Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Paperback]

Justin Raimondo (Author), George W. Carey (Introduction), Patrick J. Buchanan (Foreword), Scoot P. Richert (Contributor), David Gordon (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2008

In recent years a number of conservatives have wondered where the Right went wrong. One persuasive answer is provided by Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement. Justin Raimondo’s captivating narrative is the story of how the non-interventionist Old Right—which included half-forgotten giants and prophets such as Sen. Robert A. Taft, Garet Garrett, and Col. Robert McCormick—was supplanted in influence by a Right that made its peace with bigger government at home and “perpetual war for perpetual peace” abroad. First published in 1993, Reclaiming the American Right is today as timely as ever.

The latest volume in ISI Books’ Background series, this edition includes a new introduction by Georgetown political scientist George W. Carey, Patrick J. Buchanan’s introduction to the second edition, and new critical essays on the text by Scott Richert, executive editor of Chronicles, and David Gordon, senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"When I was deciding whether or not to run for President as a Republican, I re-read Justin Raimondo's Reclaiming the American Right and it gave me hope—that the anti-interventionist, pro-liberty Old Right, which had once dominated the party, could and would rise again. Here is living history: the story of an intellectual and political tradition that my campaign invokved and reawakened. This prescient book, written in 1993, could not be more relevant today."
— RON PAUL, Ten Term U.S. Congressman (TX) and 2008 Presidential Candidate

“Richly researched, brilliantly written, passionately argued. . . . A veritable Iliad of the American Right.”—Patrick J. Buchanan, political commentator, syndicated columnist, and author

About the Author

Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com, a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard.

George W. Carey is professor of government at Georgetown University. He is the author or editor of many books, including The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (with Willmoore Kendall) and, from ISI Books, Liberty and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate.

Product Details

• Paperback: 375 pages
• Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 2nd edition (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933859601
• ISBN-13: 978-1933859606
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,033,196 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 100 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Recovering the Old Right May 25, 2000

By John S. Ryan

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

In this excellent book, Justin Raimondo breathes new life into the forgotten icons of the Old Right. These figures include -- among others -- Albert Jay Nock (who was in fact regarded as a "leftist" for part of his career), H.L. Mencken, Frank Chodorov (born Fishel Chodorovsky -- did you know that? I didn't), Garet Garrett (author of _The Driver_, which Raimondo argues may have been an important unacknowledged source for Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED), John T. Flynn (who among other things wrote a scathing expose of Roosevelt and the "New Deal"), Rose Wilder Lane (author of _The Discovery of Freedom_), and Isabel Paterson (author of _The God of the Machine_ and the former guru of Ayn Rand).

Raimondo also discusses the hijacking of the Right by Bill Buckley and the neoconservatives, doing a much better job than Rand did in her little puff piece, "Conservativism: An Obituary." In fact Raimondo is careful to acknowledge all the genuine conservatives Rand left out of her "obituary"; rather than simply declaring conservatism dead, as Rand did, Raimondo wants to recover it from the people who almost destroyed it in favor of militaristic Statism.

Raimondo also discusses some genuine contemporary conservatives, including the late great Murray Rothbard (Raimondo is also the author of a soon-to-be-published biography of Rothbard), and provides a ringing defense of Pat Buchanan against a number of unfair attacks -- though he also harshly criticizes Buchanan's stand against free international trade. (The back of the book features an endorsement from Buchanan, by the way -- a little tribute to the intellectual integrity of both men.)

His remarks on Rand will also be of interest to bemused watchers of the "Objectivist" movement.... Despite some obvious respect for her talents as a novelist (he thinks, and I agree, that _The Fountainhead_ was her best work and ATLAS SHRUGGED was pretty kludgy), he does not spare the rod as regards her pretensions of originality, her claim to stand within no pre-existing tradition whatsoever, her intellectual fraud in each of these respects, her failure to give proper credit even to those of her forebears who were directly influential on her thought (Isabel Paterson being the primary example), and her endorsement of several policies that would have been anathema to the Old Right. I suspect that Raimondo would be happy -- and I know I would -- if Rand were publicly exposed as a pretentious, pseudophilosophical, cult-mongering fraud, discredited as a representative of the classical-liberal Right, and recognized as the "leftist" she really was. (And any "Objectivists" reading this review are hereby invited to click "Not helpful.")

At any rate Raimondo's workmanlike volume belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in recovering the genuine tradition of liberty. His efforts to restore the memory of an important and all but forgotten strain of American thought will be of interest to libertarians and classical liberals everywhere. Read more ›

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Legacy Worth Discovering February 18, 2000

By John E. Cox

Format:Paperback

Justin Raimondo's "Reclaiming the American Right" is one of the most fascinating political books I have ever read. I first read this work a couple of years ago, but return to it often because the stories of the various figures of the Old Right are so relevant to the current political situation. This book should be required reading for all who associate the word "conservative" with "troglodyte" or "warmonger". It wasn't always so! The "Old Right" conservatives were very interested in personal liberty and bitterly opposed to war and the Merchants of Death who profit from them. They saw that in trying to police the world, America would lose it's liberty. Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn, Frank Chodorov ... these are names that deserve to be widely known, men whose works should be read as an antidote to the interventionist dogma of our times. Raimondo performed a valuable service in presenting their views to a new generation.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Retracing the steps of the long march from Trotskyism to Neoconservatism May 11, 2006

By Earth that Was

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Great eye for detail. Author traces the rise of "neoconservatism" (surely a contradiction in terms) in the US from it's beginnings amongst 1930s Trotskyites and hard line anti-communist liberals and social democrats in the cold war.

Justin Raimondo shows how these groups were alienated by the developments on the American left during the post-Vietnam era and thus migrated to the right becoming a key part of the Reagan coalition. This faction displaced older line isolationist conservatives. It's not just the defection of former leftists to right as individuals, it was a factional migration.

The trail for the neocon migration of the 1970s was blazed for them by a previous generation of National Review affiliated "New Right" thinkers in the 1950s such as James Burnham.

There is a most interesting profile of Trotsky's main US apostle, Max Schactman. Max had raced to Trotsky's death bed after Stalin had him killed. Max never had the actual elective surgery that converts leftists to a fully fledged neocon, he remained a lifelong socialist. Max saw Washington as the real centre of the true revolution for global social democracy. He even saw the JFK / LBJ's interventions in Cuba and Vietnam as the historically "progressive" force versus Fidel and Ho Chi Minh, essentially reactionary fascist nationalists in marxist drag. The shadow of Max and Leon now influences US policy. Unfortunately.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Needed now more than ever! December 31, 2008

By Prof. CJ

Format:Paperback

This book, written and originally published in the early-1990s, has, if anything, become more relevant in the decade-and-a-half since its publication.

Justin Raimondo's RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN RIGHT is an examination of the so-called "Old Right." The Old Right was anti-interventionist, pro-free market, and overall, anti-statist (think "Ron Paul," who's about the only well-known present-day Old Rightist in national politics.) It first arose as a coherent (though unorganized) movement in opposition to FDR's New Deal, and it also opposed American entry into the Second World War. Such writers as Garet Garett, John T. Flynn, Frank Chodorov, H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, as well as newspaper publisher Col. Robert McCormick are the heroes of this group. In today's terminology, these men would be considered "libertarians" and/or "paleoconservatives."

Raimondo also contrasts the Old Right with the now-notorious "neoconservatives," who first started to penetrate the American Right just before the Second World War, and who found a permanent, influential place in American conservatism during the early stages of the Cold War. The "neocons" were primarily ex-Trotskyites who never left the essentials of their Marxist ideas - particularly their vehemently statist (in some cases virtually totalitarian) leanings, their militarism, their elitism, and their utter worship of raw power. According to Raimondo, during the Cold War the American Right was largely taken over by a clique - amongst whom the neocons were influential - who (whether tacitly or actively) supported Big Government and a highly interventionist foreign policy. However, once the Cold War ended, the Right was presented with an opportunity to return to its roots.... Raimondo, writing around fifteen years ago, seems optimistic that it would, and towards the end of the book, he points to Pat Buchanan as a rising paleoconservative star in the early `90s.

Raimondo writes well and tells a story that needs telling. Most modern-day Americans either know nothing of the Old Right, or they know of it only in the form of distortions, dismissive caricatures, and untrue smears.

I read a first edition of the book, so I'd be interested to read the material that has been added to the newer additions. However, it would seem to me that, with the political lynching of Pat Buchanan, the so-called "War on Terror" and wholesale imperialism in the Middle East, the Republican Party's virtual blacklisting of Ron Paul, and the McCain nomination in '08, the American Right has unfortunately NOT returned to its Old Right roots, as Raimondo somewhat optimistically hoped in the early-`90s. Instead, the American Right appears to have been taken over by a version of neoconservatism whose main political trademarks are jingoism, occasional halfhearted references to shrinking government (without the intent of ever seriously following through on them), and shamelessly pandering to evangelicals.

If you think of yourself as a "conservative," but you've found yourself alienated by George W. Bush's administration and by mindlessly jingoistic Hannity-Limbaugh-Coulter conservatism; if you like free markets and low taxes but aren't interested in imperialism or nation-building; if you just want to be left alone to run your life and take care of your family with minimal interference by the state; if you were a Ron Paul supporter or were at all intrigued by his message - you just might be a paleoconservative or a libertarian, and you owe it to yourself to find out about the movement's unsung origins in American history. This book is one of several good places to start. Read more ›