks the entire governing regime.” This also allowed paleoconservatives to undertake an ultimately failed alliance with radical libertarians, and is why Russell Kirk does not count as a paleoconservative, because of his “emphasis on slow, organic change.”

From here, Hawley goes farther afield. He covers the “European New Right,” which he acknowledges has had little influence in America, given few points of historical commonality and a tendency to be anti-Christian and overtly anti-American. European rightists reject many of the premises of American conservatives, including most or all of Enlightenment thought. But I think Hawley is correct that in the Great Fragmentation, some of this thought is likely to have increasing influence in America, and it already does in movements like the so-called Dark Enlightenment (though at the end of his book Hawley rejects the Dark Enlightenment as having no apparent importance or influence, a conclusion with which I agree). Here Hawley covers Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. He also covers those even farther from the American mainstream, including René Guénon, Julius Evola (of whom Steve Bannon was accused of being an admirer), Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye (creator of Archeofuturism), and Alexander Dugin, who some say is Vladimir Putin’s evil genius. While they seem edgy or bizarre, and I doubt if I agree with much they have to say, these various writers actually sound fairly interesting in Hawley’s telling. Unlike the Americans, I have not read any of these men (except Jünger’s "Storm of Steel," about World War I), but maybe I should change that.

Finally, going even farther afield, Hawley covers “white nationalism,” today’s boogeyman of the Left, concluding that, unlike the other movements he covers, it is very difficult to determine who the leaders are or even if the movement really has any substantial amount of followers or influence. (Hawley also daringly and correctly notes that white supremacy, in the form of eugenics, was earlier in the twentieth century an ideal of the Left, though he is wrong that “the contemporary left rejects all eugenic and white supremacist thought”—he apparently missed Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s admission a few years ago that Roe v. Wade should be celebrated because it allowed more babies to be killed from “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”) White supremacy may be a nothing movement, or it may be a strong movement—it looks the same on the Internet, after all. My bet is that there a lot of overt racists out there, but most of them are high on meth most of the time, so they are not likely to come out to play competently in the political arena. (In March of this year, what I am told was one of the most important “white nationalist” groups, the Traditionalist Workers Party, imploded when one of the two founders attacked the other because the attacker was sleeping with the attacked man’s wife. The wife attacked her husband, too. In front of their small children. Where the cuckold was the other man’s stepfather. In the trailer park where they all lived. I rest my case.)

Hawley’s conclusion is that there is a “Crisis of Conservatism.” It is God’s truth that “the previous generation’s conservatism may appear increasingly anachronistic and out of touch in the years ahead.” But, most likely, that does not imply the death of conservatism, but its rebirth in a new, relevant form. We have certainly seen a boiling up of change in that direction since this book was written. Thus, the triumphalist approach that Hawley notes characterized the Left in 2014 has already been shown to be misplaced. Mostly this belief in inevitable Left victory revolves around supposed demographic challenges, where it is said that the groups growing in relative population in America tend to vote progressive. (Hawley somewhat elides the distinction between conservative intellectual thought and conservative electoral politics, though obviously the two are closely related.) For this, Hawley relies heavily, to the extent he relies on a particular source, on the 2002 book by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, "The Emerging Democratic Majority." What he could not have known was that in September, 2017, Judis announced “I was wrong.” Hawley also ignores that conservatives, or at least Republicans, are utterly dominant and increasingly so at the state level, and that Democratic power is more and more concentrated in tiny geographic areas with dense populations. Nor are his predictions accurate: “I argue that moderate and mainstream libertarianism is the right-wing ideology most likely to enjoy greater influence in the coming decades.” But predictions are hard, and Hawley is careful not to make many, a wise choice.

Still, that is electoral politics, and politics is downstream of culture, and ideas. Hawley is correct that “In America, liberty is the value that competes with equality for ideological dominance.” Or he is right that conflict characterized the past. Part of determining the future is whether this conflict will continue to be the defining conflict, or something new, such as the conflict of equality with, say, more traditional, confining and hierarchical ideas, if liberty has reached its logical end of equality that consists of complete autonomy in all approved areas being enforced by the Leviathan state against all individuals and actions that might limit liberty, Ryszard Legutko’s “coercion to freedom.” Hidden behind this point, of the historical competition of liberty and equality in America, Hawley hints at the crucial hinge for his analysis—all the conservatives profiled here, both those exiled to the outer darkness and those who putatively gained political power, have merely fought Tolkein’s Long Defeat, except for a few policies, really neoliberal policies, not conservative policies, that have achieved permanent status—tax rates, perhaps, and free trade. If, as a conservative, one realizes that the wheel of time has turned, and that a century of failure is, after all, a century of failure, it is the moment to try something new.

[Review continues as first comment.]

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Hawley’s was written before the rise of Trump, but for people who are interested in the genealogy of ideas around the "Alt-Right" (but not the cyber-culture that led to it, which is better covered by Angela Nagle's "Kill All Normies") as well as other dissent fellow travelers of American conservative, there is almost no better single source. Hawley has chapters on the origins of conservatism and the splits that emerged after World War 2 which defined modern conservatism. However, Hawley covers localism, racial nationalism, paleo-conservatism, mainstream libertarianism, radical and paleo-libertarianism, Southern agrarianism, the European New Right and archeofuturism, and the resurgence of racial nationalism and the idea of the North American New Right. Hawley even mentions "neo-reactionarism" but does not consider it to be original enough to merit discussion. Hawley seems to have some paleo-conservative sympathies, and seems to hold European New Right at arms length, but his discussions are excellent and put relationships in one place.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the title states, this book is an analysis of right-wing critiques of what could be called mainstream conservatives. As the author is a conservative himself, the book reveals nuances within conservative politics as conservatives see them, and can be useful to a reader who is politically on the left - as a view of the far right from the center-right. At the same time, Hawley's principle argument to progressive readers, that conservatives located at such places as the National Review have provided an important service to the nation by consistently checking and purging the far right is debatable. Anyone who recalls these conservatives' embrace of Sarah Palin in 2012 might question this claim, as one interviewer from Slate recently did in an interview with William Kristol, who was unable to effectively answer his questions. Another book, by Edward Miller, draws a different conclusion - that since the 1960s, the GOP has embraced the far right's ideas to court the base, while softening their edges, thus bringing even adherents of the taboo John Birch Society directly into the GOP, especially in the South. I believe the author is arguing in good faith, but is limited by the broader failures of the center of the GOP to seriously address the continuing salience of white supremacy in America. In one key example, the author fails to explain the substantive critiques of Charles Murray's The Bell Curve, and argues that its general thesis is "uncontroversial"- that intelligence is genetic. Since the critics that he cites show that the entire book rests on an assertion drawn from 1904 that has since been disproven (that there is a single factor or gene responsible for intelligence that can be measured by IQ), one wonders whether he has actually read the critics he cites, such as this one: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/cour...

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Hawley's Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism is a look at American conservatism from the view of its fellow travellers, others on the right. What counts as a right-wing critic here is someone who doesn't think inequality is necessarily unjustifiable. Mainstream conservatism in America has it that the truest expression of a right-wing worldview is one where the country promotes a strong military and limited government, against high rates of taxation, and takes seriously cultural issues related to abortion and gay marriage, voting No for both.

Since the 1980s, American conservatism has looked as though it's a strong, monolithic bloc but according to Hawley, the movement has consisted of strange bedfellows. There are those who want limited government and low or no taxes but couldn't give a hoot about social issues, believing it best to be and let be. This group consists of moderate and radical libertarians, the moderates wanting to reform government from the inside, the radicals wishing to remake the whole system. Then there are paleo-conservatives who favor strict immigration, are opposed to free trade deals, and believe there is something distinct about American culture and might be under attack. The paleo-cons bleed into the nationalists, most of who tend to be ethnic nationalists who believe not in dominance of one ethnicity over another but in separation of ethnicities.

In short, what makes up the right-wing is this broad coalition, a diversity of competing views, just as in the case on the left. There are many more views besides but here are some of the leading ones. Hawley's book is comprehensive here, a great perspective on an often overlooked part of American politics, the many voices on the right.

[Dietrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Hawley’s timely Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism is well worth a read. Regardless of what Trump accomplishes or fails to accomplish in office, it is difficult to imagine a return to “normalcy” for the conservative movement. Hawley’s book, written shortly before the rise of Trump, depicts conservatism as entering an existential crisis mode, articulates a wide range of existing right-wing perspectives outside the mainstream, suggests that some of these perspectives will likely become more viable given conservatism’s problems, and weighs the potential strengths of these various alternatives. He maintains an admirably dispassionate tone throughout, and is clearly well versed in his subject.

Hawley observes that the post-WWII conservative movement in America was “constructed” out of elements that logically need not go together. The so-called 3 legs of the conservative stool (religious traditionalism, free market economics, and an activist foreign policy enabled through strong national defense) were held in place by anti-communism. Historical circumstances and the strong leadership of Bill Buckley helped bring the constituent elements together, and the “fusionist” consensus was enforced through a rigorous policing of “acceptable” conservative thought. Political influence over and through the Republican party eventually followed. Though the neocon takeover of the conservative movement altered it in certain respects, the three legs of American conservatism remained in place, and they even survived (oddly enough) the end of the cold war. For Hawley, such long enduring cohesion, though impressive in certain respects, amounts to calcification; he thinks the oft noticed tendency of conservatives to treat their “fusionist” conservatism as some sort of platonic idea is erroneous.

The existential crisis of conservatism that Hawley writes about has several dimensions. Strongly aggressive interventionist foreign policy after the end of the Soviet regime has struck some conservatives as unwarranted and as entailing pernicious unintended consequences, and its pursuit during the Bush years has proven a major political liability for Republicans. So there are strong pressures against this leg of the conservative stool. In addition, long range trends such as the increasing secularization and the changing racial composition of America threaten the political viability of a Republican party for whom religiously observant whites provide such an important voting bloc.

After providing this background, Hawley serves up an in-depth exploration of the rich variety of right wing thought outside of “official” conservatism. He examines localists, secular-minded mainstream conservatives, moderate and radical libertarianism, paleoconservatism, the European new right, and the white nationalists/“radical right.” He does not find all of these phenomena equally palatable, and he certainly thinks some of these right wing alternatives are more politically viable than others, but he clearly thinks that right wing critics of American conservatism have produced a lot of intellectually serious work. Hawley’s road map of right wing thought provides the interested reader plenty of good authors and perspectives to explore.

What will the political right look like in years to come? Hawley offers a somewhat plausible sounding, relatively smooth and pain-free change scenario. It is worth exploring, even though aspects of his own analysis and subsequent events would seem to cast much doubt upon it.

As a prelude to this scenario, it should be stated that though the conservative movement has remained static in some respects, Hawley thinks it has demonstrated the capacity to prudently change in others. For instance, the movement went from opposing the civil rights revolution to accepting it and eventually even valorizing it as a conservative triumph. Hawley accepts that conservatives must evolve with the times and acknowledge new realities; he thinks a politics of nostalgia that tries to “turn back the clock” is doomed to fail and involves a counter-revolutionary attitude far removed from the conservative hero Burke’s “politics of prudence.”

Hawley thinks the moderate libertarians (sometimes called “low tax liberals”) in many ways are favorably positioned to gracefully transition into the leading force in the Republican party in the decades ahead, in large part because they are not that far removed from the current party establishment (on issues like free trade, low taxes, and open borders) and because their general outlook seems a good fit with changing realities.The libertarians offer a more relaxed approach on cultural issues and their politicians do not often talk ostentatiously about their relationship with Christ, both of which will widen their popular appeal as the electorate becomes more secular. Speaking of cultural issues, the libertarian critique of the war on drugs holds out the promise of some minority outreach, as does the libertarian attack on police militarization. A course correction to the current GOP outlook on foreign policy would involve a libertarian scale back (though not a complete abandonment) of our interventionism. This is thought to be a winning electoral strategy as well.

However, a problem with Hawley’s evolutionary transition scenario involves immigration, and Hawley is well aware of it. Largely because the republican base is more restrictionist in terms of immigration than the party leadership, the Republicans have the reputation of being the nativist party. When speaking of the notion that the Republicans can solve their electoral/ demographic problems by simply being more open on immigration, Hawley says “A problem with this hypothesis is that it ignores the fact that Latinos and Asian Americans are more progressive than non-Hispanic whites on many policy areas, not just immigration. Gun control, taxes, federal spending on social services-on all these topics, nonwhites are considerably more progressive, on average, than whites. This will remain true even if immigration is completely taken off the table. Furthermore, even if a drastic move to the left on immigration did lead to an electoral windfall among Latinos and Asian Americans for the Republican Party, such a move may cost them support from restrictionist whites. Indeed, it may cost them more than they gain.” Setting aside the notion of a hypothetical drastic move to the left, I would add that a failure of the GOP to move right on the immigration issue-or perhaps just the failure to better enforce current policy-already alienates restrictionist whites. The immigration issue is a thorny, existential question for the Republican party.

Another problem with the evolutionary transition approach to conservative politics is not mentioned at all, and probably emerged after Hawley had written this book. The post-Obergefell landscape has opened up the possibility that religious liberty will be severely persecuted by the state in the name of an ongoing LGBT agenda justified as the latest civil rights struggle. If the GOP seriously fights on behalf of religious liberty (as I hope they do), they will be waging a counter-revolutionary struggle against strong contemporary trends. So much for the politics of prudence! And if instead they throw the religiously orthodox under the bus, they signal the abandonment of a constituency they cannot afford to lose and for whom they have long claimed to speak. And if they go along with the persecution of the religiously orthodox in the name of progress and somehow manage to survive as a party, it is hard to distinguish such “politics of prudence” from cowardly and total surrender to the progressives.

A further problem with the evolutionary transition scenario can be seen by looking with hindsight at what Trump’s rise has revealed about conservatism’s three legged stool. Trumpism has strong similarities with the platform of the 90’s paleo-con champion Pat Buchanan (secure borders, economic nationalism, “America first” foreign policy.) In terms of the the fusionist consensus, Hawley’s talk about the interventionist foreign policy leg of the conservative stool being in need of alteration seems vindicated by Trump’s success. As for the religious traditionalist leg, though many evangelicals supported Trump over Clinton because of religious freedom issues, the fact that a candidate with Trump’s personal baggage got the nomination at all would seem also to indicate the increasing influence of secularization that Hawley talked about. In addition, the economic protectionist aspect of Trumpism seems to indicate that the free market leg of the conservative stool is not held as especially sacred by the Republican base. Hawley did not seem to anticipate this development at all: free market economics was the strongest continuity between the contemporary GOP and the projected future belonging to the moderate libertarians. If all three legs of the republican stool are wobbly, how meaningful is it to speak of graceful & smooth evolutionary transition at all?

A strong case could be made that the emerging western trends point to a fault line between populist nationalism and elitist, progressive globalism (with the entrenched and powerful progressives having the decided advantage), and that the Republican party must choose between being openly progressive or more openly hostile to progressivism. Either course seems to promise much more turbulence on the right than Hawley projects here.

Even so, this is a highly informative and valuable book. I even suspect that when writing it Hawley was not quite as impressed by the future of mainstream libertarianism and the continuing relevance of the conservative “politics of prudence” so much as he was unwilling to provide an analysis that might be taken as implicitly endorsing a non-progressive and counter-revolutionary approach to politics. Such a book would have certainly marginalized Hawley as being outside both the academic and conservative mainstream. However, Hawley’s obvious absorption with the various right wing critics of American conservatism seems to indicate that he is trying to better understand right-wing options as we move forward into a crisis of conservatism far stormier and uncertain than he is willing to make explicit, even in a book on the topic. (Having said this, let me also mention that Hawley’s distaste for white nationalism/white supremacism seems genuine.)

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is rare to find a liberal academic willing to examine right-wing thought with any depth. George Hawley's intellectual curiosity is unique in this regard. I found his analysis of American movement conservatism to be generally accurate and often perceptive. He recognizes that GOP establishment conservatism now faces a profound crisis of legitimacy, presenting opportunities for critics on the right.

One key virtue of this book is the way it defines left and right. The left is understood as an ideologically unified force. It believes in equality as the highest value and is united by its advocacy of egalitarian ideals. The modern right is more complex. It is not united by any single ideal. Instead, it honors various different values that it considers more important than equality. The right is thus a multifaceted and fractured entity, more characterized by its opposition to the left than by any unified vision.

While Hawley does a fine job of identifying the prominent thinkers of the dissident right, his presentation of each of them is often brief and interspersed with fairly superficial analysis. His overuse of the vague pejorative "racism" and his repetitive focus on labeling (and thus dismissing) various people and ideas as "racist" indicates unthinking allegiance to liberal axioms. Anyone who has invested energy into studying the ideological currents presented here will likely find many of Hawley's observations overly simplistic. Being personally sympathetic to paleoconservatism, the European New Right, and the radical right, I found the sections covering these topics to be the most interesting but also the most annoyingly cursory.

I learned some things about the intellectual history of libertarianism from this book. It was helpful in connecting some of the dots in the evolution of libertarianism as a movement that have struck me as strange or arbitrary in the past. In the concluding chapter Hawley speculates that libertarianism has the most potential to be the unifying ideological force for the American right in the near future. I think most attentive observers would agree that this is increasingly unlikely.

The novelty of reading about the right from the outside is entertaining and there is definite value in getting an outsider's perspective, but the subjects presented in this book have all been analyzed with far more depth and rigor by thinkers within the right itself. I would recommend this book as a basic introduction to the modern right, but anyone sincerely interested in these ideas should refer to the bibliography and delve into the source materials.

Hawley has written a book on the alt right to be published soon. I look forward to reading it.

[Brendan Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Hawley has provided an expansive text covering the main ideological opponents of mainstream conservatism in America. While many on the left often refer to broad swaths of the conservative thought as monolithic, it is important to understand the ideologues and their ideas following the 2016 elections. An election cycle which now has the party of conservatism as its undisputed victor.
Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism offers a clear compendium of the conservative thought. While taking two chapters to explain the formation of mainstream conservative thought, the rest of the book is dedicated to the less distinctive members who rest upon the same political spectrum. These would happen to include the localist tradition, secular conservatives, the variant branches of libertarianism, paleoconservatism, white nationalism, and even includes a chapter regarding the European New Right. Care is also taken to assess certain conceptual positions within mainstream conservatism
For those hoping that this book will provide insight as to how someone like Donald Trump could win the presidential election, such an illuminating explanation does not occur. However there are trends of conservatism striking resemblance, most notably Samuel T. Francis’ Middle American Radicalism and elements of paleoconservatism which are discussed in some detail.
I should specify two things. First, to tie Donald Trump to an ideological strand of conservatism may be an incorrect assertion as he lacks any commitment to an ideology. He does however exercise rhetoric bearing heavy resemblance to certain elements within non-dominant strands of conservatism. Second, most scholarly observers would not have expected the results of the general election. Hawley’s own assessment of American conservatism expresses an argument that the strand of mainstream and moderate libertarianism will become the dominate ideology within the conservative movement. This could be the case, however with the general election producing as its president elect a “big government” republican, it seems somewhat unlikely.
I would recommend this text for anyone as it is extremely well written, accessible, and Hawley’s approach is academic rather than polemical. Hawley’s scholarship is excellent and any student interested in the topic should read this text and refer to it often.

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hawley provides an important contribution to the body of scholarship about the American right. This book is key to understanding the quandaries and direction of the right-wing. He knows his audience and provides a fair assessment of what's out there. Written in an accessible, clear style, this book outlines the components of the non-mainstream right, defined broadly as a grouping that does not elevate equality as the number one goal of politics (12). Hawley's search for and arrival at this definition helps to clarify why some of the included groups are here (localists being a great example). This is the best way to account for the fact that left-wing groups can become interested in the conservation of the status quo and thus conservative by some definitions. This broad definition allows him to look into movements and authors that others wouldn't easily fit into the right. It lets the book go from Wendell Berry to Ron Paul to Julius Evola, just about as wide of a focus as you can concisely tackle. Hawley is very aware of the limits of his work and suggests other figures, movements, and related readings. Personally, I'm going to give the bibliography a scan because I often found myself pausing to Google events/people he mentioned.

Hawley displays how the conservative movement, despite its ostensible opposition to cancel culture today, has canceled (okay I'm exaggerating a bit but they did expel) various members over time. Those who vocally expressed prejudice, those who overtly criticized the country's founding principles, those who vigorously opposed religion were all pushed out of conservative inc. For each group, he examines some main thinkers and describes why they failed to capture the right. The causes are indeed varied. Paleoconservatives weren't able to garner the institutional support needed for success, while Libertarians had that support but ended up playing second fiddle on some issues. Those seeking to fuse paleoconservatism and libertarianism failed because of the trade issue in part. Secular conservatives just don't have as much of a voice within a party with a strong evangelical voice.

Understanding that "the right" is far from a monolith is essential if you want to grasp the implications of the Republican Party's realignment. Hawley ends by confronting the various problems he felt the mainstream conservatives were likely to face--the hangover of the Bush years, less religiosity, lower marriage rates while the marriage gap in voting becomes more salient, more diversity, the end of the Cold War, and lower GOP credibility on foreign policy as well as the achievement of much of their economic agenda (274-280). He also discusses how the anti-intellectualism and commercialization of the right prevent a real ideational shift, one that would be able to strategize as the culture remains mounted against conservative goals. See Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism by Ed West for a wonderful analysis of this. Hawley predicts that if the mainstream right collapses, somebody will fill in for it (288) and proposes that it'll likely be Libertarians. If you follow politics, you'll know this didn't pan out. Trump is FAR from a libertarian but I don't entirely blame Hawley for that libertarian GOP guess. This was published around the post-Tea Party, a pre-Trump time when the Freedom Caucus was powerful, Rand Paul looked ascendant, and the threads of the populist right were only just starting to come together. Hawley glances over the Dark Enlightenment, which ended up playing a role in the rise of the Alt-Right (which he examines in another book). He does address some of the radical White nationalist racists who also played a role in that movement. But this book predates it--his other work is probably more helpful in dissecting what the Alt-Right really is. Also, David Neiwert's Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump is great for this purpose (and showing how dangerous the radical right is).

Even if Hawley's prediction of a libertarian rise did not turn out to be correct, his book is an essential read because "it is important to know what that case [for whatever form of conservatism is to come] will be, even if such knowledge is used only to refute their arguments" (293).

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and incredibly useful book that maps out conservative dissenters from mainstream conservatism since the Second World War. Mainstream here means pro-free market, small gov't, internationalist, traditional social values type conservatism. Hawley discusses libertarians, paleocons, white nationalists, and many other sub-categories and shows how they challenge the mainstream, construct their worldview and politics, and fight amongst each other. These discussions are incredibly useful for scholars of conservatism and political thought in general, although the appeal to more general readers might be limited.

One of the most interesting themes in this book is the idea of conservative policing of who gets to call themselves a conservative. Hawley reviews a number of examples of people who were exiled from the mainstream conservative movement (defined largely by the National Review) for various sins and deviations: overt racism, isolationism, secessionism, libertarian opposition to values-based legislation or harsh moral judgment on issues like gay rights, secularism, and so on. He does prove his case that the conservative movement has policed its boundaries pretty successfully throughout most of its history. Of course, many RW critics in this book want to exile the neocons as being too modern, universalist in value terms, and interventionist in foreign policy.

2 drawbacks to this book: First, it was written pre-Trump, so it I think has a little more sanguinity about the ability of the conservative movement to police itself, or to even try to do so in the case of DJT. Trump has been embraced by most of the conservative movement by now, bringing in all kinds of people (white nationalists and outright conspiracy theorists) toward the mainstream while also showing that the grassroots of conservatism didn't care much for small gov't or overseas interventionism. This isn't Hawley's fault, it's just an unfortunate contingency that followed his book that made some of it feel dated. Second, the book could be shaved down. The detail is often great, but did we really need 2 chapters on libertarians, one on the mainstream and the other on radicals? There were other areas that could have been condensed as well to make this a bit punchier, but overall it's a useful and interesting book for scholars in this field.

[Kiki023 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published just as Donald Trump was beginning his march to the Republican nomination in earnest, the character of the Republican Party and the conservative movement that had ostensibly captured it has shifted so drastically since 2016 that it is almost apt to describe this primer as antiquated. And that is indeed what it is: a primer. This is a study of the defining characteristics of movement conservatism and the constellation of heterodox ideologies that would challenge its hegemony over right-wing politics in America. It is aimed at political novices and those in need of their political bubble popped. The discussion of each movement is straightforward and seeks to explicate the histories, goals, and individual figures who embody such tendencies as localism, libertarianism, paleoconservatism, white nationalism, and the anti-capitalist, anti bourgeoisie European right. A typology of right-wing movements is made all the more difficult by the nebulous ideological character of some of the individuals involved in these movements, as well as some difficulties in drawing the line between "mainstream" and "radical". These attempts at categorization may serve to confuse rather than elucidate. When the author dares to delve into the realm of soothsaying, it is difficult not to smirk at some of the predictions contained herein, particularly those concerning the apparent demise of paleoconservatism and the ascendancy of libertarians, as well as the oft-repeated demographic doomsaying that tends to accompany discussion of the GOP's future. However, one cannot fault the author for failing to anticipate the exact nature of the GOP's postliberal fracturing. Though one can certainly fault him for the superficial and derivative analysis that may as well have been lifted from any of the many conservative primers that one can read on the internet today for free.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite interesting. I wouldn't exactly call it prophetic, but it gave a useful overview of many of the less mainstream right-wing movements. I was already familiar with both mainstream and radical libertarians, but I learned some more about the history of the conservative moment and some random trivia, e.g. that George Will is an agnostic.

It's definitely very readable and kept my attention until I finished it quite quickly.

[Giovanni Del Piero · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a conservative, I cannot recommend this book enough. An incredibly in depth but fair analysis of critics of American Conservatism from the Right, in both America and Europe. The book also references lots of works from the thinkers themselves, which I intended to read once I get the chance.

[Jess]

Does what it says on the cover; fine and useful. The theoretical stuff is unconvincing but it’s still much better than Corey Robin.

[Robert Steuckers]

Older generations like me, who were fully educated at the time of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War, have a tendency to equate criticism of America with left-wing positions. It has never been true: right-wing or paleoconservatives in Europe have always been quite ferociously critical of Americanism; here we have not a European anti-Americanism, which is explained in all details, but a genuine American paleoconservative or new-rightist criticism of liberal America, which could export so easily humbug throughout the world.