Well-meaning conservative co-worker has another book for me to read...

[Sammy Pepys]

A conservative co-worker (who's very nice and only mildly insane) occasionally lends me books here and there, and today he's brought me another one: "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945" by George H. Nash. He's raving about it...

Anyone know anything about this book or who is George H. Nash is? My googling suggests this is the only thing he's written, and (obviously) conservatives love him.

[SteppingRazor]

1. I thought "conservative intellectual" was an oxymoron

:D

[sakabatou]

3. ::rimshot::

[BeatleBoot]

19. Or Was that "OxyMORAN"

Lol!!!

:rofl:

[RoBear]

21. Like "Young Republican"

(courtesy of Babs S)

[rox63]

2. Does he mind if you suggest books to him? n/t

[Sammy Pepys]

7. It's actually part of the deal...

He's getting "The Promise of American Life" by Herbert Croly.

[Longhorn]

4. Should be a quick read! n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Is this like "The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro T Agnew" that I remember?

You open it and find a blank book.

[Virginia Dare]

6. The Conservative Intellectual Movement has been a very...

well kept secret apparently. Most of the Conservatives haven't caught on to it yet.

[POAS]

9. Conservative intellectuals

confine themselves to profit centers like AEI where the primary requirement is to be an adept shill and to stack and count $100 bills.

[Phredicles]

10. Now don't conservatives love to brag that all the really Big Ideas

come from them these days? Each and every one of them a truly horrible idea creating an Orwellian/Dantean/Kafkaesque nightmare, but that's apparently what being The Movement of Ideas is all about.:eyes:

[Warpy]

8. Google is your friend

The last paragraph of the third spotlight review says it all: "So what is Conservativism? In the end it seems to rest on nothing more than a negative reaction to change. The author writes that the number one enemy of Conservativism is the liberal philosophy of natural rights and civil liberties. Conservativism is about the entrenchment of power and the stratification of society. At all levels from race, to wealth to gender, each will know his place. One writer for the National Review wrote that white community is so entitled to lead because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. Woman shall be subservient to men and men shall be subservient to the church. If there were one society in the world that best represented the ideal of Conservative society it would be the Taliban. "

http://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Intellectual-Movement-America/dp/188292620X

All conservatives are not stupid. Some of them can be considered intellectuals. However, applying logical thought to faulty first principles always leads an intellectual to false conclusions.

That is the problem with conservative intellectuals. One of their basic premises is that the world used to be perfect and the only way to get back to perfection is to undo all the progress humanity has made.

I wouldn't waste my time on this book unless I were fascinated with the growth (and metastasis) of the right wing. If you're interested in where these loonies came from, by all means read this book. It's been around since 1976 because it's a good read as well as a conservative bible.

[Virginia Dare]

11. Each will know his place...

well that's it in a fascist nutshell isn't it?

[Sammy Pepys]

15. Well, I'm interested....

...so I'll give it a shot, if only because con co-worker reads what I give him in good faith as well.

[bryant69]

12. I think it is certainly easier to demonize Conservatives rather than understand them

And frankly who has time to take a path that's not the easy one these days.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Sammy Pepys]

14. Well, I'm not really trying to demonize them...

I really do think they have more of an intellectual legacy than they're given credit for, and I think it's important to be aware of that legacy. I'm just trying to figure out if this book is on the level (guess I'll ultimately find out when I dig in).

[RedEarth]

13. This article mentioned the book....I never had heard of it before this article

in Salon.............

The Coulterization of the American right

By rights, American conservatism should be dead or on life support by now. The ideology has always been incoherent, deeply divided between its libertarian, free-market wing and its traditionalist, "values" wing. As George H. Nash noted in his 1976 book "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945," a shared anti-communism and political convenience temporarily concealed these profound differences. Ronald Reagan's anti-communism, and his sunny personality, allowed free-market conservatives to overlook the fact that government actually grew enormously on his watch. With a majority of Americans continuing to believe in Democratic social policies and programs, and demographic trends running in the Democrats' favor, the right was facing disaster after Reagan's exit and the fall of communism. It desperately needed a boogeyman to unify its unruly factions. Fortunately, conjuring up boogeymen has been a right-wing specialty since the days of the Know-Nothing movement

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/03/13/coulter/print.html

[Sammy Pepys]

17. Thanks...n/t

...

[Bridget Burke]

16. There's an interesting review at Amazon....

E David Swan thought the book was fairly well-written; he gave it four stars. But the message he received is probably not what the author meant. (Or what your Well Meaning Friend means.)

Better than Russell Kirk but still dreary.

After reading `The Conservative Mind' I could scarcely imagine why ANYONE but a small group of goose stepping Neanderthals would be drawn to Conservativism. Although nearly equal in length, George H. Nash's history of Conservativism is considerably more palatable than Russell Kirk's dreary ode. It's also more readable and less pretentious. Mr. Nash presents a history of the evolution of American Conservativism particularly in the latter half of the last century as disparate groups of paleo-Conservatives, Neo-Conservatives and Libertarians managed to fuse themselves into a cohesive unit capable of temporarily gaining control of all three branches of American government. The book also does a good job of defining the tenets of Conservativism even as it claims that there are no canonized beliefs.

The author, perhaps unwittingly, stumbles on the main problem of Conservativism, that it is a completely inconsistent and incoherent belief system....

So what is Conservativism? In the end it seems to rest on nothing more than a negative reaction to change. The author writes that the number one enemy of Conservativism is the liberal philosophy of natural rights and civil liberties. Conservativism is about the entrenchment of power and the stratification of society. At all levels from race, to wealth to gender, each will know his place. One writer for the National Review wrote that white community is so entitled to lead because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. Woman shall be subservient to men and men shall be subservient to the church. If there were one society in the world that best represented the ideal of Conservative society it would be the Taliban.

www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/1933859121/sr=8-1/qid=1173888379/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/104-6060729-8091140?ie=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&qid=1173888379&sr=8-1

Perhaps you should read the book carefully. Then--discuss it with your WMF.

[leftofthedial]

18. man, talk about an axymoron-laden title!

it might actually cause physical pain in your head to read that book.

[havocmom]

20. Definition of 'conservative' in 1945 not same as now

Most old-school conservatives are not pro neo-con

[zbdent]

22. Let me guess ...

it's a book about all the stuff that Progressive people have put forth (up to a few decades ago) and the author claims that all that stuff was pushed by the people who resist change?

Remember, the conservatives were happy with their titles and land as blessed by England in 1776 ...