As the party that has won wars, reversed recessions and held prime ministerial power more times than any other, the Conservatives have played an undoubtedly crucial role in the shaping of contemporary British society. And yet, the leaders who have stood at its helm - from Sir Robert Peel to David Cameron, via Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher - have steered the party vessel with enormously varying degrees of success.;With the widening of the franchise, revolutionary changes to social values and the growing ubiquity of the media, the requirements, techniques and goals of Conservative leadership since the party's nineteenth-century factional breakaway have been forced to evolve almost beyond recognition - and not all its leaders have managed to keep up.;This comprehensive and enlightening book considers the attributes and achievements of each leader in the context of their respective time and diplomatic landscape, offering a compelling analytical framework by which they may be judged, detailed personal biographies from some of the country's foremost political critics, and exclusive interviews with former leaders themselves.; An indispensable contribution to the study of party leadership, British Conservative Leaders is the essential guide to understanding British political history and governance through the prism of those who created it.;Contributing authors include Matthew d'Ancona, Tim Bale, Stuart Ball, Jim Buller, John Campbell, John Charmley, Charles Clarke, Mark Davies, Patrick Diamond, David Dutton, Dr Mark Garnett, Richard A. Gaunt, William Hague, Angus Hawkins, Timothy Heppell, Andrew Holt, Michael Howard, Toby S. James, Nigel Keohane, Jo-Anne Nadler, T. G. Otte, Anne Perkins, Robert Saunders, Anthony Seldon, Andrew Taylor, D. R. Thorpe and Alan Wager.

During the spring semester of 1975, Wayne Woodward, a popular young English teacher at La Plata Junior High School in Hereford, Texas, was unceremoniously fired. His offense? Founding a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Believing he had been unjustly targeted, Woodward sued the school district. You Will Never Be One of Us chronicles the circumstances surrounding Woodward's dismissal and the ensuing legal battle. Revealing a uniquely regional aspect of the cultural upheaval of the 1970s, the case offers rare insight into the beginnings of the rural-urban, local-national divide that continues to roil American politics. By 1975 Hereford, a quiet farming town in the Texas Panhandle, had become "majority minority," and Woodward's students were mostly the children of Mexican and Mexican American workers at local agribusinesses. Most townspeople viewed the ACLU as they did Woodward's long hair and politics: as threatening a radical liberal takeover-and a reckoning for the town's white power structure. Locals were presented with a choice: either support school officials who sought to rid themselves of a liberal troublemaker, or side with an idealistic young man whose constitutional rights might have been violated. In Timothy Bowman's deft telling, Woodward's story exposes the sources and depths of rural America's political culture during the latter half of the twentieth century and the lengths to which small-town conservatives would go to defend it. In defining a distinctive rural, middle-American "Panhandle conservatism," You Will Never Be One of Us extends the study of the conservative movement beyond the suburbs of the Sunbelt and expands our understanding of a continuing, perhaps deepening, rift in American political culture.

Polls indicate that the newsrooms and editorial boards of America's largest news organizations are overwhelmingly populated with self-described progressives, or Leftists. This high concentration of Leftists in newsrooms has created an echo chamber that insulates journalists, editors, and producers from opposing viewpoints and alternative political opinion. Timely and hard-hitting, Distorted Landscape examines the deceptively false narratives crafted by Leftists in the media and by politicians about the issues of guns and race, war and peace, and wealth and charity. Philip J. Eveland shows how journalists, along with their political comrades, who possess this echo-chamber mentality, slant the narrative toward the political Left. Eveland presents several examples of how the media's Leftist bias distorts the landscape of current affairs and politics, distracting the public's attention away from the core issues by instead focusing on the symptoms rather than the causes of the chronic problems plaguing the nation. His blunt critique of this disturbing trend makes a strong case for greater transparency among politicians and the media. Gain a new appreciation for the depth and extent of Leftist media bias and learn how to glean the truth on the issues of today with Distorted Landscape.

"A Selection of the History Book Club"

As far as members of the hugely controversial John Birch Society were concerned, the Cold War revealed in stark clarity the loyalties and disloyalties of numerous important Americans, including Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Earl Warren. Founded in 1958 as a force for conservative political advocacy, the Society espoused the dangers of enemies foreign and domestic, including the Soviet Union, organizers of the US civil rights movement, and government officials who were deemed "soft" on communism in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Sound familiar? In "The World of the John Birch Society," author D. J. Mulloy reveals the tactics of the Society in a way they've never been understood before, allowing the reader to make the connections to contemporary American politics, up to and including the Tea Party. These tactics included organized dissemination of broad-based accusations and innuendo, political brinksmanship within the Republican Party, and frequent doomsday predictions regarding world events. At the heart of the organization was Robert Welch, a charismatic writer and organizer who is revealed to have been the lifeblood of the Society's efforts.

The Society has seen its influence recede from the high-water mark of 1970s, but the organization still exists today. Throughout "The World of the John Birch Society," the reader sees the very tenets and practices in play that make the contemporary Tea Party so effective on a local level. Indeed, without the John Birch Society paving the way, the Tea Party may have encountered a dramatically different political terrain on its path to power.

TEAR DOWN THAT WALL OF GUILT

If you are trying to raise a respectful and respectable American family and are embarrassed by the liberal media's filth and perversion you and your children are subjected to on a daily basis, remember one thing: Liberalism is at its core, licentious, morally degrading and abusive to family life. To stop the abuse you must embrace the truth: Conservatism conserves and protects family values that have made America the shining beacon of Christian family life.

To preserve the American family you must make a decision not merely to eschew liberalism and degradation but to champion conservatism and our traditional American values.

To do so you must first TEAR DOWN THAT WALL OF GUILT You must know you are guilty of nothing that may have happened to a Negro, Indian, Asian or Jew at any time in our recent or ancient past, and you must stop bowing at the silly altar of political correctness. You must regain your dignity, your individuality and your moral certitude. You must rise up and be counted as an American heart and soul, in spirit and purpose; willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to preserve America as it was founded to be and for which so many fought and died for it to be. Your children are counting on you. They will not survive as free Americans without your courage and your resolve. TEAR DOWN THAT WALL OF GUILT LET THE RECLAMATION OF AMERICA BEGIN

This is volume 18 in the "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" series. Herbert Spencer (1820-1904) was one of the foremost philosophers of the Victorian age. For the most of his life, he was engaged in building a 'synthetic philosophy' that ranged from biology to aesthetics to politics. Spencer was a defender of the doctrine of classical liberalism, akin to contemporary libertarianism, which he elaborated to a higher degree of synthesis and internal consistency. Though a friend and admirer of John Stuart Mill, he was far from an adherent to some of the principles that Mill held dear. In particular, in the dawn of democracy Spencer found not just the dangerous illusions of the masses overcoming the rights of the individual, but a new 'divine right of parliaments', an equal enemy to individual freedom as the divine right of kings. "Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers" provides comprehensive accounts of the works of seminal conservative thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines, and traditions - the first series of its kind. Even the selection of thinkers adds another aspect to conservative thinking, including not only theorists but also writers and practitioners. The series comprises twenty volumes, each including an intellectual biography, historical context, critical exposition of the thinker's work, reception and influence, contemporary relevance, bibliography including references to electronic resources, and an index.

See the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction

aThompson . . . has put together a book of essays that seeks to aconfronta this news conservatism and lay bare its inner workings. The collection brings together commentators on contemporary American politics. . . . The group has an unabashedly progressive bent and their stated objective is to bury the new conservatism even as they enviously praise its successes.a
--"Popmatters"

aA useful resource that will enable the careful reader to understand the similarities and differences among these multiple ideologies.a--"Choice"

aArguing that American conservatism today is not only a rejoinder to liberalism but a reflection of at least some of its values, Confronting the New Conservatism subjects the neo-conservative and Christian conservative movements to thoughtful scrutiny and original scholarly analysis. While animated by progressive politics, this collection offers students and citizens alike a deeper look at the intellectual and ideological foundations of the American right in ways that will encourage understanding as well as a more effective liberal response.a
--Benjamin R. Barber, author of "Jihad vs. McWorld"

aThompson has assembled an exciting collection of essays written by a high quality group of scholars. The essays are sharp and academically rigorous, but also highly engaging and readable."
--Judith Grant, author of "Fundamental Feminism"

William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, George F. Will, and Dick Cheney. These are today's neoconservatives--confident, clear-cut, and a political force to be reckoned with. But how should we define this new conservatism? What is new about it?In this volume, some of today's top political scholars take on the charge of explaining, defining, and confronting the new conservatism of the last twenty-five years. The authors examine the ideas, policies and roots of this ideological movement showing that contemporary neoconservatism has been able to blend many of the aspects of social conservatism--such as religious populism and nationalism--with economic liberalism and the rhetoric of equality of opportunity and individualism. With their emphasis on dismantling the welfare state and a rhetorical return to economic laissez faire and individual rights, neoconservatives have been able to harness populist sentiment in terms of both economics and cultural issues. And with their belief in moral and cultural "simplicity," their turn away from science, their conviction in American superiority on the global stage, and their embrace of "anti-government" rhetoric, they have effectively changed the nature of the American political landscape.

The contributors to Confronting the New Conservatism offer a trenchant analysis and substantive critique of the neoconservative ethos, arguing that it is an ideology that needs to be better understood if change is to be had.

Contributors: Stanley Aronowitz, Chip Berlet, Stephen Eric Bronner, Lawrence Davidson, Greg Grandin, Philip Green, Diana M. Judd, Thomas M. Keck, Charles Noble, R. Claire Snyder, Michael J. Thompson, and Nicholas Xenos.

As recently as 2008, when Presidents Bush and Obama acted to bail out the nation's crashing banks and failing auto companies, the perennial objection erupted anew: government has no business in . . . business. Mike O'Connor argues in this book that those who cite history to decry government economic intervention are invoking a tradition that simply does not exist. In a cogent and timely take on this ongoing and increasingly contentious debate, O'Connor uses deftly drawn historical analyses of major political and economic developments to puncture the abiding myth that business once operated apart from government. From its founding to the present day, our commercial republic has always mixed--and battled over the proper balance of--politics and economics.

Contesting the claim that the modern-day libertarian conception of U.S. political economy represents the "natural" American economic philosophy, O'Connor demonstrates that this perspective has served historically as only one among many. Beginning with the early national debate over the economic plans proposed by Alexander Hamilton, continuing through the legal construction of the corporation in the Gilded Age and the New Deal commitment to full employment, and concluding with contemporary concerns over lowering taxes, this book demonstrates how the debate over government intervention in the economy has illuminated the possibilities and limits of American democratic capitalism.