AYN RAND AND AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN THE COLD WAR ERA

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICK ALLITT
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Ayn Rand ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

An American conservative movement developed rapidly after World War II. It brought together intellectuals and politicians opposed to the New Deal in domestic policy and Soviet communism in foreign policy. The movement's first presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, lost the election of 1964 but its second, Ronald Reagan, won the election of 1980. It has remained an influential force in American life up to the present, despite strong internal contradictions, which include disagreements about centralized power, about religion, about tradition, about elites, and about the free market. To some of the movement's early luminaries, such as Russell Kirk, free-market capitalism was the antithesis of conservatism since it required perpetual innovation and the sweeping away of traditional forms. To others, such as Ayn Rand, capitalism was the heart and soul of conservatism because it alone preserved the dignity and freedom of the individual.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Doody
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Grassroots Activism ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Market Capitalism

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. This study of Cold War Detroit showed the roots of contemporary conservatism, which combined support for free-market capitalism, small domestic government, anti-Communism, and traditionalism. All of these core ideas had been present in American society before the Cold War. The anti-Communism of the early Cold War helped bring together these previously disparate forces. Although the proponents of what became the new conservative movement did not always see eye-to-eye, they perceived that they shared common enemies. It would take many years and a great deal of both elite and grassroots activism before a powerful conservative movement formed nationally. However, the components of that ideology were well developed long before the late 1960s and 1970s.

The Cold War Origins of the “Crisis of Democracy”

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-61
Author(s):  
Kyong-Min Son
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Free Market ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Coordination ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Market Capitalism ◽  
The Welfare State

This article suggests that a “crisis of democracy” can be understood not simply as a deterioration of specific representative institutions but as a repositioning of democratic politics vis-à-vis other principles of social coordination, most notably the capitalist market, and the attendant decline of democratic subjectivity—people’s attunement to claims appealing to the common good. I trace this process to the post–World War II era. I show that the crisis of democracy was shaped by the substantive imperative of fusing democracy with free-market capitalism. Many postwar democratic theorists believed that the welfare state could manage the tension latent in this fusion. But an analysis of Friedrich Hayek’s theory of neoliberal democracy, which recognizes that tension more acutely, reveals that the incorporation of free-market capitalism creates tendencies that undermine democracy from within.

‘Communism Is a Religion That Is Inspired, Directed and Motivated by the Devil Himself’: Billy Graham’s Apologetics and the Cold War West

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Uta Andrea Balbier
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Billy Graham ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
End Times ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

Anti-Communism constituted a core feature of Billy Graham’s preaching in the 1950s. In Graham’s sermons Communism did not just stand for the anti-religious thread of an atheistic ideology, as it was traditionally used in Protestant Fundamentalist circles, but also for its opposition to American freedom and Free Market Capitalism. This article argues that the term Communism took on significantly new meaning in the evangelical milieu after the Second World War, indicating the new evangelicals’ ambition to restore, defend, and strengthen Christianity by linking it into the discourse on American Cold War patriotism. This article will contrast the anti-Communist rhetoric of Billy Graham and other leading evangelical figures of the 1950s, such as Harold Ockenga, with the anti-Communist rhetoric used by early Fundamentalists in the 1910s and 1920s. Back then, Communism was predominantly interpreted as a genuine threat to Christianity. The term also made appearances in eschatological interpretations regarding the imminent end-times. The more secular interpretation of Communism as a political and economic counter-offer by evangelical preachers such as Billy Graham will be discussed as an important indicator of the politicization and implied secularization of the evangelical milieu after the Second World War.

The National Association of Manufacturers and the Militarization of American Conservatism

2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Soffer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Association ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Before And After ◽  
National Association Of Manufacturers ◽  
Industry Membership ◽  
The Right

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) played an important role in the emerging conservative movement in the United States, both before and after World War II, but its contribution to the increasing militarism of that movement has received little scrutiny. Between 1958 and 1975, a combination of organizational changes peculiar to NAM and political pressures from both the right and the left led NAM to adopt and maintain a militaristic posture. In the late 1950s, a decline in the organization's membership resulted in a take over by larger corporations, which purged the board of its ultraconservative leadership. The reorganized board established a National Defense Committee (NDC) in order to promote defense industry membership and, by 1962, had selected a new permanent president, Werner Gullander. Under Gullander, the NDC moved NAM in the direction of support for defense expansion during the early 1960s.

All Politics Was Local

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle M. Nickerson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Local Community ◽  
World War ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Ethnic Factors ◽  
Political Rituals ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Community Decision

This chapter documents the formation of conservative activist culture in Los Angeles after World War II. It outlines the historic recipe of political, economic, religious, and ethnic factors that made conservatism so powerful in metropolitan Los Angeles, and then examines the formation of conservative female political culture and consciousness. The grassroots right, already in formation at the beginning of the decade, actively contributed to the beliefs, practices, and institutions that would, by 1960, become known as the “conservative movement.” American conservatism was produced through discourse—political rituals, rhetoric, and performances—before it became a movement with a recognizable name. The activist right toiled locally, not only by concentrating their energy in metropolitan venues, but by generating and continually emphasizing ideals about local community decision-making in an age of government centralization at the federal level.

“Your Grandchildren Will Grow Up Under Communism!”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria M. Grieve
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Democratic Capitalism ◽  
The World ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Soviet Communism ◽  
Advertising Council ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Market Capitalism

A potent weapon in the Cold War, advertising relied on the notion of childhood innocence to promote Cold War containment at home and to advance a crucial pillar of US Cold War ideology abroad—the superiority of free market capitalism over communism. This chapter analyzes how images of children and ideas about childhood informed several major Advertising Council public service campaigns as well as consumer advertising during the 1950s. The distinction between domestic advertising and foreign propaganda during the Cold War was often a fine one, as both routinely used images of children to represent the nation to Americans and to potential allies around the world. In the hands of government propagandists and corporate advertisers, children simultaneously functioned as symbols of the happiness and security that could be achieved through a commitment to democratic capitalism and as symbols illustrating the nation’s vulnerability to the spread of Soviet communism.

GODLESS CAPITALISM: AYN RAND AND THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER BURNS
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Ayn Rand ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The New Deal

This essay examines the relationship between the novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and the broader conservative movement in the twentieth-century United States. Although Rand was often dismissed as a lightweight popularizer, her works of radical individualism advanced bold arguments about the moral status of capitalism, and thus touched upon a core issue of conservative identity. Because Rand represented such a forthright pro-capitalist position, her career highlights the shifting fortunes of capitalism on the right. In the 1940s, she was an inspiration to those who struggled against the New Deal and hoped to bring about a new, market-friendly political order. As a second generation of conservatives built upon these sentiments and attempted to tie them to a defense of Christian tradition, Rand's status began to erode. Yet by the late 1960s, Rand's once-revolutionary defense of capitalism had become routine, although she herself remained a controversial figure. The essay traces the ways in which Rand's ideas were assimilated and modified by key intellectuals on the right, including William F. Buckley, Jr, Whittaker Chambers, and Gary Wills. It identifies the relationship between capitalism and Christianity as a fundamental dilemma for conservative and right-wing thinkers. By treating Rand as an intellectual and cultural leader of significant import, the essay broadens our understanding of the American right beyond the confines of “mainstream” conservatism, and re-establishes the primacy of the 1930s, and 1940s, to its ideological formation. Responding to a paucity of scholarship on Rand, the essay offers an analysis and summary of Rand's ideas, and argues that despite her outsider status, Rand's work both embodied and shaped fundamental themes of right-wing thought throughout the century.

scholarly journals Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalist Christianity: History, Identity, and the Falsity of Peripeteic Dialectics

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
Dustin J. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
World War ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Market Capitalism

The recent upsurge of European nationalism is partially an attempt to address the ongoing identity crisis that began with the Bourgeois revolution, which expressed itself through positivistic scientism and aggressive secularization, and culminated in the post-World War II “liberal consensus”: representative democracy and free-market capitalism as the “end of history.” Due to the needs of capitalism after World War II, coupled with the liberalization and Americanization of European societies, there has been a growing presence of “non-identical” elements within Europe, which itself is reexamining the very geography of what it means to be European. In this essay, I explore the historical context of the current identity struggles that are facing Europeans. From a Critical Theory perspective, I challenge the idea that Christianity or a Christian age can be resurrected by ultra-nationalists in their attempt to combat the cosmopolitanism of Western modernity. Moreover, I demonstrate how such attempts to return to an idealized Christian identity are rooted in a false possibility: Peripeteic Dialectics, or “dialectics in reverse.”

Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
And Behavior

This book explores the question of how policy makers gauge their adversaries’ intentions and the implications of such intentions assessment for international relations and world affairs. It advances a framework called the selective attention thesis and compares it to three well-known explanations of perceived intentions: the capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. All four theses are tested using three cases: British assessments of Nazi Germany’s intentions in the period leading to World War II; U.S. assessments of Soviet intentions under the administration of Jimmy Carter; and U.S. assessments of Soviet intentions in the years leading to the end of the Cold War during the second administration of Ronald Reagan. Drawing on these historical episodes, the book considers which indicators are used or ignored by decision makers and intelligence organizations when making intentions assessments.

scholarly journals T. J. Woofter Jr. and Government Social Science Research During the New Deal, World War II, and the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-272
Author(s):  
MARK ELLIS
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Social Security ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
World War ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

AbstractThe work of southern sociologist Thomas Jackson Woofter Jr. (1893–1972) is frequently cited by American historians, but his contribution to government policy on agriculture in the New Deal, Social Security in the 1940s, and demography in the Cold War remains underappreciated. He left the University of North Carolina to direct government research on rural relief in the 1930s, Social Security enhancement during and after World War II, and foreign population and manpower projections during the Cold War. Contributing to the delivery of essential programs in key agencies, he participated in internal and external debates over policy and social attitudes between 1930 and 1960. Woofter worked for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Farm Security Agency, the Federal Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency, improving data-gathering and assisting transitions in federal policymaking. This article assesses his role in those agencies, using official records, other primary materials, and secondary sources.

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