1. I do not attempt in this article to offer a comprehensive overview of the conservative movement in the 1970s, but have taken a more precisely thematic focus. Thus I do not consider foreign policy issues or the place of the religious Right. For these subjects, see Ehrman, John, The Rise of the Neoconservatives: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1994 (New Haven, 1995)Google Scholar, and Himmelstein, Jerome, To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), 97–128Google Scholar. For a review of scholarly literature on American conservatism since the mid-twentieth century, see Hixson, William B. Jr., Search for the American Right Wing: An Analysis of the Social Science Record, 1955–1987 (Princeton, 1992).Google Scholar

2. Babbitt, Irving, Democracy and Leadership (Boston, 1924), 61.Google Scholar

3. Viereck, Peter, Conservatism Revisited (1949; New York, 1962), 34–35.Google Scholar

4. Additional items in this literature would include Weaver, Richard M., Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago, 1949)Google Scholar; Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Chicago, 1950)Google Scholar and A Program for Conservatives (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar; Lippmann, Walter, The Public Philosophy (London, 1955)Google Scholar; and Bloom, Allan, The Closing of the American Mind (New York, 1987)Google Scholar. Among conservatives with a more expressed contempt for democracy and mass society, one would include H. L. Mencken and Albert J. Nock.

5. Kazin, Michael, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York, 1995), 185–88.Google Scholar

6. Buckley, William F. Jr., God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom (Chicago, 1951), 46–55, 22–23.Google Scholar

7. Buckley, William F. Jr. and Bozell, R. Brent, McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning (Chicago, 1954), 317, 323, 330Google Scholar. Willmoore Kendall, a professor at Yale when Buckley arrived, also influenced the majoritarian ideology among conservatives, particularly in making the case against the open society, which Kendall associated with the liberal tradition of John Stuart Mill.

8. Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Boston, 1949), 51–67.Google Scholar

9. Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R (New York, 1955), chaps. 1 and 2.Google Scholar

10. Riesman, David and Glazer, Nathan, “The Intellectuals and the Discontented Classes,” in The New American Right, ed. Bell, Daniel (New York, 1955), 73Google Scholar; Kazin, Populist Persuasion, 190–91.

11. Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite (New York, 1957), 262–68Google Scholar; Diggins, John Patrick, The Rise and Fall of the American Left (New York, 1992), 224–26.Google Scholar

12. Miller, James, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York, 1987), 343–45.Google Scholar

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15. Buckley, William F. Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959; New York, 1984), 125, 155–67.Google Scholar

16. Brennan, Turning Right, 8, 24–25, 35–36.

17. Ibid., 46, 71.

18. Carter, Dan T., The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York, 1995), 23–24Google Scholar, 48–49, 52, 69, 76–77.

19. Ibid., 84, 206, 316, 344, 351–52, 368–69.

20. Ibid., 391, 394, 425, 432. E. J. Dionne states that in the Indiana primary contests of 1968 Wallace supporters tended to identify themselves as working class more than those supporting Humphrey, Hubert or Nixon, Richard. Why Americans Hate Politics (New York, 1991), 91Google Scholar; see also Pettigew, Thomas F., Racially Separate or Together (New York, 1971), 236–56.Google Scholar

21. Phillips, Kevin P., The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, N.Y.), 40, 44, 88.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., 167, 172, 179–82. Phillips identified early patterns of this trend in liberal urban-reform movements in the 1950s. Led by middle-class professionals (and often acting as reform “clubs” within the Democratic party), they were concentrated in the more affluent locations of the cities. As reform efforts, they worked against city machines with their working-class and ethnic connections. Phillips, Kevin, Mediacracy: American Parties and Politics in the Communications Age (Garden City, N.Y., 1975), 21Google Scholar. Dionne writes of the reform movement: “Thus, the class war inside the Democratic party began not, as is often thought, in the struggles of the 1960s, but in the skirmishes of the 1950s.” The reform group, Dionne adds, also became the dissenter Democrats who broke from Lyndon Johnson for Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics, 45–46.

23. Phillips, Mediacracy, 17, 21, 26–27, 33. William Berman writes: “How ironic it was, then, that the major force for cultural change issued from a growing, relatively secure, postindustrial new class, while the main line of opposition to its program and values came from below.” America's Right Turn (Baltimore, 1994), 15.Google Scholar

24. On the leftist background of the neoconservatives, see Dorrien, Gary, The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and tlie War of Ideology (Philadelphia, 1993), 19–67.Google Scholar

25. See Welfeld, Irving H., “Toward a New Federal Housing Policy,” The Public Interest 19 (Spring 1970): 31–43.Google Scholar

26. See Ruff, Larry E., “The Economic Sense of Pollution,” The Public Interest 19 (Spring 1970): 69–97.Google Scholar

27. See Feldstein, Martin S., “A New Approach to National Health Insurance,” The Public Interest 23 (Spring 1971): 93–105.Google Scholar

28. See Roberts, Marc J., “Is There an Energy Crisis?” The Public Interest 31 (Spring 1973): 17–38.Google Scholar

29. See Feldstein, Martin, “The Economics of the New Unemployment,” The Public interest 33 (Fall 1973): 3–42.Google Scholar

30. See Tyler, Ralph W., “The Federal Role in Education,” The Public Interest 34 (Winter 1974): 164–87.Google Scholar

31. See Abrams, Elliott and Abrams, Franklin S., “Immigration Policy—Who Gets in and Why!” The Public Interest 38 (Winter 1975): 3–39.Google Scholar

32. See Sowell, Thomas, “Affirmative Action Reconsidered,” The Public Interest 42 (Winter 1976): 47–65.Google Scholar

33. See Long, Norton E., “A Marshall Plan for the Cities?” The Public Interest 46 (Winter 1977): 48–58.Google Scholar

34. See Wanniski, Jude, “Taxes, Revenues, and the ‘Laffer Curve,’” The Public Interest 50 (Winter 1978): 3–16.Google Scholar

35. Gerson, Mark, The Neoconseraittve Vision: From the Cold War to the Culture Wars (Lanham, Md., 1996), 95–96.Google Scholar

36. Quoted by Bloom, Alexander, in Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (New York, 1986), 254–55.Google Scholar

37. Podhoretz, Norman, Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir (New York, 1979), 165–66.Google Scholar

38. Kristol, Irving, “Skepticism, Moralism, and The Public Interest,” The Public Interest 81 (Fall 1985): 33.Google Scholar

39. Berman, America's Right Turn, 9–10. The description of the New Class owed much to David Bazelon, a New York intellectual and affiliate of the radical Institute for Policy Studies. In 1966 he described a group of bureaucrats and intellectuals—managers, lawyers, social workers, consultants—who effectively determined liberalism's political agenda, from the expanding welfare state to massive investments in higher education. See Dorrien, Neoconservative Mind, 14.

40. Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (New York, 1982), 53–54Google Scholar; idem, “America's Political System: The Rules of the Game Are Changing,” U. S. Neu'S and World Report, 18 September 1987, 55–56 (an interview).

41. See Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Why I Am Not a Republican,” Common Sense (Fall 1979): 34. E. J. Dionne Jr. has written: “Over the long run, the new party rules that emphasized participation led to an increasing role for the well-to-do and a declining role for the working and lowermiddle classes.” Why Americans Hate Politics, 49. He also confirms the neoconservative charge of a New Class takeover of the party and adds that “the 1972 results reversed decades of voting history.” Ibid., 122.

42. Novak, Michael, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in the Seventies (New York, 1972), 47, 86, 123, 126, 203, 245–46.Google Scholar

43. Quoted in David Hoeveler, J. Jr., Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era (Madison, Wis., 1991), 246.Google Scholar

44. Dorrien, Neoconservative Mind, 221.

45. Novak, Michael, A Theology for Radical Politics (New York, 1969), 13, 17, 74, 21, 23, 29, 74, 60.Google Scholar

46. Novak, Michael, “A Changed View of the Movement,” Christian Century, 13 September 1978, 830.Google Scholar

47. Novak, Michael, “Switch to Reagan for a Strong America,” Commonweal, 24 October 1980, 102Google Scholar. And two years after this essay, in a book that showed Novak's full switch to market conservatism, he published The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

48. Berman, America's Right Turn, 79–80; Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics, 151, 107, 109 (the quotation).

49. Berman, America's Right Turn, 11–12.

50. Ibid., 12.

51. Barone, Michael, Our Country (New York, 1990), 487–89, 492–93.Google Scholar

52. Gerson, Neoconservative Vision, 110.

53. Hoeveler, Watch on the Right, 99–100.

54. Ibid., 96–97; see also Kristol, Irving, “When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness-Some Reflections of Capitalism and the Free Society,” The Public Interest 21 (Fall 1970): 3–15.Google Scholar

55. Kristol, Irving, interview with Robert Glasgow, Psychology Today, 7 February 1974, 80Google Scholar; idem, “Capitalism, Socialism, and Nihilism,” The Public Interest 31 (Spring 1973): 3–16.

56. [Ronald Reagan], A Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961–1982 (Chicago, 1983), 156–57.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., 147, 156, 160, 186. In the late 1970s corporate America made itself a major lobbying group in Washington with a very political agenda to fight the recent regulatory legislation: “Literally thousands of lobbyists came to town to work on behalf of [the] agenda for Fortune 500 companies, the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Federation of Independent Business.” Berman, America's Right Turn, 70.

58. [Reagan], A Time for Choosing, 154, 177, 187.

59. Ibid., 169, 171, 188, 167 (the quotation).

60. Ibid., 176.

61. Ibid., 184, 189.

62. Heclo, Hugh, “Reaganism and the Search for a Public Philosophy,” in Perspectives on the Reagan Years, ed. Palmer, John L. (Washington, D.C., 1987), 46.Google Scholar

63. Wills, Garry, Reagan's America: Innocents at Home (New York, 1987), 148.Google Scholar

64. See the list compiled by Gary Dorrien, Neoconservative Mind, 10–11.

65. As possible predecessors for the kind of populist and laissez-faire conservatism I am describing here, it might seem that southern politics supplies a source. Powerful demagogues, especially those that appeal to a white, racist populace, do represent a significant strand in the American right-wing tradition. But this type invariably wanted at the very least to control business or did in fact attack big business as a populist device that inaugurated a political career. We have seen the case of Wallace in Alabama here. Huey Long in Louisiana attempted a grassroots effort against Standard Oil and learned from Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi the political advantages of denouncing the wealthy. See Harry Williams, T., Huey Long (New York, 1969), 71, 104–5, 152, 214–15Google Scholar. Leander Perez of Louisiana criticized federal control of business only that he might have more of the same in his own parish. See Jeansonne, Glen, Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta (Baton Rouge, 1977), 101–20.Google Scholar

66. Buckley's most often-quoted lines to this effect spoke to Harvard liberal intellectuals: “I am obliged to confess,” he said, “that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” Quoted in Hoeveler, Watch on the Right, 43.

67. See Judis, John B., William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York, 1988), 377–79Google Scholar. Phillips had written: we cannot “expect Alabama truck drivers or Ohio steelworkers to sign on with a politics captivated by Ivy League five-syllable word polishers.” Quoted in ibid., 379.

68. See Hoeveler, Watch on the Right, 53–80.

69. Will, George, The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election (New York, 1987), 80–81.Google Scholar

70. Will, George F., The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses, 1981–1986 (New York, 1986), 6.Google Scholar

71. Phillips, Kevin, The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (New York, 1990), 8–11, 75, 78, 80, 44–45 (the quotation).Google Scholar

72. Lind, Michael, Up from Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America (New York, 1996), 5.Google Scholar

73. Ibid., 7–8.

74. For Lind's outline of a “true” conservatism, i.e., a “creative traditionalism” as presented by Peter Viereck, see ibid., 49–54.