The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History

by Patrick N. Allitt

This lively book traces the development of American conservatism from Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Daniel Webster, through Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover, to William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan, and William Kristol. Conservatism has assumed a variety of forms, historian Patrick Allitt argues, because it has been chiefly reactive, responding to perceived threats and challenges at different moments in the nation’s history. While few Americans described themselves as conservatives before the 1930s, certain groups, beginning with the Federalists in the 1790s, can reasonably be thought of in that way. The book discusses changing ideas about what ought to be conserved, and why. Conservatives sometimes favored but at other times opposed a strong central government, sometimes criticized free-market capitalism but at other times supported it. Some denigrated democracy while others championed it. Core elements, however, have connected thinkers in a specifically American conservative tradition, in particular a skepticism about human equality and fears for the survival of civilization. Allitt brings the story of that tradition to the end of the twentieth century, examining how conservatives rose to dominance during the Cold War. Throughout the book he offers original insights into the connections between the development of conservatism and the larger history of the nation.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, American History, Biography

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 26, 2009

Reviews

[A.B. Swinborne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just died of boredom and nothing made any sense, but at least I'm technically ready to write the paper I have due about this tomorrow.

Update: Paper is written. My brain can now dump all of this.

[Ben Smitthimedhin · Rating 5 out of 5]

National Review conservatives are different from Fox News conservatives, who are different from the Harold Bloom conservatives, but they're somehow connected to the Old Guard conservatives. I didn't know there were so many!

What Allitt has done is to provide a genealogy of these differing strands of conservatism since the founding of America and how they've joined forces at certain periods of U.S. history against what they saw as common enemies (communism, failing standards in American education, or the dismantling of structure and hierarchy).

Allitt achieves his goal of not allowing his opinions to leak through as a historian, paying equal attention to both the appraisals and criticisms of many conservative movements. He provides color to what would otherwise be a fairly dull topic and allowed me to sympathize with conservative concerns that many would deem outdated, which I consider Allitt's strength; a good historian is one that allows his readers to experience the world of the past and not to paint those gone before us as "those who didn't know better."

[Michael Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent review of Conservative thinking in America, from colonial times to the present day. The book is useful because it doesn't get too deep. I also read The Conservative Intellectual Movement in the United States which goes much deeper and is a slower read.

[Mitch Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of the threads that connect conservatism throughout American history. It always comes down to anti-democratic ideals and finding institutional ways to preserve enduring social hierarchies.

[Jerome · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written historically balanced view. Allitt shows modern historians how to lower the rhetorically impassioned tone and give a fair reading of events and personages of the past.

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history especially once one gets into the 20th century. I enjoyed seeing the progression of ideas (and this is about ideas).

[JR Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to the Great Courses teaching series by Dr. Allit roughly covering the same material as this book. It was one of the best GC I've ever watched! Dr. Allit is a masterful teacher.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Allitt's book describing the paradoxical history of conservatism in America is, well, paradoxical. He's very good at pointing out the tensions (dare I say inconsistencies?) in American conservative thought, and does a remarkably good job of staying disinterested about most of the authors he discusses. This does have a cost: he's aware of the tensions, but his 'objective' standpoint means that he can't criticize the bad thinking to which those tensions lead. To take the most obvious example, conservatism has always been about preserving communities; American conservatism (and, increasingly, depressingly, conservatism everywhere) since the cold war has been about supporting economic processes that destroy communities. Because of his objective standpoint, he can't do any analysis of problems like that.

Also odd is his attempt to read 'conservatism' back into American history. His approach isn't obviously objectionable (he defines early conservatives as those who try to preserve anything), and it leads to some provoking ideas (the civil war as a clash of two different forms of conservatism). The problem is clear, though- there's a big difference between 'conservatives' who want to 'preserve' market societies, and conservatives who wanted to preserve communities in the face of markets. The former want to preserve something that never existed before; the latter have to change everything in order to preserve what used to be.

But this is a problem with conservatism as such, not just with Allitt's book. It suffers all the usual flaws of 'intellectual' history (you'd never suspect from this book that conservatives reacted to anything other than the ideas of liberals, socialists, communists, democrats, abolitionists and federalists; it looks like history is nothing other than a long line of men writing their thoughts down for posterity and so on), but also possesses all of its virtues (clarity, narrative flow).

[As a special bonus, the back-cover blurbs are idiotic: the Hoover Institute representative suggests that the book is about "a uniquely American core of convictions repeatedly summoned to hold the fort against waves of Europeanizing assailants," which would be news to the large number of Europhilic conservatives throughout American history (Santayana, James, Henry Adams, just to name a few). A professor from Wisconsin-Milwaukee thinks that conservatism "has an American history best understood in terms of its fluid meanings, plural definitions and oppositional currents," which I'm pretty sure is a nice/self-delusional way of saying "American conservatives want to be part of a tradition, but they aren't; by and large they're just knee-jerk reactionaries." Which is probably close to the truth given the characteristics of conservative thought in U.S. history (i.e., that almost all conservatives became liberals during the 1960s), particularly if you ignore the above-mentioned Europhiles].

[Nathan Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read about the "conservatives." Attempts to identify the conservative elements of previous presidents, which I thought was a little like trying to make the history fit the definition. I appreciated the level of objectivity, but that impartiality waned a little as the time line became more current. Nevertheless, thought provoking and worth the effort.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough history of the conservative movement in America, from the founding of the country to the present time. The author highlights the paradoxes of the conservative movement, and discusses some authors that I'd never heard of before. Nevertheless, he seems to have a very expansive definition of "conservative."

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent overview of the conservative ideology in America. However, in too few pages Allitt covers too much ground and mentions too many people and their bodies of work. All of them deserved more attention. Still, for someone looking to get a nice first overview, this works.

[Mike Uva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this at the same time as Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal." A finely-written, non-polemical history of various (often competing) strains conservative thought throughout U.S. history.

[Joshua Rolph]

Allitt offers a straightforward summary of British and American conservative thought and tradition.