A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism / Edition 1

by Jonathan Schoenwald

Overview

How did American conservatism, little more than a collection of loosely related beliefs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, become a coherent political and social force in the 1960s? What political strategies originating during the decade enabled the modern conservative movement to flourish? And how did mainstream and extremist conservatives, frequently at odds over tactics and ideology, each play a role in reshaping the Republican Party? In the 1960s conservatives did nothing less than engineer their own revolution. A Time for Choosing tells the remarkable story behind this transformation.
Where previous accounts of conservatism's rise tend to speed from 1964 through the start of the Reagan era in 1980, A Time for Choosing explores in dramatic detail how conservatives took immediate action following the Goldwater debacle. William F. Buckley, Jr.'s 1965 bid for Mayor of New York City and Reagan's 1966 California governor's campaign helped turn the tide for electoral conservatism. By decade's end, independent "splinter groups" vied for the right to bear the conservative standard into the next decade, demonstrating the movement's strength and vitality.
Although conservative ideology was not created during the 1960s, its political components were. Here, then, is the story of the rise of the modern conservative movement. Provocative and beautifully written, A Time for Choosing is a book for anyone interested in politics and history in the postwar era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195157260
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	9.16(w) x 6.32(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Jonathan M. Schoenwald is a Lecturer in the Humanities at Stanford University. Previously he taught at the College of Wooster.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
1	The Birth of Postwar Conservatism	14
2	The Cold War Hits Home	35
3	A New Kind of Conservatism: The John Birch Society	62
4	The Case of General Edwin A. Walker	100
5	Creating Conflagration: Barry Goldwater and the Republican Party	124
6	Buckley for Mayor	162
7	A New Kind of Conservative: Ronald Reagan	190
8	Passing the Torch: Organizations and Issues, 1968-1972	221
	Conclusion	251
	Notes	267
	Bibliography	315
	Index	327

Editorial Reviews

"Elegantly written and persuasively argued, A Time for Choosing is destined to become a standard work in the study of modern conservatism. It is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the decline of liberalism and the dramatic shift to the right since 1960."—Steven M. Gillon, University of Oklahoma

"Jonathan Schoenwald has given us a well-researched and thoroughly fair account of the growth of the modern conservative movement from 1950 to 1972, centering on the struggle between its more responsible protagonists and its extremist fringes. In so doing, he is leading the way in giving the movement the serious historical attention it has long deserved. Future students of the movement will find his book indispensable."—William A. Rusher, The Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy

"Carefully argued, well researched, and far ranging, A Time for Choosing successfully reconceptualizes the rise of the modern conservative movement. Jonathan Schoenwald has clearly demonstrated that the conservative capture of the Republican party in 1964 was only the beginning of a dynamic process of taming extremists, attracting moderates, and integrating grassroots organizations into a viable electoral alliance that would eventually vanquish the New Deal coalition of President Franklin Roosevelt."—Robert Alan Goldberg, University of Utah

"In this crowded field, Schoenwald has accomplished a remarkable feat: rooting around the boxes in the conservative attic and recovering some of the more forgotten moments and figures from the movement's past."—Washington Monthly

"Amid the many recent books on the rise of American conservatism in the 1960s and 1970s, Jonathan Schoenwald's volume stands out for its depth of research, clarity of writing, and—above all—for its admirably balanced understanding of the dilemmas and divisions that confronted conservatives in those years."—James T. Patterson, Brown University

From the Publisher

Conservatism emerging as a political force to be reckoned with very well may be the most enduring counterculture movement of the Sixties. Schoenwald (humanities, Stanford) offers a thoroughly researched investigation of the love/hate relationship between mainstream Republican conservatism and extremist, rabid anti-Communist factions like the John Birch Society and how they merged in 1964 to nominate the conservative Arizona senator Barry Goldwater as the Republican Presidential candidate. While Goldwater proved to be the wrong man at the wrong time, Schoenwald demonstrates that Ronald Reagan was the right man at the right time just two years later when he was "surprisingly" elected governor of California. The conservative movement surpassed liberalism as the politics of choice for voters when its leaders and grass-roots workers discovered the limits of ideology, the importance of organization, and the necessity of getting out the vote. Although not as entertaining as Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (LJ 2/15/01), Schoenwald's is an excellent account of the spread of conservatism from 1957 to 1972. His study is especially strong in revealing the internal workings of the many splinter groups that the movement comprised during its formative years. Strongly recommended for larger public and academic collections. Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal