The National Association of Manufacturers and the Militarization of American Conservatism

2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Soffer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Association ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Before And After ◽  
National Association Of Manufacturers ◽  
Industry Membership ◽  
The Right

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) played an important role in the emerging conservative movement in the United States, both before and after World War II, but its contribution to the increasing militarism of that movement has received little scrutiny. Between 1958 and 1975, a combination of organizational changes peculiar to NAM and political pressures from both the right and the left led NAM to adopt and maintain a militaristic posture. In the late 1950s, a decline in the organization's membership resulted in a take over by larger corporations, which purged the board of its ultraconservative leadership. The reorganized board established a National Defense Committee (NDC) in order to promote defense industry membership and, by 1962, had selected a new permanent president, Werner Gullander. Under Gullander, the NDC moved NAM in the direction of support for defense expansion during the early 1960s.

Conservatism

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kivisto
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Right

Conservatism refers to one of the constituent political positions found in all contemporary democracies. It can be construed as a philosophy, an ideology, a political party, a movement, a disposition, a mode of discourse, performance style, and an emotional relationship to the political. Since the birth of modern democracies in the aftermath of the French Revolution, it has become commonplace to describe the range of political options available to the citizenry as occupying a spectrum from left to right, with a range of alternatives between the extreme poles, including a centrist position in the middle that straddles the divide. The left was associated with promoting challenges to established authorities and existing hierarchies, along with calls for increased economic equality and expanded social and political rights to all citizens, including the heretofore marginalized. This contrasts with the right, which was defined as defending inequalities and differential entitlements, concentrating matters involving rights around preserving property rights, shoring up public and social order, and promoting traditional values and conventional social relations. In this context, liberalism became a mark of political identity associated with the left, as did socialism, while conservatism, broadly construed, represented the right. This framing of politics also includes the possibility of underminings by extremism on both the left and right. For the former, the main threat since the Russian Revolution has been posed by revolutionary communism, while right-wing extremism has manifested itself in reactionary movements, including fascism and illiberal populism. Since liberalism and conservatism must be understood in relational terms, the spatial and temporal settings for the politics of opposition will vary considerably. It is impossible to do justice to the vast literature on conservatism in a bibliography such as this. What follows is a more delimited, and thus manageable examination of work on conservatism. First, it focuses on conservatism in the United States, and not elsewhere. Second, it is chiefly concerned with conservatism since the end of World War II. Third, it concentrates on the study of conservatism by sociologists and those working in cognate disciplines; while not all the authors are card-carrying sociologists, their works reflect a sociological character, although the exception to this third point is the overview section, which presents key readings by advocates of conservatism, and thus offers insider depictions of the meaning of conservatism. Fourth, this article does not concentrate solely on extremist right-wing movements; rather, in surveying the relevant literature on American conservatism broadly construed, it points to a growing consensus that the radical right wing has pushed mainstream conservatism increasingly further to the right.

scholarly journals NEW TRENDS IN THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AT THE END OF THE 20th CENTURY: DISCUSSION ON SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-312
Author(s):  
V.R. Zolotykh
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
Contract With America ◽  
The Welfare State

The novelty of this research lies in its primary task: to study the adaptation process of American conservatism to a rapidly changing world. The article attempts to trace the formation process of a conservative socio-political strategy in the 1990s, through the analysis of 1) factors that influenced the strengthening of the consolidation of the conservative movement in the early 1990s, 2) the reaction of the Right to the implementation of the "Contract with America" in 1994, and 3) discussions that was unfolded between the leaders of the conservative movement during the election campaigns of 1992, 1996 and 2000. The analyzed material allows to conclude that 1990s became a period when a new kind of conservative model of social policy is taking shape as a real alternative to the social-liberal model. The new tendencies manifested in the conservative movement were incorporated into the conservative version of the “welfare state”. The scientific novelty of this work is also in the investigation of the social policy of conservatives alongside with the evolution of the conservative movement.

Foundations of American Conservatism

1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 1105-1117
Author(s):  
W. Hardy Wickwar
Keyword(s):  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Will ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Comparative Political Theory ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right

To the student of comparative political theory, few things are more fascinating than the contrast not only between different ages but also between different countries in one and the same age. The greatest advances in the collective thinking of Western humanity have been made coöperatively by men of every nation; and in every age all unite to give to that age its own distinctive character; yet each people contributes something of its own national genius to the spirit of the age. He, then, who would understand a country and the pattern of its people's thinking does well to inquire in what way it has deviated from the thinking of other nations in particular epochs.Whoever looks at early nineteenth-century America must be struck by its aloofness from many of the main currents of Western thinking. In the great Revolution of the eighteenth century, it had not been thus. The Lockean and Blackstonean tradition of the right of Englishmen to protect their property through representative organs; Rousseau's concept of equal natural rights of every individual and the right of the sovereign people in convention to reconstitute society according to its general will; Montesquieu's advocacy of checks and balances as safeguards of liberty; Quesnay's physiocratic cult of land as the natural source of wealth and power; Adam Smith's analysis of the relationship between national policy and private commerce; deism in religion; and associationism in psychology—these were among the many trends in the Age of Reason that came to a focus in the revolt of the thirteen colonies and the establishment of the United States.

Something Has Changed

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-192
Author(s):  
Jack Reid
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Personal Safety ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Ride Sharing ◽  
National Values ◽  
The 1960S

The epilogue summarizes key arguments in the book and reflects on ideas about ride solicitation in contemporary society—noting the intersections between hitchhiking and modern ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. Hitchhiking was common for decades in the United States, because it complimented the transportation needs of a cross-section of Americans while also meshing with the nation’s values—whether it be during the Great Depression, World War II, or the “hitchhiking renaissance” of the 1960s and ‘70s. The practice lost traction when thumbing rides fell out of touch with national values amid the rise of the conservative movement, increasing transportation regimentation, and growing concerns for personal safety.

The Evolution of the “American Empire”

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
José A. Cabranes
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Empire ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Right ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt ◽  
The New Deal

Today, the anniversary of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, is especially appropriate for a discussion of the political evolution of two territories whose development, before and after his death, was shaped by Roosevelt’s enlightened vision of world public order. The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) was an inheritance of a war waged by the United States in affirmation of “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live.” Puerto Rico’s progressive dismantlement of colonial government had its origins in the New Deal. It was furthered by Roosevelt’s support of Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party and a policy favoring self-determination and decolonization entrusted by Roosevelt to a succession of sympathetic and imaginative administrators. Both territories emerged in the postwar period as natural objects of the concern of the world community which Roosevelt helped to organize.

The United States and Self-Determination: Perspectives on the Wilsonian Conception

1976 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michla Pomerance
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
The Right

Ever since the principle of self-determination entered the lexicon of international politics during World War I, American foreign policymakers have had to contend with problems revolving around that concept. The need to favor one or another claimant, each waving the banner of self-determination and invoking the “right to determine its own fate,” continues to present dilemmas, often extremely troubling ones, for U.S. decisionmakers. Examples from recent history come readily to mind. The entire post-World War II decolonization process entailed an endless series of such dilemmas, and even after formal decolonization was all but completed, such nagging issues as Katanga, Biafra, and Eritrea remained, not to mention the problems of South Africa, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Indochina. Indeed, even within America’s own imperial domain, the United States was faced with the conflicting demands of the Puerto Rican nationalists and the majority of the Puerto Rican electorate, the claims of the Marianas as against those of Micronesia as a whole, and demands for cultural autonomy on the part of diverse ethnic groups.

Human Rights and the Right to Culture in China

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-31
Author(s):  
John Young
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Policy Failures

As anthropologists we are often preoccupied with our own circumscribed studies of local communities. Only during World War II did we embrace the global dimensions and importance of cultural differences. Many Western anthropologists who have recently, and as a matter of conscience, become concerned with globalization have abandoned the concept of culture as an organizing principle, perhaps in part because they confuse cultural relativism with moral relativism, and perhaps because it is fashionable to denounce their forebears. As professionals I think we must deal with the cultural dimensions of a problem first before making moral judgements. I remain convinced that the concept of culture is a useful tool for understanding and shaping macro-level political understanding and dialogue, in somewhat the same way as Ruth Benedict and others demonstrated more than half a century ago. American policy failures in the international arena, of which the war in Afghanistan is one result, are related to arrogance (ethnocentrism) which breeds ignorance of other cultures and a lack of comparative perspective on American culture as well. Human rights is one issue where the United States is blindly pushing its own agenda to its own detriment.

Jury Service and Women's Citizenship before and after the Nineteenth Amendment

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gretchen Ritter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Jury Service ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Citizenship

The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution had surprisingly little impact on women's citizenship or the American constitutional order. For seventy-two years, from 1848 until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, suffrage was the central demand of the woman rights movement in the United States. Women demanded the right to vote in the nineteenth century because they believed it would make them first class citizens with all the rights and privileges of other first class citizens. Both normatively and instrumentally, the suffragists believed that voting would secure equal citizenship for women by raising their civic status and allowing them to assert their political interests. Yet in many ways women were more politically efficacious in the years just prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment than they were afterward. Further, their ability to claim rights from the courts and legislatures, on the basis of their new status as voting citizens, was limited.

Immigration, National Identity, and Conservatism in the United States

Politics ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Ashbee
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
Legal Immigration ◽  
Bare Minimum

American conservatives are divided about the future of legal immigration. Whereas some assert that the US should remain a ‘nation of immigrants’, others insist that immigration levels should be reduced to a bare minimum. The divisions owe much to ddifferent conceptions of American national identity. Whereas some represent the US as a ‘universal nation’ open to all those who subscribe to particular political and philosophical principles, growing numbers within the conservative movement put forward visions of an American nation structured around a distinct ethno-culture. The rifts are deeply rooted, and have consequences for the future of both American conservatism and the Republican Party.

The Economic Progress of American Jewry: From Eighteenth-Century Merchants to Twenty-First-Century Professionals

2010 ◽  
pp. 624-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry R. Chiswick
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
World War ◽  
Employment Practices ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
Before And After

This article focuses on the economic progress of American Jewry. The American Jewish community has experienced a remarkable economic advancement from the nineteenth century to the present, both in absolute terms and relative to the non-Jewish population of the United States. It is an achievement that is unprecedented in terms of the various racial, ethnic, and religious groups that compromise the American population. The article examines the economic progress of American Jews with the help of quantitative data. It then traces the condition of the Jews in the colonial period to position of the Jews in Eastern Europe including Germany. The article further traces the occupation of Jewish people before and after the Second World War. With the end of World War II there was a change in attitudes toward anti-Semitic employment practices. One of the sectors was in higher education. A discussion on wealth acquired by Jewish people concludes this article.

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