Volume 43, Number 16 · October 17, 1996
White Mischief
By Jason Epstein
Up from Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America
by Michael Lind
Free Press, 295 pp., $23.00
The World Turned Right Side Up: A history of the Conservative Ascendancy in America
by Godfrey Hodgson
Houghton Mifflin, 365 pp., $27.50
What, if anything, does political conservatism mean today in the United States? How, for example, do Plato and Augustine fit with Joe McCarthy and Ralph Reed; or Burke, Gibbon, and Dr. Johnson with Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan, and Irving Kristol; or original sin with free market theory, or the Ten Commandments with selling machine guns? The crude answer given by many opponents of the movement is that today's doctrinaire conservatism is simply political opportunism, the pursuit of power by selfish interests through the exploitation of popular frustrations and credulity; the manipulation, in other words, of right-wing populism in its typical forms—nativism, racism, status envy, and so on—disguised as patriotism, traditionalism, and a love of liberty thwarted by illegitimate authority. This is the answer suggested by Michael Lind, a reformed conservative, and, more cautiously, by the British journalist Godfrey Hodgson. But the crude answer is not quite the full answer.
Review, 3672 words
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