American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party [Hardcover]

Margaret Hoover (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 19, 2011

Margaret Hoover has been a lifelong member of the Republican Party. She grew up a self-described “ditto head.” She worked in the White House for President George W. Bush. Today she is a political commentator for Fox News, where, as one of Bill O’Reilly’s Culture Warriors, she regularly champions the conservative cause. She also happens to be the great-granddaughter of the thirty-first president of the United States, Herbert Hoover. These impeccable conservative credentials underscore the gravity of her deep-seated concerns about the future of the Republican Party. Her party, she believes, has fallen dangerously out of step with the rising generation of young Americans.
   In American Individualism, Margaret Hoover chal-lenges the up-and-coming millennial generation to take another look at the Republican Party. Although millennials rarely identify themselves as Republicans, Hoover contends that these young men and women who helped elect President Barack Obama are sympathetic to the fundamental principles of conservatism. She makes a compelling case for how the GOP can right itself and capture the allegiance of this group. She believes that her party is uniquely positioned to offer solutions for the most pressing problems facing America—skyrocketing debt and deficits, crises in education and immigration, a war against Islamist supremacy—but that it is held back by the outsize influence within the party of social and religious conservatives. 
   American Individualism is Hoover’s call to action for Republicans to embrace a conservatism that emphasizes individual freedom both in economic policy and in the realm of social issues in order to appeal to the new generation of voters. The Republican Party, Hoover asserts, can win the support of the millennials while at the same time remaining faithful to conservative principles. In a journey that is both political and personal, Hoover rediscovers these bedrock conservative values in the writings of her great-grandfather, President Herbert Hoover, who emphasized the vital importance of individual freedom to the American way of life and who sought to strike a delicate balance in identifying the limited yet essential role the federal government should play in the lives of Americans. 
   Margaret Hoover advocates a conservatism that is fully consistent with the original impulses of the American conservative movement. It evokes her great-grandfather’s emphasis on the values of civic responsibility and service to others—instincts instilled in the millennial generation. She argues that the Republican Party today must evolve in order to achieve greatness, and that it can do so without compromising its tried-and-true fundamental principles. On the contrary, those enduring principles, if consistently applied, will enable the party to attract a younger following. 
   An impassioned and persuasive political manifesto grounded in twentieth-century history and targeted at
the most perplexing problems of the twenty-first century, Margaret Hoover’s American Individualism offers provocative ideas not just for reinvigorating the Republican Party but also for strengthening America in the decades ahead.

Praise for American Individualism:

“It is not her great grandfather’s Republican party anymore. And Margaret Hoover has written a book that old Herbert would enjoy. Sassy, opinionated, and smart, Ms. Hoover shakes up conventional GOP wisdom.” 
—Bill O’Reilly, Anchor, Fox News Channel
 
“Margaret Hoover, a fresh and brilliant young voice in the Republican Party, is bent on connecting the GOP to rising generations of the young. She has something to say to their elders, too. They'd best hear her.”
—Peggy Noonan, columnist, Wall Street Journal

“Margaret Hoover's American Individualism is a must read for every member of the Republican party—elected or otherwise—as a new generation of Republicans try to shine new light on who exactly we should be.”
—Meghan McCain, author of Dirty Sexy Politics

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Guest Reviewer: John Calvin Batchelor on American Individualism by Margaret Hoover
John Calvin Batchelor is the host of a top-rated national radio program, The John Batchelor Show. Based in New York City at WABC, it airs seven nights a week from 9PM to 1AM. He is the author of Ain't You Glad You Joined the Republicans? A Short History of the GOP, and eight novels, among them, Father's Day and The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica.

In American Individualism, Margaret Hoover focuses on what we know so far of the Millennial generation of 20- and 30-somethings who voted 2 to 1 for Barack Obama in 2008. The Millennials welcomed the campaigning Obama's theme of hope and change; yet today they often feel ignored and helpless in the Great Recession and the stagnant Obama administration recovery. Margaret Hoover argues that the Millennials are now open to either of the major parties--or to no politics at all--and that the Republicans can gain the loyalty of the next generation of leaders by emphasizing tolerance, certainty and common sense. Margaret Hoover opens her quest with an anecdote from the 2004 election of George W. Bush, when she realized that the Republicans were deaf to the ambitions and assumptions of the youngest voters with issues as critical as same-sex marriage, immigration, and abortion, and she turned to this extended essay to correct the errors. Margaret Hoover is the great-granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover; she speaks carefully of Hebert Hoover's essay by the same title as this book, "American Individualism," which Hoover published in 1922 while he served the Harding administration as Secretary of Commerce. Herbert Hoover meant "American individualism" as a superior form of governance in competition with Communism, socialism, syndicalism, capitalism and autocracy. Margaret Hoover argues that her great-grandfather was an enthusiastic globalist who presented American individualism as an antidote to what he called "will-o'-the wisp of all breeds of socialism" that preaches altruism while it practices a cynical leveling that leaves bosses in charge.

Margaret Hoover emphasizes a reawakening of American individualism to counter the cynicism of the Federal government. Also, she joins her great-grandfather in seeing that American individualism is under assault not only by the dictator powers and the European Utopians but also by American politicians who aggrandize themselves with pious preaching of shared sacrifices, by which they mean higher taxes and fees on the so-called rich. Margaret Hoover is not uniformly rosy about the future: the Great Recession has frightened the young voters, the Millennials, into alienation and drift. Margaret Hoover does lay out a plan for attracting the Millennials with what she calls "competence over ideology." American Individualism is an edgily critical look at what the GOP is not doing or saying to attract the next generation. The elders of the GOP--I am one--will not welcome a change of music, but then growing old and moving on are not easy to accept. American Individualism is an earnest, often contrary, impatient measure of the GOP at the edge of another national election in which it can listen to the voice of Herbert Hoover through his great-granddaughter or it can lose the future electorate to Barack Obama and the Utopians.

Review

“It is not her great grandfather’s Republican party anymore. And Margaret Hoover has written a book that old Herbert would enjoy. Sassy, opinionated, and smart, Ms. Hoover shakes up conventional GOP wisdom.” 
—Bill O’Reilly, Anchor, Fox News Channel
 
“Margaret Hoover, a fresh and brilliant young voice in the Republican Party, is bent on connecting the GOP to rising generations of the young. She has something to say to their elders, too. They'd best hear her.”
—Peggy Noonan, columnist, Wall Street Journal

“Margaret Hoover's American Individualism is a must read for every member of the Republican party—elected or otherwise—as a new generation of Republicans try to shine new light on who exactly we should be.”
—Meghan McCain, author of Dirty Sexy Politics

“An insightful and important book”
—National Review

“Hoover is an engaging personality with timely advice for Republicans. Her book and her message…are helpful guides to candidates and political operatives. And frankly, the Republican Party of New York…might do well to get her on the ballot somewhere in 2012.”
– Washington Post

“The 2012 Republican nominee would do well to take a page from Hoover’s book — a lot of pages.”
– Chicago Sun Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Crown Forum (July 19, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307718158
• ISBN-13: 978-0307718150
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.8 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #147,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Elections & Political Process > Political Parties

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An important message to the Republican Party August 29, 2011

By D. Robison

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a well written, interesting, and potentially important and influential book. Its theme is that the Republican Party is on the verge of losing an entire generation of voters for life - but, doesn't have to. "Millennials" comprise a fifty million strong generation of Americans born roughly between the years 1980 and 1999. They voted 2-1 for Barack Obama in 2008, but are disenchanted with his presidency and Ms. Hoover believes they could be in play for the Republican Party in 2012 and beyond. But, they are suspicious of and even repelled by the old-style social conservatism of the Republican Party. She believes they can only be attracted to the party by a Ronald Reagan-style big tent approach that emphasizes the bedrock principles of individual liberty that all conservatives can agree on.

Margaret Hoover is probably the only writer on the planet who would begin an appeal to twenty-something voters by defending the record and beliefs of Herbert Hoover. But, she is his great granddaughter, and she deserves a little leniency to make her case for the rehabilitation of his image. Although it seems a little out of place it's an interesting chapter and she makes an admirable attempt to connect his conservative beliefs to the approach she believes can unite modern conservatives. (The title of her book is taken from an essay he wrote in 1922.)

Chapter two is a very interesting brief overview of all the conservative "tribes". It's an enlightening quick read on the history of conservative thought and how all the different brands of conservatism came to attach themselves to the Republican Party.

Chapter three is the best chapter in the book. It is a detailed introduction to the Millenial generation and their life experiences and attitudes. It is an eye-opening look at a generation that looks at the world completely differently than their parents' and grandparents' and even the Gen-x'ers just ahead of them. Even the most traditional social conservatives have to take notice of the obvious fact that the Republican Party is not going to win the votes of this generation by preaching to them about gay-marriage, abortion, and immigration, or by ridiculing protection of the environment and even evolution.

Where Ms. Hoover believes the party can appeal to the Millenials is by appealing to their strong belief in individual liberty and by emphasizing to them that current economic policies amount to "generational theft" (chapter four). The Millenials in a nutshell are economic conservatives and social libertarians - a combination that Ms. Hoover believes should form the tent under which conservatives of all stripes can gather. The remaining chapters of the twelve in her book cover individual issues and how she believes the Republican Party can appeal to Millenials and still stay true to the bedrock principles of limited government, free market capitalism, individual liberty, and individual responsibility. She covers gay rights, education reform, women's rights, the pro-choice/pro-life debate, environmentalism, immigration, national security - and how conservatives can take principled stands on these issues and still appeal to the Millenials.

She closes with a chapter on American Exceptionalism - which she believes in - and how Millenials can be convinced to believe in it, also (they mostly don't, now). This is a very well written book and a good read - that explores an approach to the Millenial generation that the Republicans ignore at their peril. It's easy to disagree with some of Margaret Hoover's views on individual issues. But, if her characterization of a generation of fifty million is accurate - I believe it is - it's hard to see how the Republican Party can win elections much farther into the future by failing to win over this generation of voters. She calls for a big tent that will hold all the tribes of conservatism united on the principle of individual liberty - American individualism. It's a book worth reading and an idea worth considering.

18 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern America July 25, 2011

By JWR

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Hoover's book is amazing and a good look at how the Republican party is suppose to be. How any American can live here and believe the primary goal of the Republican party should be to control and force their religious beliefs on everyone else is beyond me...we have Freedom of religion which includes freedom from it. Republicans true to their values believe in small government... controlling marriage and reproductive rights is big government. If people actually knew the history of this country the religious right here would have no power. Our founding fathers were Deist not evangelical Christians. Hoover's book is a good lay out of how to stay true to conservative politics with a new generation of American's who are not racist homophobic ignorant bigots looking to force outdated illogical views down everyone's throat.

14 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Margaret Hoover and David Mamet July 26, 2011

By R. Holman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Since I had just read David Mamet's "The Secret Knowledge," when I began to read "American Individualism" I was amazed to find Ms. Hoover's writing more succinct, more interesting and more effective. Similar themes of individualism reverberate through both books, but Ms. Hoover's conclusions are practical, specific, and, most important, interesting. I will give this book to many friends.