The Vanishing Tradition: Perspectives on American Conservatism

by Paul Edward Gottfried (Editor)

This anthology provides a timely critical overview of the American conservative movement. The contributors take on subjects that other commentators have either not noticed or have been fearful to discuss. In particular, this collection of searing essays hits hard at blatant cult of celebrity and intolerance of dissent that has come to characterize the conservative movement in this country.

As The Vanishing Tradition shows, the conservative movement has not often retrieved its wounded, instead dispatching them in order to please its friendly opposition and to prove its "moderateness." The movement has also been open to the influence of demanding sponsors who have pushed it in sometimes bizarre directions. Finally, the essayists here, highlight the movement's appeal to "permanent values" as a truly risible gesture, given how arduously its celebrities have worked to catch up with the Left on social issues. This no-holds-barred critical examination of American conservatism opens debates and seeks controversy.

Genres: Politics

276 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 15, 2020

About the author

Paul Edward Gottfried is the editor of Chronicles and a former Horace Raffensperger professor of humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

6.5/10.

Uneven essays, with two standouts, the best being 'Catholicism and Neoconservatism'. Will enumerate and rate separately later. Very 'Lite' compared to some of Gottfried's earlier work, the authors here consistently skewer Zionist Neoconservativism (aka Trotskyism with somewhat free markets) without offering any constructive project. If you still think neocons are conservatives or good for America, this book deserves a higher rating.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gottfried, Paul. ed. The Vanishing Tradition: Perspectives on American Conservatism. Northern Illinois University Press, 2020.

We place before the house the definition of our term: a neoconservative is a former liberal who is anti-Soviet and pro-Israeli. When I use the phrase “neoconservative” or “neocon,” I do not mean it in a pejorative sense. At least not in this review. Indeed, some neoconservatives, particularly the West Coast Straussians, are decent human beings. They are wrong, to be surer, but they have honor. Not so those on the East Coast.

One other introductory remark: what is the relationship between the philosopher Leo Strauss and Neoconservatism? Leo Strauss, by all accounts an impressive and powerful thinker, marginalized religious belief for the sake of philosophy–but he did so in what appears to be a somewhat conservative bent. He believed in natural rights. His disciples took his natural rights philosophy and reinterpreted the Declaration of Independence around it. No longer was the Declaration an American document listing specific abuses by a specific king. It was now a manifesto for all of humanity. In other words, America is no longer a place or even a people, but an idea.

The Big Con

Beginning in the 1980s, neoconservatives repositioned themselves, infiltrating (infecting?) think-tanks and DC groups. Conservatism no longer meant a commitment to community, tradition, and the values undergirding them. It now means what former Trotskyites say it means. And while the contributors to the volume did not make this explicit, the purges the neocons engaged in were almost identical to (minus the firing squads) the Stalinists engaged against the Trotskyites, further compounding the irony.

The Mel Bradford Affair

Mel Bradford, a world-class scholar, was chosen by Reagan (or Reagan’s aides) to head the National Endowment for the Humanities. Aside from the fact that such an institution should not exist, Bradford would have been an ideal choice. Neocons were in panic-mode, for if Bradford got the job, he would send most of the money to Texas and Oklahoma and not to the east coast universities where the neocons worked. That was unforgivable.

In response, the necons dug up some old remarks of Bradford on Lincoln. On one level, Bradford’s remarks had little to do with slavery, as Bradford, like everyone else today, opposed it. Bradford merely pointed out that Lincoln’s rhetoric made empire possible.

Evaluation

Neocons promote specific global aims at the expense of the American people. The clearest manifesto of Neo-Conservatism was David Frum’s vitriolic attack on godly Americans in “Unpatriotic Conservatives” (2003). Anyone who had questions concerning the Iraq invasion simply hated America or was probably a secret Muslim (which was particularly awkward for the Jewish paleoconservative Paul Gottfried). That is ultimately why the Neoconservatives hated Trump. Although he is vulgar and brash, Trump’s ultimate sin was questioning neocon foreign policy.

One could argue that Trump is not a conservative. But on issues regarding homosexuality and abortion, the main issues on which Trump faltered, it is hard to see how he is any less conservative than Norman Podhoretz or David Brooks. Trump did not “move” conservatism away from its true moorings The Neocons already did that in the 1980s.

Not every essay in this volume is equally good, though some are near-perfect. Gottfried ends with an autobiographical reflection on various neocon purges in the last few decades.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The Right is changing perspective’

Pennsylvania author Paul Gottfried has penned thirteen books and is a recognized political theorist and historian of political movements. He is the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College. For this anthology of ten essays on the subject of the changing face of conservatism, Paul has invited young critics whose contributions challenge, startle and encourage thought about conservatism.

In his Introduction Paul states, ‘Two developments are critical for understanding the direction in which the conservative movement has gone, particularly since the 1980s. One is the rise of the neoconservatives as the dominant force within the movement…A group of influential journalists and fund-raisers who combined strong anti-Soviet feeling with fervent Zionist sympathies, the neoconservatives have enjoyed commending positions in conservative publications and foundations since the 1980s…The other development that would shape the movement, and one related to the neoconservative ascendancy, has been a growing flexibility on social questions. There are few, if any, social positions taken by the Left, whether on immigration or LGBT rights, that the conservative movement has not eventually incorporated. Conservative publicists have made these adjustments while promoting an activist foreign policy against countries depicted as human rights violators…’

Jack Kerwick, a professor of philosophy, leads off the essays with BIG CONSERVATISM AND AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, and in doing so provides some definition to the prominent words in this anthology: “According to the conventional wisdom, America is home to a great partisan divide, a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between conservatives on the right and liberals or progressives on the left. The Republican Party is the party of conservatism, or the Right, while the Democratic Party is the party of progressivism. We may safely assume that most Americans, irrespective of their political sympathies, subscribe to this understanding of their political universe. Its popularity notwithstanding, however, the conventional wisdom on this matter is mistaken – and profoundly so. In what follows, I show that “Big Conservatism,” or “the Big Con” – that is, the contemporary conservative movement with which nationally recognized media personalities in talk radio, cable news, and especially well-established and generously funded print publications are associated - is not really of the Right. This movement is ‘neoconservative.’ Neoconservatism, far from being a variant of conservatism is in fact a species of the ideological politics against which conservatism has traditionally defined itself.’

The contributors are traditionalist conservatives concerned with freedom. The messages herein relate to the takeover of American conservatism by neoconservatives. These are thoughts and opinions by enlightened people who bring to light important ideological questions we all have, one being ‘who in the world is responsible for the presence of Trump as POTUS!’ Lively discussions that are rich in controversy, this is a major reference point for all – no matter the claimed Party label.

[Terrence D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the whole, I thought this was a great overview of the ostensible "Conservative movement" and its descent into disarray and failure. However, I do not believe the title appropriately reflects the content. I say this knowing that Gottfried and some of the other contributors are reactionaries, and not traditional conservatives. I know they're not writing from a perspective that reflects conservatism as a mindset, but rather as an ideology in a specific context; the United States of America. When viewing it as such, one's perception is limited to a specific movement that arose from conservatism, but has since died and/or morphed. This is not a history of conservatism as a concept or mindset itself. For more on that, one needs to read Russell Kirk's "A Conservative Mind" and George Nash's "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945."

I don't think America's Conservative Movement indicates the disappearance of tradition (Conservatism) as a whole, or more generally, but rather the tradition's displacement from partisaniship, or rather its subversion, in a sociopolitical movement at the hands of Neoconservatives (like Buckley and Kristol) and naive Traditionalists (like Kirk). Conservatism was not and is not a tradition anchored to a specific party. This is evident by the history of the two dominating parties (Democrats and Republicans); both of whom have been home to radical leftists and traditionalists at various times in their history, and sometimes simultaneously. This, unfortunately, is not reflected in the present volume.

American Conservatism, I believe, is alive, but not well. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats reflect the values of traditional conservatism, policy wise, though the former does give lip service when expedient. The same is true of self-professed reactionaries in our time, though they vary. Since there is no cohesive Reactionary movement; one organized around restoring some specific social paradigm, it's difficult for me to see this book as more than a work of doom and gloom. I appreciate the concise historiography, and the criticism's but I don't think a work like this is complete without some hint at a solution in the end; which Gottfried fails to deliver sufficiently in the appendix along with all the preceding authors. I may be too critical in this regard, but these authors are smarter than me, and should know better.

If I'm to believe the tradition is "vanishing," and not completely gone, then there needs to be some semblance of its present existence in these pages, but as it stands, the title should be "The Vanished Tradition: An Obituary on American Conservatism," for that's how it reads. Regardless, I actually thought the book was well done, even if overly pessimistic and dour. I like Gottfried, and of the contributing authors that I know of, I like them as well. I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to others, but with the disclaimer that they may walk away from it dismayed.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moderately interesting anthology edited by Dr. Paul Gottfried. I particularly enjoyed Havers’ comparative analysis of Canadian/British Toryism and American conservatism, Russell’s critical examination of American Catholic neoconservatism, and Hawley’s investigation into the relationship between ideology and partisanship. Many of the essays were educational, not least because they shed light on the history of mainstream conservatism in America and how the neoconservatives outmaneuvered the genuine Right. Unfortunately I frequently found myself asking, “so what?”—what is missing from the picture is a positive vision, predictions about the future, or at least insights about what the adversaries of the neoconservative clique ought to have done differently. In the acknowledgments, Gottfried writes of his wife, “Mary believed that my senior years should be devoted to more scholarly work than bashing media personalities.” I’m inclined to agree.

[Ben Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take my 5 star rating lightly, as I just started it. However, I listened to the first chapter on “Big Conservatism and American Exceptionalism”, and haven’t heard anything more thought provoking in a while. The concept of “America as an abstract idea” is something that I would like to see debated and discussed. In my opinion (I’m not as well versed in history as Gottfried), the founding and formation of America was a radical idea. However, I also see how this line of thinking leads to destructive globalist policies (mass immigration of people with cultures that don’t assimilate to the “idea” of America, and agitating overseas to “spread democracy”). Food for thought. I welcome discussion from anyone here

[Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gottfried is such an odd fellow that he can assess situations with spot on, searing critique at times whilst being able to simultaneously violently shit the bed on others. There's a lot valid points here but you'll get a better assessment of conservatives contradicting their history through Chomsky.

[Cody Justice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly good. Chapters 6-8 + Gottfried's Afterword were especially stimulating.