"Joseph Scotchie wishes to tell the story of what he terms an
"underfunded, mostly unknown movement" known as the
"paleoconservative" or "Old Right" which, he argues, has "provided
the intellectual firepower behind the troubled populism of the
1990's." And Scotchie is not afraid to ask hard questions." --"The
Review of Politics"
"An essential and valuable contribution to American intellectual
history in the last decade of the last century." -- "The American
Conservative"
The dominant forces of American conservatism remain wedded, at all
costs, to the Republican Party, but another movement, one with its
roots in the pre-World War II era, has stepped forth to fill an
intellectual vacuum on the right. This Old Right first rose in
opposition to the New Deal, fighting both statism at home and the
emergence of an American empire abroad. More recently this
movement, sometimes called paleoconservatism, has provided the
ideological backbone of modern populism and the opposition to
globalization, with decisive effects on presidential politics. In
"Revolt from the Heartland," Joseph Scotchie provides an
intellectual history of the Old Right, treating its main figures
and defining its conflict with the traditional left-right political
mainstream.
As Scotchie's account makes clear, the Old Right and its
descendents have articulated an arresting and powerful worldview.
They include an array of learned and provocative writers, including
M.E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and Murray Rothbard,
and more recently, Clyde Wilson, Thomas Fleming, Samuel Francis,
and Chilton Williamson, Jr. Beginning with the movement's
anti-Federalist forerunners, Scotchie traces its developments over
two centuries of American history. In the realm of politics and
economics, he examines the anti-imperialist stance against the
Spanish-American War and the League of Nations, the split among
conservatives on Cold War foreign policy, and the hostility to the
socialist orientation of the New Deal. Identifying a number of
social and cultural attitudes that define the Old Right, Scotchie
finds the most important to be the importance of the classics, a
recognition of regional cultures, the primacy of family over state,
the moral case against immigration. In general, too, a Tenth
Amendment approach to such recurring issues as education, abortion,
and school prayer characterizes the group.
As Scotchie makes clear, the Old Right and its grass-roots
supporters have, and continue to be, a powerful force in modern
American politics in spite of a lack of institutional support and
media recognition. "Revolt from the Heartland" is an important
study of a persisting current in American political life.
Joseph Scotchie is the author of "Barbarians in the Saddle: An
Intellectual Biography of Richard M. Weaver" and the editor of "The
Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right" and "The Vision of
Richard Weaver," all available from Transaction. He is also the
author of a biography on the novelist Thomas Wolfe.
""Joe Scotchie's terrific new book solves a Great American
Mystery. Why do our conservative intellectuals attack one another
more viciously than they do liberals? Why does the splintered
movement-Old Right, Neoconservative, New Right, and Beltway
Right-behave like old communists who would rather purge each other
than carry out the revolution? Why, if a member has some success,
as when Pat Buchanan won in New Hampshire in 1996, do the rest
attack him until they have assured his defeat? It's an incredible
story and you have to read the book to find the answer""-William J.
Quirk, Professor of Law, "University of South Carolina"
""As an immigrant, I have always regarded the American conserative
movement as the flower of democracy, the real reason for the Free
World's victory in the Cold War. But flowers do not grow to the sky
and the historic conservative movement is clearly now dead. In this
remarkable and erudite account, Joseph Scothie investigates the new
shoots that are coming up, traces their roots, and analyzes their
future-and America's.""
-Peter Brimelow, author of "Alien Nation: Common Sense About
America's Immigration Disaster"
""With truly masterful precision, Joe Scotchie illuminates the
myriad dissident strains of American Conservatism which knocked at
the doors of power at the end of the Cold War before meeting a
fateful rebuff. He tells the story of those distinctive Right wing
intellectuals who said "no" to an imperial foreign policy, mass
immigration, and a globalized economy. While this band lost the key
internecine battles of the 1990s to Newt Gingrich the
neoconvervatives, and the politics of Clinton-bashing, in Scotchie'
eloquent account their struggle for a conservatism rooted a sense
of measure and respect for the American past retains all its
piquancy for the decade to come.""-Scott McConnell
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