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This chapter aims to interpret American Conservative thought, clarifying the concepts and attitudes that form the background for the political controversies that take place on issues of the Conservative agenda within American political life. In reflecting upon the agenda of political issues, the analysis of American Conservatism has conventionally been divided into three parts: Social Conservatism, Economic Conservatism, and Conservatism in foreign policy with its priority of protection of the national interest. To a degree, Social Conservatism is related to differing interpretations of the concept of liberty, Economic Conservatism is related to differing interpretations of the concept of equality, and Conservatism in foreign policy with its priority of protection of the national interest is related to differing interpretations or to alternative developments of the concept of fraternity.

This chapter identifies the different elements in the conservative movement and delineates its fundamental contradictions and conflicts. It delineates the different assumptions of economic, social, and national security conservatives and explains how the divisions between them could be overcome if the movement could reorganize around an agenda of limited government and low taxes.

The chapter explores the influence of the conservative movement on American economic policy. It assesses the role of conservative ideas on economic thought and practice and distinguishes between different strands of conservative economic philosophy and their relationship to policy. It assesses where conservative economic policy has been successful and where it has been less significant.

This chapter examines the claim that evangelical Christians are predisposed toward economic conservatism because of their individualistic theology. In the United States, white evangelicals are more economically conservative than other Americans. Yet Canadian evangelicals are just as supportive of redistributive social policy as other Canadians, even though they share the same tools of conservative Protestant theology. To solve this puzzle, the chapter compares how U.S. and Canadian evangelical congregations talked about poverty and the role of government. In both countries, evangelicals made sense of their religious responsibilities to “the poor” by reference to national identity. Evangelicals used their theological tools differently in the United States and Canada, because different visions of national solidarity served as cultural anchors for religious discourse about poverty.

This chapter undertakes the difficult task of defining Russian conservatism. Many of conservatism's most commonly cited features appear at best to fit uneasily together and at worst to contradict each other entirely. Conservatism is universalistic, but also anti-universalistic; seems to oppose change, but also to promote it; can be vehemently anti-liberal, but also can be liberal; and so on. Different groups labeled “conservative” often hold views diametrically opposed to one another. But different conservatives do all have something in common. Tying them together is the thread of a preference for organic change. Following this thread, the chapter demonstrates that Russian conservatism is not a philosophy of the status quo. Rather, it is one that endorses change, but change of a certain, gradual sort that is in keeping, as much as possible, with national traditions.

This chapter looks at how greater inclusiveness and formal equality were accompanied by growing distrust of government and the rise of market values in the post-1970s world. Over more than three decades, the result was a more diverse public culture in the realm of employment, entertainment, and politics, on the one hand, and a more economically differentiated society, on the other. Class differences widened, as measured by the distribution of income and wealth. But Americans had long been loath to talk about class divisions, something associated for the past century with Marxist analysis. Rather than addressing growing economic inequality, Americans tended instead to celebrate racial and ethnic diversity. Here, cultural liberalism and economic conservatism had come to form a de facto alliance. It had become the contemporary American condition, the ground on which the vaunted American middle class continued to shrink.

This chapter describes the substantive content and political dynamics of what is here referred to as “anti-caste liberalism”. Developed by Radical Republicans and their allies during the late 1860s, anti-caste liberals claimed that the Reconstruction amendments had placed the principle of racial equality at the pinnacle of the American constitutional order, charging the federal government with the responsibility to take action against the continued maintenance of racial caste. This position was quite radical for its time, as it insisted on the political imperative of a strong standard against racial discrimination. Although only briefly upheld as the law of the land, anti-caste constitutionalism continued to find expression in legal arguments, books, speeches, and political meetings well into the 1880s. On the other hand, anti-caste liberalism represented an essentially conservative position on economic issues. Particularly given the growing economic divisions and class antagonisms of the time, this combination of economic conservatism and racial, political, and legal radicalism illustrates the tremendous disjuncture that existed between the struggle against racial discrimination and the battle for economic justice in late 19th-century America.

This chapter traces the mass-level story of civil rights realignment among whites. The conventional understanding is that New Deal economic liberalism and racial liberalism were not related among whites until the 1960s or perhaps the late 1950s. The chapter shows that among northern whites, both Democratic partisanship and economic liberalism were linked to support for the major civil rights initiatives on the agenda in the late 1930s and 1940s. Although partisanship was uncorrelated with civil rights views among southern whites, economic conservatism was related to more conservative civil rights views. This connection between economic and racial conservatism in the South provided fertile ground for the GOP's eventual “southern strategy.” Ultimately, economically liberal northern Democrats provided much stronger support for most of the leading civil rights policy initiatives on the agenda than did economically conservative Republicans.

This chapter underlines the role of anti-unionism in challenges to the New Deal consensus, further highlighting the influence of economic conservatism in the immediate postwar years. New Deal-era laws increased workers' ability to form unions and set a minimum wage for many workers, fueling an economic prosperity that by the 1950s had created the century's narrowest income gap between the wealthy and middle-income workers. Corporate and conservative interests had challenged these laws from the start, and many emerged from World War II motivated by a renewed determination to slow labor's growing momentum and return workplace economics to the private sector.

This chapter examines how Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish nationalist politician, sought to make his name as a transatlantic leader of the home rule campaign and head of the Irish National Land League. In the early 1880s, there was a significant struggle over the direction of Irish nationalism between those who would privilege a global campaign against land monopoly and those who would focus directly on a national struggle and were blind to arguments against the unfairness of private ownership. Moreover, historian Mike Sewell argues that during the 1880s, “Irish nationalism overlapped with domestic radicalism” and thus jarred with the conservative drift of U.S. politics. Ultimately, Parnell and the Irish National League repudiated social radicalism in favor of constitutional nationalism and economic conservatism.