Overview

Creating Conservatism charts the vital role of canonical post-World War II (1945-1964) books in generating, guiding, and sustaining conservatism as a political force in the United States. Dedicated conservatives have argued for decades that the conservative movement was a product of print, rather than a march, a protest, or a pivotal moment of persecution. The Road to Serfdom, Ideas Have Consequences, Witness, The Conservative Mind, God and Man at Yale, The Conscience of a Conservative, and other mid-century texts became influential not only among conservative office-holders, office-seekers, and well-heeled donors but also at dinner tables, school board meetings, and neighborhood reading groups. These books are remarkable both because they enumerated conservative political positions and because their memorable language demonstrated how to take those positions--functioning, in essence, as debate handbooks. Taking an expansive approach, the author documents the wide influence of the conservative canon on traditionalist and libertarian conservatives. By exploring the varied uses to which each founding text has been put from the Cold War to the culture wars, Creating Conservatism generates original insights about the struggle over what it means to think and speak conservatively in America.

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9781611861273

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Reviews

Michael Lee has written a lovely book--lovely in conceptualization, lovely in organization, and lovely stylistically. The book is deeply thoughtful as well, eloquently arguing that failure to appreciate the rhetorical vectors of conservatism in the United States results in misunderstanding its boisterous endurance. Creating Conservatism is one of the finest first books I have ever read. --Roderick P. Hart, Shivers Chair in Communication and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin

Michael Lee has written a lovely book--lovely in conceptualization, lovely in organization, and lovely stylistically. The book is deeply thoughtful as well, eloquently arguing that failure to appreciate the rhetorical vectors of conservatism in the United States results in misunderstanding its boisterous endurance. Creating Conservatism is one of the finest first books I have ever read. --Roderick P. Hart, Shivers Chair in Communication and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin

Amidst the screech and howl that characterizes so much of public discourse these days <i>by</i> conservatives and <i>about</i> them, it is a welcome relief to have a calm, careful, and critical analysis of conservative authors in America s postwar past. Michael Lee has done a splendid job of bringing back to life the originary moments of an intellectual movement comprised of many different voices and beliefs. <i>Creating Conservatism </i>asks us to think more historically and carefully about what has gone into being conservative. Public discourse would be the better for it. James Farr, Professor of Political Theory and the History of Political Thought, Northwestern University

Author Information

Michael J. Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the College of Charleston, USA, where he teaches and researches in the areas of rhetoric and political communication.

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