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The Old Right is an informal designation used for a branch of American conservatism that was most prominent from 1910 to the mid-1950s, but never became an organized movement. Most members were Republicans, although there was a conservative Democratic element based largely in the Southern United States. They are termed the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors who came to prominence in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Most were unified by their defense of authority, tradition, morality, religion, limited government, rule of law, civic nationalism, capitalism, social conservatism, anti-Communism, anti-socialism, anti-Zionism, and anti-imperialism, as well as their skepticism of egalitarianism and democracy and the growing power of Washington.[1] The Old Right typically favored laissez-faire classical liberalism; some were business-oriented conservatives; others were ex-radical leftists who moved sharply to the right, such as the novelist John Dos Passos. Still others, such as the Democrat Southern Agrarians, were traditionalists who dreamed of restoring a pre-modern communal society.[2] Above all, Murray Rothbard wrote, the Old Right were unified by opposition to what they saw as the danger of "domestic dictatorship" by Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal program.[3]
The Old Right per se has faded as an organized movement, but many similar ideas are found among paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians.
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Transcription
Canada and the United States share the longest, straightest, possibly boringest border in the world. But, look closer, and there's plenty of bizarreness to be found. While these sister nations get along fairly well, they both want to make it really clear whose side of the continent is whose. And they've done this by carving a 20-foot wide space along the border. All five and a half thousand miles of it. With the exception of the rare New England town that predates national borders or the odd airport that needed extending, this space is the no-touching-zone between the countries and they're super serious about keeping it clear. It matters not if the no-touching-zone runs through hundreds of miles of virtually uninhabited Alaskan / Yukon wilderness. Those border trees, will not stand. Which might make you think this must be the longest, straightest deforested place in the world, but it isn't. Deforested: yes, but straight? Not at all. Sure it looks straight and on a map, and the treaties establishing the line *say* it's straight... but in the real world the official border is 900 lines that zig-zags from the horizontal by as much as several hundred feet. How did this happen? Well, imagine you're back in North America in the 1800s -- The 49th parallel (one of those horizontal lines you see on a globe) has just been set as the national boundary and it's your job to make it real. You're handed a compass and a ball of string and told to carefully mark off the next 2/3rds of a continent. Don't mind that uncharted wilderness in the way: just keep the line straight. Yeah. Good luck. With that. The men who surveyed the land did the best they could and built over 900 monuments. They're in about as straight as you could expect a pre-GPS civilization to make, but it's not the kind of spherical / planar intersection that would bring a mathematician joy. Nonetheless these monuments define the border and the no-touching-zone plays connect-the-dots with them. Oh, and while there are about 900 markers along this section of the border, there are about 8,000 in total that define the shape of the nations. Despite this massive project Canada and the United States still have disputed territory. There is a series of islands in the Atlantic that the United States claims are part of Maine and Canada claims are part of New Brunswick. Canada, assuming the islands are hers built a lighthouse on one of them, and the United States, assuming the islands are hers pretends the lighthouse doesn't exist. It's not a huge problem as the argument is mostly over tourists who want to see puffins and fishermen who want to catch lobsters, but let's hope the disagreement gets resolved before someone finds oil under that lighthouse. Even the non-disputed territory has a few notably weird spots: such as this tick of the border upward into Canada. Zoom in and it gets stranger as the border isn't over solid land but runs through a lake to cut off a bit of Canada before diving back down to the US. This spot is home to about 100 Americans and is a perfect example of how border irregularities are born: Back in 1783 when the victorious Americans were negotiating with the British who controlled what would one day be Canada, they needed a map, and this map was the best available at the time. While the East Coast looks pretty good, the wester it goes the sparser it gets. Under negotiation was the edge of what would one day be Minnesota and Manitoba. But unfortunately, that area was hidden underneath an inset on the map, so the Americans and British were bordering blind. Seriously. They guessed that the border should start from the northwestern part of this lake and go in a horizontal line until it crossed the Mississippi... somewhere. But somewhere, turned out to be nowhere as the mighty Mississippi stops short of that line, which left the border vague until 35 years later when a second round of negotiations established the aforementioned 49th parallel. But there was still a problem as the lake mentioned earlier was both higher, and less circular than first though, putting its northwesterly point here so the existing border had to jump up to meet it and then drop straight down to the 49th, awkwardly cutting off a bit of Canada, before heading west across the remainder of the continent. Turns out you just can't draw a straight(-ish) line for hundreds of miles without causing a few more problems. One of which was luckily spotted in advance: Vancouver Island, which the 49th would have sliced through, but both sides agreed that would be dumb so the border swoops around the island. However, next door to Vancouver Island is Point Roberts which went unnoticed as so today the border blithey cuts across. It's a nice little town, home to over 1,000 Americans, but has only a primary school so its older kids have to cross international borders four times a day to go to school in their own state. In a pleasing symetry, the East cost has the exact opposite situation with a Canadian Island whose only land route is a bridge to the United States. And these two aren't the only places where each country contains a bit of the other: there are several more, easily spotted in sattelite photos by the no-touching zone. Regardless of if the land in question is just an uninhabited strip, in the middle of a lake, in the middle of nowhere, the border between these sister nations must remain clearly marked.
History and views
The Old Right came into being when the Republican Party (GOP) split in 1910, and was influential within that party into the 1940s. They pushed Theodore Roosevelt and his progressive followers out in 1912. From 1933, many Democrats became associated with the Old Right through their opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and his New Deal Coalition, and with the Republicans formed the Conservative Coalition to block its initiatives. Conservatives disagreed on foreign policy, and the Old Right favored non-interventionist policies on Europe at the start of World War II. After the war, they opposed President Harry Truman's domestic and foreign policies. The last major battle was led by Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, who was defeated by Dwight D Eisenhower for the presidential nomination in 1952. The new conservative movement later led by William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan adopted much of the domestic anti-New Deal conservatism of the Old Right, but broke with it by demanding free trade and an aggressive, internationalist, interventionist, and anti-communist foreign policy.
Historian George H. Nash argues:
Unlike the "moderate", internationalist, largely eastern bloc of Republicans who accepted (or at least acquiesced in) some of the "Roosevelt Revolution" and the essential premises of President Truman's foreign policy, the Republican Right at heart was counter-revolutionary. Anti-collectivist, anti-Communist, anti-New Deal, passionately committed to limited government, free market economics, and congressional (as opposed to executive) prerogatives, the G.O.P. conservatives were obliged to wage a constant two-front war: against liberal Democrats from without and "me-too" Republicans from within.[4]
The Old Right emerged in opposition to the New Deal and to FDR personally; it drew from multiple sources. Hoff says, "moderate Republicans and leftover Republican Progressives like Hoover composed the bulk of the Old Right by 1940, with a sprinkling of former members of the Farmer–Labor party, Non-Partisan League, and even a few midwestern prairie Socialists."[5]
By 1937, partisans of the Old Right had formed a Conservative coalition that controlled Congress until 1964.[6] They were consistently non-interventionist and opposed entering World War II, a position exemplified by the America First Committee. Later, most opposed U.S. entry into NATO and intervention in the Korean War. "In addition to being staunch opponents of war and militarism, the Old Right of the postwar period had a rugged and near-libertarian honesty in domestic affairs as well."[7]
This anti-New Deal movement was a coalition of multiple groups: business Republicans like Robert A. Taft and Raymond E. Baldwin; conservative Democrats like Josiah Bailey,[8] Al Smith and John W. Davis;[9] libertarians like H. L. Mencken[10] and Garet Garrett[11] and mass media tycoons like William Randolph Hearst[12] and Colonel Robert R. McCormick.[13][14]
In his 1986 book Conservatism: Dream and Reality, Robert Nisbet noted the traditional hostility of the right to interventionism and to increases in military expenditure:[15]
Of all the misascriptions of the word 'conservative' during the last four years, the most amusing, in an historical light, is surely the application of 'conservative' to the last-named. For in America throughout the twentieth century, and including four substantial wars abroad, conservatives had been steadfastly the voices of non-inflationary military budgets, and of an emphasis on trade in the world instead of American nationalism. In the two World Wars, in Korea, and in Viet Nam, the leaders of American entry into war were such renowned liberal-progressives as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. In all four episodes conservatives, both in the national government and in the rank and file, were largely hostile to intervention; were isolationists indeed.
Jeff Riggenbach argues that some members of the Old Right were actually classical liberals and "were accepted members of the 'Left' before 1933. Yet, without changing any of their fundamental views, all of them, over the next decade, came to be thought of as exemplars of the political 'Right'."[16]
Internal differences
While outsiders thought Taft was the epitome of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, inside the party he was repeatedly criticized by hard-liners who were alarmed by his sponsorship of New Deal-like programs, especially federal housing for the poor, and federal aid to public schools. The real estate lobby was especially fearful about public housing. Senator Kenneth Wherry discerned a "touch of socialism" in Taft, while his Ohio colleague Senator John Bricker speculated that perhaps the "socialists have gotten to Bob Taft". This distrust on the right hurt Taft's 1948 presidential ambitions.[17]
The Southern Agrarian wing drew on some of the values and anxieties being articulated on the anti-modern right, including the desire to retain the social authority and defend the autonomy of the American states and regions, especially the South.[18] Donald Davidson was one of the most politically active of the agrarians, especially in his criticisms of the TVA in his native Tennessee. As Murphy (2001) shows, the Southern Agrarians articulated old values of Jeffersonian Democracy. Murphy explains that they "called for a return to the small-scale economy of rural America as a means to preserve the cultural amenities of the society they knew."[19] Instead of science and efficiency, they preferred to rely on religion to uphold social order and values.
Notable figures
- President William Howard Taft
- President Warren G. Harding
- President Calvin Coolidge
- President Herbert Hoover
- Senator Bennett Champ Clark, of Missouri
- Senator Josiah Bailey, of North Carolina
- Senator Harry F. Byrd, of Virginia
- Senator John W. Bricker, of Ohio
- Representative Howard Buffett, of Nebraska
- Representative Hamilton Fish III, of New York
- John T. Flynn
- William Randolph Hearst[20]
- Raymond C. Hoiles
- Zora Neale Hurston[21][22]
- Albert Jay Nock
- John J. Raskob
- Representative Eugene Siler, of Kentucky
- Governor Al Smith, of New York
- Senator Robert A. Taft, of Ohio
- Senator William E. Jenner, of Indiana
- Senator Kenneth S. Wherry, of Nebraska
- General Robert E. Wood
Legacy
Paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians are often considered the successors and torchbearers of the Old Right view in the late-20th century and the 21st century. Both of these groups often rally behind Old Right slogans such as "America First" while sharing similar views to the Old Right opposition to the New Deal and involvement in World War II (including Old Right objections to economic programs and loans of naval equipment to supply England, through the famous 'Blitz' of 1940–41 'Britain's Finest Hour', viewing such aid as likely to involve the US further). Recently, it has been suggested that some of the ideas of the Old Right have seen a resurgence in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of Ron Paul[23][24] and the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump.[25][24]
See also
Citations
- ^ Modugno, Roberta A. (2019). "The Libertarian Legacy of the Old Right: Democracy and Representative Government". Journal of Libertarian Studies. 23: 5–21.
- ^ Allitt, Patrick. The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (2009), chapter 6
- ^ Rothbard, Murray. The Betrayal of the American Right (2007)
- ^ George H. Nash, "The Republican Right from Taft to Reagan", Reviews in American History (1984) 12#2 pp. 261–265 JSTOR 2702450, quote on p. 261; Nash references David W. Reinhard, The Republican Right since 1945, (University Press of Kentucky, 1983)
- ^ Hoff, Joan (1975). Herbert Hoover, forgotten progressive. Little, Brown. p. 222. ISBN 978-0316944168.
- ^ James T. Patterson, "A Conservative Coalition Forms in Congress, 1933–1939", The Journal of American History, Vol. 52, No. 4. (Mar., 1966), pp. 757–72. JSTOR 1894345.
- ^ Rothbard, Murray. Swan Song of the Old Right, Mises Institute Archived May 12, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ By Troy L. Kickler, "The Conservative Manifesto" North Carolina History Project Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ George Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League 1934–1940 (1962)
- ^ Mencken, H.L. (2012). Diary of H. L. Mencken. Knopf Doubleday. p. 28. ISBN 978-0307808868.
- ^ Garet Garrett and Bruce Ramsey, Defend America First: The Antiwar Editorials of the Saturday Evening Post, 1939–1942 (2003) excerpt and text search Archived 2014-02-11 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2001)
- ^ Richard Norton Smith, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880–1955 (2003)
- ^ For others see Gary Dean Best, The Critical Press and the New Deal: The Press versus Presidential Power, 1933–1938 (1993) [ISBN missing]
- ^ Prospects of Conservatism, p. 111, in Conservatism: Dream & Reality, at Google Books. Accessed: 26 November 2012.
- ^ Riggenbach, Jeff. "The Mighty Flynn", Liberty January 2006 p. 34
- ^ David W. Reinhard, The Republican Right since 1945, (University Press of Kentucky, 1983) pp. 28, 39–40 [ISBN missing]
- ^ Murphy p. 124
- ^ Paul V. Murphy, The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2001) pp. 5, 24
- ^ Rodney P. Carlisle, "William Randolph Hearst: A Fascist Reputation Reconsidered." Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 50#1 (1973): 125–133.
- ^ McWhorter, John, “Thus Spake Zora" Archived 2009-08-16 at the Wayback Machine, City Journal, Summer 2009.
- ^ McWhorter, John (2011-01-04) Why Zora Neale Hurston Was a Conservative Archived 2013-10-27 at the Wayback Machine, The Root
- ^ Antle, W. James III (October 15, 2007). "Making the Old Right New". The American Spectator. Archived from the original on April 12, 2008. Retrieved September 22, 2008.
- ^ a b "'America First!' is Current Again". Archived from the original on 2016-11-04. Retrieved 2016-12-30.
- ^ Paleoconservatism, the movement that explains Donald Trump, explained Archived 2022-06-23 at the Wayback Machine, Dylan Matthews (updated), Vox, May 6, 2016.
General references
- Robert Morse Crunden (1999). The superfluous men. Isi Books. ISBN 978-1882926305.
- Cole, Wayne S. America First; The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (1953) [ISBN missing]
- Doenecke, Justus D. "American Isolationism, 1939–1941", Journal of Libertarian Studies, Summer/Fall 1982, 6(3), pp. 201–216. online version
- Doenecke, Justus D. "Literature of Isolationism, 1972–1983: A Bibliographic Guide" Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 1983, 7(1), pp. 157–184. online version
- Frohnen, Bruce; Beer, Jeremy; and Nelson, Jeffery O., eds. American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (2006) [ISBN missing]
- Murphy, Paul V. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2001) [ISBN missing]
- Radosh, Ronald. Prophets on the right: Profiles of conservative critics of American globalism (1978) [ISBN missing]
- Raimondo, Justin. An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (2000) [ISBN missing]
- Raimondo, Justin (1993). Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement. Burlingame, CA: Center for Libertarian Studies. ISBN 9781883959005.
- Ribuffo, Leo. The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Temple University Press (1983) [ISBN missing]
- Rothbard, Murray. The Betrayal of the American Right (2007) [ISBN missing]
- Schneider, Gregory L. ed. Conservatism in America Since 1930: A Reader (2003) [ISBN missing]
- Schneider, Gregory L. The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (2009) pp. 1–38 [ISBN missing]
- Scotchie, Joseph. The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right (1999) [ISBN missing]
External links
Media related to Old Right (United States) at Wikimedia Commons
This page was last edited on 20 May 2024, at 06:26