Overview

While the dominant forces of American conservatism remain wedded, at all costs, to the Republican Party, another movement, one with its roots in the pre-World War II era, has stepped forth to fill an intellectual vacuum on the right. The Old Right first rose in opposition to the New Deal, fighting both statism at home and the emergence of an American empire abroad. More recently this movement, sometimes known as paleconservatism has provided the ideological backbone of modern populism and the opposition globalization with decisive effects on presidential politics. In Revolt From the Heartland, Joseph Scotchie provides an intellectual history of the Old Right, treating its main figures and defining its conflict with the traditional left-right mainstream.

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9780765801289

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Reviews

Joseph Scotchie wishes to tell the story of what he terms an underfunded, mostly unknown movement known as the paleoconservative or Old Right which, he argues, has provided the intellectual firepower behind the troubled populism of the 1990's. And Scotchie is not afraid to ask hard questions. --The Review of Politics An essential and valuable contribution to American intellectual history in the last decade of the last century. --The American Conservative Joe Scotchie's terrific new book solves a Great American Mystery. Why do our conservative intellectuals attack one another more viciously than they do liberals? Why does the splintered movement-Old Right, Neoconservative, New Right, and Beltway Right-behave like old communists who would rather purge each other than carry out the revolution? Why, if a member has some success, as when Pat Buchanan won in New Hampshire in 1996, do the rest attack him until they have assured his defeat? It's an incredible story and you have to read the book to find the answer --William J. Quirk, Professor of Law, University of South Carolina As an immigrant, I have always regarded the American conserative movement as the flower of democracy, the real reason for the Free World's victory in the Cold War. But flowers do not grow to the sky and the historic conservative movement is clearly now dead. In this remarkable and erudite account, Joseph Scothie investigates the new shoots that are coming up, traces their roots, and analyzes their future-and America's. --Peter Brimelow, author of Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster With truly masterful precision, Joe Scotchie illuminates the myriad dissident strains of American Conservatism which knocked at the doors of power at the end of the Cold War before meeting a fateful rebuff. He tells the story of those distinctive Right wing intellectuals who said no to an imperial foreign policy, mass immigration, and a globalized economy. While this band lost the key internecine battles of the 1990s to Newt Gingrich the neoconvervatives, and the politics of Clinton-bashing, in Scotchie' eloquent account their struggle for a conservatism rooted a sense of measure and respect for the American past retains all its piquancy for the decade to come. --Scott McConnell

Author Information

Joseph Scotchie is editor of the Roslyn News in Mineola, NY. He is the author of The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right and Barbarians in the Saddle: An Intellectual Biography of Richard Weaver and editor of The Vision of Richard Weaver, all available from Transaction.

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