Année universitaire 2013/2014

Collège universitaire
Semestre de printemps

History of U.S. Conservatism

Since 1945
Instructor : Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins

Syllabus

Course Description

What is the difference between a Neo-Liberal and a Neo-Con? How did American Evangelicals transition from
politically irrelevancy during the 1950s and 1960s into a political force to be reckoned with by the mid-1970s? And
what are the intellectual and political origins of the idea that liberal democratic regimes reserve the right to protect
civil and political freedoms by preemptively restricting the exercise of such freedoms? This course seeks to provide
answers to these and other related questions by offering a panoramic survey of American Conservatism since
World War II. It does so by looking at key concepts and ideas typically associated with the conservative movement. The
ultimate goal is to help you conceptualize the diversity of American conservatism and to provide you with an enriched
understanding of its recent developments and contemporary significance in the U.S. The success of this course depends
on you having reflected on the weekly reading assignments and your discussion of these texts in class. All of the readings
are accessible via PDFs made available to you as shared docs on Google Drive.

Class Schedule

Week 1: Introduction to the course : Discuss Syllabus and Presentation Topics

Reading: Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, preface only (pdf); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “The Need for an
Intelligent Opposition,” New York Times Magazine, 1950
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/26/specials/schlesinger-opposition.html>

Week 2: Origins of Post-War Conservatism

Reading: William F. Buckley, National Review mission statement (1944) (pdf) ; Russell Kirk, The Conservative
Mind (1953), chapters 1, 13 (pdf); Mount Perelin Society, “Statement of Aims” (1947) (pdf) ; Patrick Allitt, “The New
Conservatism, 1945-1964,” in The Conservatives (pdf);

Week 3: Cold War Conservatism

Reading: Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” and “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt-
1954” in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (1964), chapters 1-2 (pdf); Irving Kristol, “’Civil
Liberties’ 1952 – A Study in Confusion,” The New York Intellectuals Reader (pdf); Senator Joseph McCarthy,
Speech at Wheeling, WV (1950) (pdf); Sidney Hook & Bertrand Russell, “A Foreign Policy for Survival: An
Exchange” in the New Intellectual Reader (pdf)

Week 4: The Return of Laissez-Faire: Part I

Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944), “The Abandoned Road” (pdf); _________, The Constitution of

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 Liberty, "Why I Am Not a Conservative” (pdf); Milton Friedman, “Capitalism and Freedom,” in William F. Buckley
and Charles R. Kesler, eds., Keeping the Tablets (1988), pp. 125-137 (pdf); Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion:
Reinventing Markets Since the Great Depression (2012), selected chapters (pdf)

Week 5 : The Return of Laissez-Faire: Part II

Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2011), selected chapters (pdf); Philip
Mirowskic, Never Let a Serious Crisis go to Waste : How Neo-Liberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown (2013),
selected chapters (pdf); Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind : Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (2011),
chapter 3 (pdf)

Week 6: Straussianism
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (1953), selections (pdf) ; Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right
(1999), selected chapters (pdf); Mark Lilla, “The Closing of the Straussian Mind” New York Times Review of Books (2004)
<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/nov/04/the-closing-of-the-straussian-mind/>

Week 7: Neoconservativism
Irving Kristol, “Urban Civilization and Its Discontents,” The Neocon Reader (pdf); Irving Kristol, “Corporate
Capitalism in America” (pdf); Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic” (pdf); Adam Wolfson, “Conservatives and
Neoconservatives,” The Neoconservative (pdf)

Week 8: Foreign Policy

Jeanne Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards” (pdf); Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History” (pdf);
William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs (1996) (pdf);
Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness” (pdf)

Week 9: Religion and Society

Matthew Avery Sutton, Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right, excerpts (pdf); Richard Neuhaus, “What
the Evangelicals Want” (pdf); George Weigel, “Christian Conviction and Democratic Etiquette” (pdf); Robert
George, “The Tyrant State,” First Things (November 1996) (pdf); Robert George “The Debate Over Same-Sex
Marriage” (pdf); Rebecca Klatch, Women of the New Right, Chapter 5 (pdf)

Week 10: Culture Wars

Patrick Buchanan, “1992 Republican National Convention Speech” (pdf); Irving Kristol, “The Adversary Culture of
the Intellectuals,” (pdf); Gertrude Himmelfarb, “A Demoralized Society,” (pdf); Alan Bloom, The Closing of the
American Mind, excerpts (pdf); Richard Jensen, “The Culture Wars, 1965-1995: A Historian’s Map,”
Journal of Social History, Journal of Social History 29 (October 1995), pp. 17-37 (pdf)

Week 11: Populism

Stephen Tonsor, “Why I Am Not a Neoconservative” (pdf); Patrick Buchanan, Where the Right Went Wrong
(excerpts) (pdf); Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, excerpts (pdf); Teaparty.org, “Non-negotiable Demands” ((pdf)
Tea Party Patriots, “Mission Statement” (pdf); Mark Lilla, “The Beck of Revelation,” New York Review of Books,
December 9, 2010 (pdf).

Week 12: The Future of U.S. Conservatism

Mark Lilla, “The Tea Party Jacobins,” New York Review of Books (May 27, 2010); Reihan Salam and Ross
Douthat, “The Party of Sam’s Club,” Weekly Standard (pdf); Francis Fukuyama, “The Neoconservative Legacy”
(pdf).

Course Requirements

The grade for this course consists of three components. Your participation in class is of utmost importance.
You should come to class prepared to discuss the required readings. At the beginning of each class I will
introduce the topic of discussion. My main aim, however, is to facilitate a discussion of the readings. Hence,
the success of the course depends significantly on your participation in class.
You will also be required to give a 10-15 minute presentation on one of the key topics of the course. You
will be provided with a list of presentation topics, however you are free to suggest a topic of your choosing – this does
necessarily mean it will be approved. Finally you be required to write and 8-10 page paper on a topic of your choice
related to the course. The papers will be due the final day of the course (TBA).

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 Grade Breakdown
Participation: 20%
Presentation: 30%
Final Paper: 50%

Références bibliographiques :

All required readings will be made available via shared PDF documents on Google Drive.
The following book are recommended – but not required – standard texts on US. Conservatism.

1. George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement since 1945

2. Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement
3. Jonathan Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism

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