George Hawley: Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism (2016)

The mainstream American conservative movement was founded in the 50s by a patrician young man named William F. Buckley. He and his like-minded thinkers abhorred the grand ideas of social engineering that were gaining popularity among the liberal intelligentsia (despite constant horror stories from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe). They were skeptical about science, progress, and human nature, and they placed their faith in God and the Constitution.
Buckley managed to forge an intellectual movement to support the conservative political agenda by successfully identifying the greatest common denominator of the different strands of conservative thought. The defining traits of the emerging movement were anti-communism combined with a strong military presence in the world, reverence for religion, and the commitment to small government. Buckley was not only the de-facto leader of mainstream conservatism in the next half-century, and an inspiration for generations, but also an active gatekeeper of it. For decades he decided what and who stood the test of acceptability, pushing overt antisemites and racists out, and keeping sympathetic but radical thinkers at arm's length. This book is about these rejected extremes, the schools of thought that did not get into the canon. George Hawley offers a guided tour through this versatile territory of intellectual currents that are usually referred to simply (oversimply), as the Right.

Evangelical Christians would like to break down the wall of separation between religion and state. In America, even Republican politicians can argue for separation on a constitutional basis, but not even Democrats can afford to appear unchristian. Therefore, the evangelicals have a very strong political clout. The Paleoconservatives think that everything was better in the 50s. The Neocons are the disillusioned liberals who briefly held the reins in the 2000s, and has fallen into disgrace since. Their strong focus on foreign policy is not shared by others.

The Libertarians are the believers in the free market. With their indifference to tradition, religion, and authority, they are the odd ducks of the Right, but their opposition to big government, for political expediency at least, puts them in the same tent with the rest. Their market-centered worldview at first glance makes them look the least colorful species of the fold, but taken far enough, their intellectual purity and single-mindedness often lead to some morally sinister conclusions. If Libertarians take the idea of small government to the extreme, the Anarcho-capitalists go even beyond. Ayn Rand's Objectivists are the champions of selfishness and individualism - ironically, more than any other, they look like a cult.

Localists, Agrarists, Traditionalists, and proponents of the Southern way of life are not very easy to tell apart. They unequivocally revere small communities and loathe to interfere with the world that is outside of America. Further down this road white supremacists and white nationalists offer their tainted wisdom. The former want the rule of the master race, the latter, with more modest ambitions, simply want every race to live in their own land. What they share is the growing insignificance. Their ideas are tabus in Academia, the KKK is a shadow of its former self, its sibling organizations rarely survive their founders, and proliferation their Internet sites didn't stop the membership decline.

Yet for those who expected to see the wildest ideas in the States, the book has a surprise treat. Hawley dedicates a chapter to the European New Right that reveals that the real monsters of the intellectual landscape still roam the Old Continent. Some ideas professed by fringe European thinkers - largely anti-christian, anti-capitalist, and anti-American - would put them beyond the pale anywhere in the US left from marginal fascist movements.

Although these movements have largely been denied of fully entering the political mainstream, they heavily influence its intellectual hinterland. Many respected conservative thinkers regard themselves as libertarians. Most profess to be Christians. Few are unsympathetic to tradition and the importance of shared moral values. Recently, even the political barriers broke. The strongest base of Donald Trump is the Evangelical Christians - who conveniently changed their former top priority, that is, the character of the incumbent. His call for withdrawing from world affairs, and the slogan "America First" hit home for almost the whole spectrum.

The Right, with its emphasis on religion, patriotism, and order, has always been a hospitable environment for darker ideas. The slope was always slippery between personal faith and religious intolerance, strong community spirit and xenophobia, respect for authority and authoritarianism. Unsavory ideas often hid behind right-wing pretexes and principled conservatives sometimes got in the same camp with genuine racists - when, for example, the federal government finally cracked down on racial segregation, many right-wing politicians and intellectuals suddenly discovered in their hearts a deep ideological commitment to state rights and decentralized governance.

But even ideologies that we don't accept as a whole can offer legitimate insights on life. Religion can exert a positive cohesive force. Tradition and community give meaning to life for many. It doesn't take a libertarian to find individual freedom and rights a fundamental moral principle. And there are uncomfortable truths that, at the moment, are only voiced by white supremacists.

The book doesn't restrict itself to simply enumerate the different players in the Right's camp. Its main ambition is to create a framework to understand its multifaceted subject. It provides historical and political context to show how these currents were born, how they evolve and interact; and more importantly, how their ebbs and tides of influence move the gravitational center of the conservative movement.