The New Right Flashcards
Suburban Warriors - Lisa McGirr (2001)
- Orange County was at the leading edge of economic and social changes that have propelled a deep-rooted and ever more powerful conservative political culture in significant areas of the Sunbelt and West
- Suburban middle class Yuppies in Orange County California organize and put Reagan into office
- the new right movement was not one of marginal people suffering from status anxiety, but rather one formed by successful entrepreneurial types with modern lifestyles and bright futures.
- the New Right appealed to many who were part of the New Deal coalition
- social conservatism wasn’t enough to being people to the right
Right Out of California - Kathy Olmstead (2015)
- Growers in the 30s in California afraid of New Deal Politics establish new style of politics using corporate funding of grassroots groups
- these business leaders create the foundation for what would become the mechanisms that launched the careers of Nixon and Reagan
- Agribusiness Coalition feels like Government betrayed them in their mediation of dispute between them and worker unions
- New Deal as treason
- Western conservatives weren’t against big government, they were against big government helping workers instead of big business
Redeeming America (1993) - Lienesch
- Lienesch sees Christian right activity as a permanent part of American politics which, while not totally predictable, “is predictably periodic”
Chain Reaction (1991) - the Edsalls
- New Deal coalition displaced by a conservative voting majority, using the lenses of race, rights, and taxes
- the Republican “lock” on the White House has resulted from successfully exploiting lower class white fears of liberal Democratic policies on affirmative action
From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt (1991) - Bruce J. Schulman
- How the South’s economic expansion was tied to government involvement, especially in regard to military and defense-related programs, and that this ironically led to the “development of American liberalism.”
- southern policies subsidized transportation (especially highways and airports) and high-tech research (and with it higher education) but neglected health care and education of the poor and underprivileged
- with the decline of traditional states’ rights conservatism came a new group of southern political leaders, whom Schulman aptly describes as “Whigs” –> i.e. the specter of Calhoun returns in the form of New Right big government
Mothers of Conservatism (2012) - Michelle Nickerson
- feminism allowed conservative women to make their arguments through the lens of housewife populism
- Conservative women capitalized “upon cultural assumptions about women and motherhood [putting] themselves forward as representatives of local interests who battled bureaucrats for the sake of family, community, and God”
- Phyllis Schlafly
- The John Birch Society
- idea that feminism shouldn’t be the only lens through which we historicize the role of women in the 20th century
- 1st wave feminists left a “janus faced” legacy, in that it looked both to conservative (difference) and liberal (sameness) arguments to get the vote
Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit - Thomas Sugrue (1998)
- That racism exacerbates urban problems and also inhibits potential solutions; the decline of the Detroit auto industry doubly hurt blacks; racial violence and intimidation were used by whites in order to hold onto a semblance of economic power in a city that was undergoing severe economic decline; idea that 1960s inner city race riots didn’t start urban problems, but that urban problems caused the 60s race riots
- white Detroiters were aided by the Federal Government’s discriminatory leading policy (FHA), and the real estate industry whose Board endorsed and attempted to enforce racial discrimination
- ethnic whites vs blacks
The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics - Dan T. Carter (1995)
- George Wallace was “the most influential loser in 20th century politics,” and an “irredeemable monster” who links the old racist South with the New Right
- Goldwater doesn’t represent the New Right as much as he did the failure of conservatives to roll back the New Deal, and that thus Wallace was more representative of social conservatism that fueled the conservative counterrevolution
Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles - Eric Avila (2006)
- A new mass culture developed after the end of WWII that characterized cities as dangerous sites of decay filled by dangerous people of color, whereas suburbs were represented as sites of order and safety inhabited by homogeneous “white” people.
- the shift from New Deal liberalism to New Right conservatism contributed to people preferring a homogeneous rather than heterogeneous society
The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South - Matthew D. Lassiter (2006)
- that the white middle class, or the Silent Majority, viewed their suburban lifestyles not as the product of segregation and federal subsidies, but of “free-market meritocracy,” and that they thus viewed civil rights efforts as an attack on free market principles and individualism
- suburban strategies of the Silent Majority reshaped southern politics
- the New Right didn’t rise simply due to the Republican Party’s southern strategy, but due to a NATIONWIDE grassroots efforts centered around suburbia and middle-class entitlement
- color-blind middle class suburban conservatism
White Flight - Kevin Kruse
- desegregation in Atlanta resulted in whites leaving the city in droves, leading to “suburban secessionism,” or the creation of homogenic racial enclaves
- While legal desegregation was achieved with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, de-facto segregation emerged in its wake, meaning that Atlanta and other cities like it ironically remained nearly as segregated after the passage of the bill
- postracial rhetoric allows conservatives to maintain their relevance after the Civil Rights movement
Why did the New Right rise?
The second half of the 1960s and the 1970s witnessed pivotal developments that reshaped American politics—the breakup of the political coalition forged by Franklin D. Roosevelt; an economic crisis that traditional liberal remedies seemed unable to solve; a shift of population and economic resources to conservative strongholds in the Sunbelt of the South and West; the growth of an activist, conservative Christianity increasingly aligned with the Republican Party; and a series of setbacks for the United States overseas. Together, they led to growing popularity for conservatives’ ideas, including their understanding of freedom.
