Conservative, Conservatism

A conservative is generally defined as a person adhering to or advocating a political philosophy known as conservatism. As a term, conservatism has been used to describe a wide array of ideological viewpoints and has incorporated, to varying degrees, a host of political, social, cultural, and economic ideas. Conservatism's roots extend back to the Enlightenment. Many of the philosophy's particulars were defined by Anglo-Irish political observer Edmund Burke, whose critique of the French Revolution elevated the stage upon which conservative thought began to evolve. American conservatism in the 20th century is no less easily defined and includes strands of free-market liberalism, social and religious conservatism, anticommunism, anti-Statist libertarianism, isolationism, and neoconservatism. Throughout the 20th century, both major political parties in the United States have been associated with conservatism to varying degrees, although by the 1970s, Republicans were generally considered to be more uniformly conservative than Democrats.

Twentieth-century American conservatism has, in many ways, responded to changes in American liberalism and, specifically, expansions in the size and scope of the federal government. For instance, conservatives reacted to expansions in federal power during the Progressive Era (1900 to 1920), the Great Depression and New Deal (1930s), World War II (1941 to 1945), cold war (1945 to 1991), and Great Society (1964 to 1969) eras. Modern American conservatism began to take shape after World War II, when isolationist conservatives lost control of the Republican Party. Cold war anticommunism unified many conservatives in the 1950s and served as a springboard for political leaders like Barry Goldwater, who, in 1964, unsuccessfully ran for the presidency on a platform of anticommunism and smaller government. Other prominent contributors to the coalescence of modern conservative thought include Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Ronald Reagan.

Regional distinction also helped shape modern American conservatism. For many years, conservatism was stereotypically identified as a philosophy of wealthy northeastern elites. Conversely, southern conservatism was long identified with the Democratic Party, the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, and massive resistance to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Beginning in the 1960s, Western conservatism exposed numerous divisions within both major political parties and infused the ideology with a more color-blind, populist, antitax, and antigovernment ethos. Demographic and social changes have also played enormous roles in defining modern conservatism. During the 1960s, a revival in American Protestant evangelicalism coincided with the rise of suburbs. The electoral coalition that arose as a result of widespread dissatisfaction with the nation's moral character and financial health was referred to by many as the “New Right.”

[Page 130]More recently, American conservatism has been buoyed by the rise of conservative talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, who, during the 1990s, gained popularity as the recognized nemesis of the Bill Clinton presidency. During the administration of George W. Bush, conservatism was primarily viewed as a combination of neoconservative foreign policy and social conservatism. Bush's victory in 2004 was credited to adherents from these two conservative strands. After 2004, the conservatism's electoral appeal encouraged a renewed interest in “moral leadership” among political candidates from both parties.

...