Take Back the Right: How the Neocons and the Religious Right Have Hijacked the Conservative Movement

From the days of Barry Goldwater through his work for presidential candidate Steve Forbes, Philip Gold was an active and influential conservative. The Great Society of the ‘60s seemed like a scam to this poor Jewish kid from Pittsburgh, so off he went to Yale and thus began a thirty-year crusade for the Right as an Ivy League marine, a cog in the think-tank world, participant in political campaigns, and a Beltway defense intellectual in the ‘80s and ‘90s. But growing disillusionment with the creed and its people provoked his clean break from the Right in 2002. Lithely written yet earnest, peppered with humor and insight, Take Back the Right is an anecdotal tale of a Republican policymaker’s breakup with the conservative movement. While regaling readers with personal and political tales, Gold explores the forces that prompted his opposition to the war in Iraq, his first published critiques of Bush and the neo-conservatives around him, and his dismay at the cultural conservatives who have alienated the party from its roots. Gold predicts that our country is facing its greatest crises since the 1850s as his book prepares readers for what lies ahead and how we can avert disaster.

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The author of Against All Terrors: This People’s Next Defense challenges conservatism from within, arguing that the religious right and conservative ideologues have hijacked this hallowed American political tradition. Original.

Gold, a prolific journalist on conservative matters and currently president of Aretea, a cultural affairs center, here discusses his experiences with the mainstream conservative movement in U.S. politics since the Goldwater campaign of 1964. Because he opposes the U.S. war with Iraq, his role changed from leading conservative advocate to critic who argues that mainstream conservatism has abandoned its roots. Neoconservatives (neocons), says Gold, have redefined the movement's goals to fight a culture war and lead an aggressive national foreign policy. His challenge to conservatism's intellectual shortcomings includes personal efforts to oppose the war in Iraq and the neocons' agenda "because they threaten us with both financial and moral bankruptcy." The principles of Gold's "retaken Right," or new conservatism for the 21st century, are based upon the American Founders' fundamental sensibility, including the possibilities of human freedom without ideological or religious rigidity. Gold's attempted personal conversation with the citizenry often follows multiple paths and would be useful for some public libraries.-Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.