The Right, Conservativism, Reaction

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version:

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Some people like to read about plagues, parasites, or psychopaths. Me, I read about the right wing.

See also: Counter-Enlightenment; Political Foundations, Think-Tanks, Advocacy Groups and NGOs; Totalitarianism

See:
• Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarians [Full text free online. Mini-review.]
• Dean Baker, The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer [Full text free online]
• James Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (1997)
• Robert Borosage, "The Mighty Wurlitzer," The American Prospect, 6 May 2002 [Online]
• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [One of the founding documents of conservativism; a profoundly eloquent and equally profoundly sophistical work. Its modern admirers, for instance, never repeat the bits where Burke claims the revolution is the result of a conspiracy of financiers. Online]
• Susan George, "How to Win the War of Ideas: Lessons from the Gramscian Right", Dissent 44 (1997): summer, pp. 47--53 [online copy]
• Don Herzog, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders [This might be summarized as "The birth of conservatism out of the spirit of contempt."]
• Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction [The Tanner Lectures the book was based on (PDF); also his "The Rhetoric of Reform" (The American Prospect, 23 June 1993)]
• Richard Hofstadter
  • The Paranoid Style in American Politics
  • Anti-Intellectualism in American Life [The title essay is online]
• Stephen Holmes, An Anatomy of Antiliberalism
• Michael Lind
  • Up from Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America
  • "Right and Wrong: The Elegant Errors of Conservative Thinker James Burnham" [Online. Wonderful quote: "The largely unintellectual conservatives who preceded them before the 1950s, and succeeded them in the 1990s, have been surly, demagogic and wrong about everything; in contrast, the mid-century `movement' conservatives around Buckley were wrong about everything in a sprightly and erudite way. They were never for racism, only against desegregation; they did not support apartheid, they merely vilified its victims and critics; they were not in favor of dire poverty, they just objected to any and all government programs that might ameliorate it."]
• Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman, Prophets of Deceit: A Portrait of the American Agitator [Free full text. Right-wing American demagogues of the '30s and '40s.]
• David Neiwert, Orcinus [Does an excellent job of keeping an eye on the very scary fringes of the American right, and the almost equally scary way the supposedly-respectable right consorts with them.]

To read:
• James A. Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism
• Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter
• Nancy Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy
• Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement
• Mary C. Brennan, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP
• Philip H. Burch, Reagan, Bush, and Right-Wing Politics: Elites, Think Tanks, Power, and Policy
• Sara Diamond, Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right Jean-Francois Drolet, American Neoconservatism: The Politics and Culture of a Reactionary Idealism
• Martin Durham, The Christian Right, the Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservativism
• Jay M. Feinman, Un-Making Law: The Conservative Campaign to Roll Back the Common Law
• Joseph V. Femia, Against the Masses: Varieties of Anti-Democratic Thought Since the French Revolution
• Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design
• Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics
• Jean Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers
• Robert L. Hilliard and Michael C. Keith, Waves of Rancor: Tuning in the Radical Right
• Linda Kintz, Between Jesus and the Market: The Emotions that Matter in Right-Wing America
• Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
• Angela M. Lahr, Millenial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelicalism
• Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right
• Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective
• Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise
• David Neiwert
  • In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest
  • Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial and Hate Crime in America
  • The Eliminationists
• Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right
• John T. Noonan, Narrowing the Nation's Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the States
• Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire
• Sheldon D. Pollack, Refinancing America: The Republican Antitax Agenda
• Matthew Rose, A World after Liberalism Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right
• Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism
• Smith, Christian America: What Evangelicals Really Want
• Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado, No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America's Social Agenda
• Karen Stenner, The Authoritarian Dynamic
• Cass R. Sunstein, Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America