Results by title

103 books match the query 'Conservatism & Liberalism' and 7 start with r

cover of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy

Radical American Partisanship

Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy

Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason

University of Chicago Press, 2022

Radical partisanship among ordinary Americans is rising, and it poses grave risks for the prospects of American democracy.
 
Political violence is rising in the United States, with Republicans and Democrats divided along racial and ethnic lines that spurred massive bloodshed and democratic collapse earlier in the nation’s history. The January 6, 2021 insurrection and the partisan responses that ensued are a vivid illustration of how deep these currents run. How did American politics become so divided that we cannot agree on how to categorize an attack on our own Capitol?

For over four years, through a series of surveys and experiments, Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason have been studying radicalism among ordinary American partisans. In this groundbreaking book, they draw on new evidence—as well as insights from history, psychology, and political science—to put our present partisan fractiousness in context and to explain broad patterns of political and social change. Early chapters reveal the scope of the problem, who radical partisans are, and trends over time, while later chapters identify the conditions that partisans say justify violence and test how elections, political violence, and messages from leaders enflame or pacify radical views. Kalmoe and Mason find that ordinary partisanship is far more dangerous than pundits and scholars have recognized. However, these findings are not a forecast of inevitable doom; the current climate also brings opportunities to confront democratic threats head-on and to create a more inclusive politics. Timely and thought-provoking, Radical American Partisanship is vital reading for understanding our current political landscape.
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cover of Rebels All!: Rebels All! A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America

Rebels All!

Rebels All! A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America

Mattson, Kevin

Rutgers University Press, 2008

Outstanding Academic Title of 2008

Do you ever wonder why conservative pundits drop the word “faggot” or talk about killing and then Christianizing Muslims abroad?  Do you wonder why the right’s spokespeople seem so confrontational, rude, and over-the-top recently?  Does it seem strange that conservative books have such apocalyptic titles?  Do you marvel at why conservative writers trumpeted the “rebel” qualities of George W. Bush just a few years back? 

There is no doubt that the style of the political right today is tough, brash, and by many accounts, not very conservative sounding. After all, isn’t conservatism supposed to be about maintaining standards, upholding civility, and frowning upon rebellion? Historian Kevin Mattson explains the apparent contradictions of the party in this fresh examination of the postwar conservative mind. Examining a big cast of characters that includes William F. Buckley, Whittaker Chambers, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Kevin Phillips, David Brooks, and others, Mattson shows how right-wing intellectuals have always, but in different ways, played to the populist and rowdy tendencies in America’s political culture. He boldly compares the conservative intellectual movement to the radical utopians among the New Left of the 1960s and he explains how conservatism has ingested central features of American culture, including a distrust of sophistication and intellectualism and a love of popular culture, sensation, shock, and celebrity.

Both a work of history and political criticism, Rebels All! shows how the conservative mind made itself appealing, but also points to its endemic problems. Mattson’s conclusion outlines how a recast liberalism should respond to the conservative ascendancy that has marked our politics for the last thirty years.

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cover of Right On?: Political Change and Continuity in George W. Bush's America

Right On?

Political Change and Continuity in George W. Bush's America

Edited by Iwan Morgan, Philip D. Davies

University of London Press, 2006

George W. Bush is widely regarded as a president of transformative significance. This volume analyzes the ambitious but controversial agenda that he has pursued at home and abroad. The contributors assess Bush's presidency in terms of its historical context, first-term record, and second-term prospects. They consider his administration from the perspective of its engagement in an ideologically driven project to consolidate conservative ascendancy over U.S. politics and public policy and to promote America's interests and values in the unipolar world. They evaluate the elements of political change and continuity in George Bush's America. The book also focuses on the extent to which the Bush agenda is new or a continuation of previous trends. Contributors also examine how far Bush has succeeded in overcoming political, institutional, and international resistance to his conservative agenda, and they evaluate his prospects for further success.
Contributors include John Dumbrell (University of Leicester, UK), Martin Durham (University of Wolverhampton, UK), Godfrey Hodgson (Rothermere American Institute, Oxford University, UK), Steven Hurst (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), Klaus Larres (Royal Holloway College, University of London, UK), Bob McKeever (University of Reading, UK), John Owens (University of Westminster, UK), Rob Singh (Birkbeck College, University of London, UK), and Alex Waddan (University of Sunderland, UK).
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cover of Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision

Righting the American Dream

How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision

Diane Winston

University of Chicago Press, 2023

A provocative new history of how the news media facilitated the Reagan Revolution and the rise of the religious Right.
 
After two years in the White House, an aging and increasingly unpopular Ronald Reagan looked like a one-term president, but in 1983 something changed. Reagan spoke of his embattled agenda as a spiritual rather than a political project and cast his vision for limited government and market economics as the natural outworking of religious conviction. The news media broadcast this message with enthusiasm, and white evangelicals rallied to the president’s cause. With their support, Reagan won reelection and continued to dismantle the welfare state, unraveling a political consensus that stood for half a century.

In Righting the American Dream, Diane Winston reveals how support for Reagan emerged from a new religious vision of American identity circulating in the popular press. Through four key events—the “evil empire” speech, AIDS outbreak, invasion of Grenada, and rise in American poverty rates—Winston shows that many journalists uncritically adopted Reagan’s religious rhetoric and ultimately mainstreamed otherwise unpopular evangelical ideas about individual responsibility. The result is a provocative new account of how Reagan together with the press turned America to the right and initiated a social revolution that continues today.
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cover of Rising Star: The Meaning of Nikki Haley, Trump’s Unlikely Ambassador

Rising Star

The Meaning of Nikki Haley, Trump’s Unlikely Ambassador

Jason A. Kirk

University of Arkansas Press, 2021

Nikki Haley has been an emerging force in American politics, her star power burnished over a decade that has seen her move from the national spotlight to the global stage. In Rising Star, political scientist Jason A. Kirk analyzes her ascendance in the Republican Party, from her governorship of South Carolina—during which she faced extraordinary challenges in a state reckoning with tragedy, race, and its own history—to her elevated profile as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, where, as the daughter of immigrants and a woman of color, she became the face of his America First policy to the world. In considering a wide range of perspectives, Kirk illuminates how the combination of Haley’s political talents and her identity as an Indian American, Christian, southern woman has made her an unlikely bridge between the Trump years and the GOP’s embattled path forward.
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cover of Rock of Ages: Subcultural Religious Identity and Public Opinion among Young Evangelicals

Rock of Ages

Subcultural Religious Identity and Public Opinion among Young Evangelicals

Jeremiah J. Castle

Temple University Press, 2019

Evangelicals and Republicans have been powerful—and active—allies in American politics since the 1970s. But as public opinions have changed, are young evangelicals’ political identities and attitudes on key issues changing too? And if so, why? In Rock of Ages, Jeremiah Castle answers these questions to understand their important implications for American politics and society. 

Castle develops his own theory of public opinion among young evangelicals to predict and explain their political attitudes and voting behavior. Relying on both survey data and his own interviews with evangelical college students, he shows that while some young evangelicals may be more liberal in their attitudes on some issues, most are just as firmly Republican, conservative, and pro-life on abortion as the previous generation. 

Rock of Ages considers not only what makes young evangelicals different from the previous generation, but also what that means for both the church and American politics.

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cover of Ronald Reagan and the House Democrats: Gridlock, Partisanship, and the Fiscal Crisis

Ronald Reagan and the House Democrats

Gridlock, Partisanship, and the Fiscal Crisis

Karl Gerard Brandt

University of Missouri Press, 2009

When Democrats in the House of Representatives locked horns with President Ronald Reagan over the latter’s fiscal policies, the ensuing conflict reinforced the seismic shift in the political landscape that the 1980 election had brought. Karl Brandt now tells the story of how the New Deal Democratic coalition was able to sustain itself in the face of an unprecedented Republican assault—in a conflict whose reverberations are still being felt today.
            After a bipartisan conservative House coalition passed Reagan’s budget and tax cuts in 1981, conservative Democrats became worried about the increasingly large deficits produced by Reaganomics and questioned the administration’s spending priorities. In one of the few studies of congressional politics in the 1980s, Brandt describes the House Democratic leadership’s efforts to rebuild party unity while facing challenges from conservative Democrats, the Reagan administration, and the emerging fiscal crisis. He tells how Democrats worked hard to rein in party conservatives, to craft consensus-oriented policies palatable to all Democrats, and over the coming years to force the president and the Senate to compromise over fiscal policy.
            Drawing on primary source materials unavailable in the 1980s—including transcripts from closed-door meetings and internal House documents—Brandt chronicles the events that resulted in the deepening of the fiscal crisis, examines the growth of an intensely partisan political environment, and provides insight into the dynamics of creating a national budget. He cuts through conservative rhetoric to show how Reagan’s fiscal policies deepened federal deficits and reveals how the partisan struggles of the Reagan years redefined the Democrats along more centrist lines.
            When the dust had settled, the Democratic Party had become more unified in the face of budget conflict and had proved that it could practice fiscal conservatism and make tough budget choices when necessary. Carefully argued and thoroughly researched, Brandt’s work brings historical perspective to this important chapter in recent history as it explores conflicting visions of the economy, American society, and the very future of the nation.
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