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Samuel T. Francis

Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism Hardcover – January 1, 1993

by Samuel T. Francis (Author)

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The 1992 presidential election campaign showed just how deep were the divisions within the Republican party. In this provocative collection of essays, Washington Times columnist Samuel Francis argues that the victory of the Democratic party marks not only the end of the Reagan-Bush era but the failure of American conservatism.
Francis cites a number of reasons for the failure. After contributing to Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1981, leaders of the New Right divorced themselves from popular discontents and pursued democratic globalism, a policy inconsistent with the theories of the Old Right. The success of the "managerial revolution " - the shift of power from the bourgeois elite to a managerial or corporate elite - spawned a new kind of conservative, the neoconservative. Francis shows that by the end of the Reagan administration, neoconservatism was the dominant faction of the American Right. While the Old Right had sought smaller government, the Reagan and Bush administrations contributed to one of the largest expansions of the federal government in history. While the Old Right promoted cultural conservatism, "multiculturalism" and "political correctness" had become powerful forces by the beginning of the 1990s.
Viewing the intellectual, political, and social changes in the American conservative movement, Francis discusses such individuals as George Will, Joseph McCarthy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Whittaker Chambers. He also reflects on the meaning of such ideas as equality and democracy, and the role of elites in American society and culture.
The changes of the last decade have led to a virtual disappearance of the political Right. Beautiful Losers is a timely look at a crucial moment in the history of American conservatism, when, for the first time since the New Deal, the nation faces the prospect of political democracy without an oppositional force to liberalism.

Print length

237 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Univ of Missouri Pr
Publication date

January 1, 1993
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0826209076
ISBN-13

978-0826209078
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of provocative articles and review essays by a Washington Times columnist deals variously with the quarrel between the Old Right and the Neoconservatives, the emergence in the last decade of multiculturalism and political correctness, as well as the shifting of traditional moral, sexual and social norms. Three essays are especialy noteworthy: a controversial piece called "the Cult of Dr. King" considers the apotheosis of the slain civil rights leader; a discussion of Senator Joseph McCarthy explains why his ghost continues to haunt us 30 years after his death; and an illuminating reevaluation of Whittaker Chambers elevates his standing as an American writer. Francis argues that virtually every cause taken up by American conservatives over the past three decades has been lost and that the conservative movement has transformed itself into near-extinction. The New Right "must recognize that its values and goals lie outside and against the establishment and that its natural allies are not in Manhattan, Yale and Washington but in the increasingly alienated and threatened strata of Middle America."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Univ of Missouri Pr; First Edition (January 1, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 237 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0826209076
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0826209078
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,130,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,774 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
- #14,212 in Political Science (Books)
- #80,376 in United States History (Books)

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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 21, 2022

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Incredibly insightful and put much of what I have noticed with the Conservative Party as I have gotten older into perspective.

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Yaakov (James) Mosher

Hard truths

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 5, 2022

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After reading only a few selections I felt like I could write a 5,000-word tribute. This book is a political science classic. David Brooks said Samuel Francis was/is one of the most important political writers of the past 50 years. True, Bobo, and I would extent that to THE most important.
The theory at the core of “Beautiful Losers” is what makes the book so revolutionary (read: not conservative). It goes something like this – A political earthquake known as the Great Depression ushered in an elite known as managerial liberalism (a term taken from the work of James Burnham). Having reached its peak in the 1960s, managerial liberalism has since become corrupt and dysfunctional. Yet, given its cultural dominance, it cannot be displaced by the nice-sounding ideas of the conservative movement and/or libertarianism (neoconservatism is more an arm of the liberal regime than anything else). Appeals to Christianity, free-market economics etc. do not attach themselves sufficiently to the public mind to arrest this dominance. It is only populist nationalism, by igniting the passions of the middle class, that can dislodge the managerial elite. That, my fellow Americans, is the hard truth at the foundation of this milestone publication.
Until the Right uses government like the Left to reward its people and institutions (and punish enemies) as well as grow its presence in the at-large culture, it will continue to lose. For those wanting to impact politics, writes the eminent Dr. Francis, we are all big-government revolutionaries now.

5 people found this helpful

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ta

another good collection of Francis' essays.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 14, 2016

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This book is a collection of Sam Francis’ essays written between 1981 and 1991. He discusses the conservatism and the Right, and describes how true conservatives had become irrelevant. America surely needs Francis' whit and wisdom today.

6 people found this helpful

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Steve Jackson

Brilliant

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 25, 2000

This is a brilliant collection of essays by Dr. Samuel Francis, perhaps the leading paleoconservative writer today. As many people don't know, most of today's so-called "conservative" thinkers are in fact "neo-conservatives," or as Francis says "neo-liberals." They accept many of the premises of liberalism, but think liberalism went to far in the 70's. Rather than providing an alternative to the liberals, they are just another aspect of what Francis' mentor, James Burnham, called the "managerial class." This collection contains excellent essays on Martin Luther King, Joe McCarthy and other subjects.

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Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism Hardcover – January 1, 1993

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