On Suburban Warriors

I don’t know what I can say here that hasn’t already been said a billion other times over the course of the past five or six years. By this point, McGirr’s argument is received wisdom. Movement Conservatism, although it had stirrings under the New Deal and in the 1940s-50s, gained respectability through a grassroots movement led by upper- and middle-class suburbanites. Although the John Birch Society and other conspiratorial organizations were important in the way they brought people together and shared ideas, the real important shift was the marriage between social conservatives and economic libertarians in the fight against Communism. Although tensions between social conservatives and economic libertarians have become prominent in periods where Communism was less of a threat (think, the 1980s-90s, for instance), they never pulled apart.

At the end of the day, the American conservative project was not—and is not—a “small state” as such, but a certain type of state. American conservatives sought to weaken the welfare state and the government’s ability to distribute resources while simultaneously strengthening national defense and the United States’ legal regime (under the slogan “Law and Order,” of course).

The conservative project up until the publication of this book had been largely successful, to the point that we might even say that it had become hegemonic. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 raised new fears about “Communism” (which was, naturally, racialized and without grounding), giving rise to the Tea Party. Under the Tea Party movement and Obama’s largely successful administration, American conservatism splintered apart and is no longer recognizable. Some might make the case the Donald Trump represents the apotheosis of Movement Conservatism, but I can’t agree. He jettisoned both economic libertarianism and social conservatism and produced a new movement that appears to, rhetorically, lay claim to the conservative tradition while setting out on a new, nationalist path.

Anyways, this is a really good book and should be read to, if for no other reason, to uncover the starting point on a wave of historical scholarship on the origins of modern American conservatism.