One of the most interesting and exciting developments in the historiography
of the United States in the 20th century has been the "discovery" of conservatism
as a subject worthy of historical study. For many years the "consensus"
school of historians—including scholars such as Louis Hartz, Daniel Bell,
and Richard Hofstadter—saw the American Right as little more than a cranky
reaction against progressive change, or, in Hofstadter’s words, an expression
of the "paranoid style" he observed in American politics. Ultimately,
therefore, they were of negligible interest to historians—mere speed bumps
in the highway of progress.
In the April 1994 issue of the American Historical Review Alan
Brinkley lamented that "while historians have displayed impressive powers
of imagination in creating empathetic accounts of the past, they have seldom
done so in considering the character of conservative lives and ideas."
He admitted that part of the reason for this myopia was that most academics
today are not conservatives; nevertheless, Brinkley challenged them to
stretch their "historical imagination" in giving fair consideration to
this important tradition.
Historians have in recent years risen to Brinkley’s challenge, and the
result has been a new wave of scholarship on the American Right—some of
the best of which, it should be added, has been written by non-conservatives.
Of particular interest has been the origins of the so-called "New Right"
that asserted itself in the presidential nomination of Barry Goldwater
in 1964, and in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. It is the
spirit of this conservative movement that continues to animate large sections
of the American electorate today.
To capitalize on this development—and in recognition of the 200th anniversary
of Ohio statehood and the 125th anniversary of Ashland University—the AU
Department of History and Political Science held a conference,
in partnership with Ashland University’s John M. Ashbrook Center, dedicated
to the historical evolution of the modern Right.
Conference Organizers:
John Moser (Ph.D. University of Illinois, 1995) is an assistant
professor of history at Ashland University. He is author of Twisting
the Lion’s Tail: American Anglophobia between the World Wars (New
York University Press, 1999) and Presidents
from Hoover through Truman, 1929-1953 (Greenwood Press, 2001).
He is currently working on a biography of the liberal-turned-McCarthyite
journalist John T. Flynn.
Michael W. Flamm (Ph.D., Columbia University) is an assistant
professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University. He is the author
of ’Law and Order’: Street Crime, Civil Disorder, and the Crisis of
Liberalism. (Columbia University Press, forthcoming). He has
also written numerous articles and reviews on the political culture of
the 1960s.
Jeff Roche (Ph.D. University of New Mexico, 2001) is an assistant
professor of history at the College of Wooster. He is author of two
books, Restructured
Resistance: The Sibley Commission and the Politics of Desegregation in
Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 1998), and Cowboy Conservatism
(forthcoming). He is also the co-editor of The
Conservative Sixties (Peter Lang, 2003), which features original
essays by some of the leading scholars of recent political history.
