The Right Side of the Sixties Reexamining Conservatism's Decade of Transformation

by Gifford, Laura Jane; Williams, Daniel K.

• ISBN13: 9781137014788
• ISBN10: 1137014784
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-07
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This volume offers a new perspective on American conservatism in the 1960s and the way in which the changes of the decade shaped the development of American politics for the next half-century. Historians have increasingly begun to view the sixties as a decade of conservatism, and a spate of landmark books in the field have traced the careers of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Wallace. Much, however, is still unknown about the growth of the conservative movement during this decade. In their effort to chronicle the national politicians and organizations that led the movement, previous histories of conservatism neglected to examine lesser-known developmentslocal perspectives, the role of religion, transnational dimensionsthat help to give clues to conservatism's enduring influence in American politics. The contributions here provide a synthesis of cutting-edge scholarship that addresses those overlooked developments and offers new insights into the way that the 1960s shaped the trajectory and contributed to the political power of postwar conservatism.

Author Biography

Laura Jane Gifford is a scholar in residence at George Fox University and the author of The Center Cannot Hold: The 1960 Presidential Election and the Rise of Modern Conservatism. Daniel K. Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of West Georgia and the author of God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What Happened to Conservatism in the 1960s?	p. 1
The Politics of Race
Courting Conservatism: White Resistance and the Ideology of Race in the 1960s	p. 21
"Inequality for All and Mint Juleps, Too": White Social Sororities and "Freedom of Association" in the United States	p. 41
"Build, Baby, Build": Conservative Black Nationalists, Free Enterprise, and the Nixon Administration	p. 61
Shaping Conservative Ideology
Fellow Travelers: Overlap between "Mainstream" and "Extremist" Conservatives in the Early 1960s	p. 83
From Without to Within the Movement: Consolidating the Conservative Think Tank in the "Long Sixties"	p. 101
God and Country
The Righteousness of Difference: Orthodox Jews and the Establishment Clause, 1965-71	p. 121
Richard Nixon's Religious Right: Catholics, Evangelicals, and the Creation of an Antisecular Alliance	p. 141
The International Arena
"Girded with a Moral and Spiritual Revival": The Christian Anti-Communism Crusade and Conservative Politics	p. 161
Disarming the Devil: The Conservative Campaign against a Nuclear Détente in the 1960s	p. 181
Defending Freedom in Vietnam: A Conservative Dilemma	p. 201
Evangelical Internationalism: A Conservative Worldview for the Age of Globalization	p. 221
The Conservative Triumph in the GOP
Spiro T. Agnew: The Decline of Moderates and Rise of the Republican Right	p. 243
Epilogue: Looking Back on the Decade in which Conservatism "Grew Up"	p. 261
Contributors	p. 267
Index	p. 271
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