Overview
In 1981, as Ronald Reagan swept into the White House and his men prepared to take over the government they had for years viewed with the greatest suspicion, the citizens of the United States woke up to discover that conservatism, once held in contempt, had become the nation's ruling ideology. The World Turned Right Side Up is a brilliant chronicle of the ideas and events that led to this astounding turnabout in American politics and public life. Godfrey Hodgson, a veteran journalist and historian, traces the patriotic, religious, social, and economic strands of conservatism from the dog days of the New Deal through the triumphs of the past fifteen years. He paints vivid portraits of key conservative figures, including Ronald Reagan, Ayn Rand, George Wallace, Pat Robertson, and William F. Buckley, Jr., and addresses a number of critical questions: Was there really a Reagan Revolution? Has American politics become"Europeanized," "southernized," both, or neither?Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
How conservatism, an impotent and unfashionable political philosophy at the end of WWII, gained a broad following, shifted the centerline of American politics to the right and captured seats of power is the theme of this penetrating inquiry. British journalist and historian Hodgson (America in Our Time) calls himself an ex-conservative turned "Whig," which may help to explain his empathic yet critical view of American conservatism. He tracks the movement from Ayn Rand's novels and Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind (1953) through Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, William Buckley's National Review, the harnessing of evangelical Christianity to conservative politics, Milton Friedman's monetarist economics and the defection of liberal intellectuals such as Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol and others to neoconservatism. In Hodgson's view, the so-called Reagan revolution yielded mixed results, bringing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War but also fueling a rapid growth in financial inequality among the electorate. Today's conservative movement, he asserts, is deeply divided between authoritarians and libertarians, and between neoconservatives and "paleoconservatives" whose creed is rooted in religious belief and tradition. (Oct.)Kirkus Reviews
And now for something completely different: a book on the recent fortunes of conservatism in America that is not an exercise in ideological hyperbole.As a British journalist covering the US since the 1960s, Hodgson (The Colonel, 1990, etc.) brings a relatively detached perspective to his subject. A self-described conservative-turned- Whig, he questions the coherence of the conservative movement, noting that the leaders of the oxymoronic "conservative revolution" include the scions of high society and accumulated wealth, but he does not dismiss the movement out of hand. He points out conservative achievements, most prominently Reagan's role in ending the Cold War, without using them to excuse failures. His approach combines a journalistic narrative with a solid intellectual history. Albert Jay Nock, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, and Russell Kirk are, he argues, the parents of contemporary conservative ideology, and the account of how their disparate ideas were molded into a more or less unified coalition is outstanding. The contributions of an odd mix of figures, from William F. Buckley to Richard Viguerie, are considered in relation to events ranging from the disastrous 1964 Goldwater presidential campaign to the Reagan victory in 1980. While desegregation was a critical catalyst in the rise of conservatism, and while race remains a powerful issue, Hodgson argues that anti-Communism was the glue that held the conservative coalition together. Ironically, the Communists' "defeat" by Reagan poses a problem for maintaining cohesiveness among conservatives, and Hodgson devotes the final chapter to speculation about the future of the movement. This is the least satisfying component of the book, but his ability to tell a story makes up for his unpersuasive speculations.
Committed partisans from left or right will not be satisfied, but readers who fall somewhere in the middle will find this insightful and entertaining.