Title: Search for the American right wing : an analysis of the social science record, 1955-1987 /
Authors: Hixson, William B.
Publisher: Princeton University Press,
Year: 1992
Subjects: Conservatism United States History; Right and left (Political science); United States Politics and government
Abstract: This book is a creative synthesis of the published scholarly research on the contemporary American right wing from the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy to the election of Ronald Reagan as President. Unlike most other syntheses, it directly engages that research by critically analyzing the major explanations emerging from it. Emphasizing neither the lives and backgrounds of the scholars that he discusses nor paradigms within the social sciences as a whole, William Hixson focuses on the way the concepts of individual researchers have interacted with accumulating evidence on the American right, and how this evidence has led to new and more comprehensive theories. Hixson first summarizes and evaluates the research on the major developments analyzed by scholars - the social sources of "McCarthyism," the "radical right" of the early 1960s, George Wallace's constituency in his Presidential campaigns, and the emerging "new right" of the late 1970s. He then compares the interpretations of the two most influential students of the right wing, Seymour Martin Lipset and Michael Paul Rogin. Finally, he offers his own explanations, suggesting that the right wing is both a mass and elite phenomenon, that its durability comes from its appeal to the upwardly mobile, especially in economically expanding regions, and that far from being either "traditionalist" or reactive, it represents a proactive defense of values associated with late nineteenth-century "modernization."
Contents: pt. 1. The Sources of "McCarthyism" -- The New American Right: "McCarthyism" as "Status Politics" -- Hofstadter, Viereck, Shils: "McCarthyism" and the "Populist Heritage" -- Rogin: "McCarthyism" as Midwestern Conservatism -- Beyond Rogin: "McCarthyism" as the Revenge of the "Locals" -- pt. 2. The "Radical Right" of the Early 1960s -- Bell and Riesman: The "Radical Right, "American Society, and the Cold War -- Sociological and Psychological Profiles of Right-Wing Activists -- Hofstadter: The "Radical Right, "Fundamentalism", and the Paranoid Style -- pt. 3. The Wallace Constituency -- Southern Support for Wallace: The Politics of Place -- Nonsouthern Support for Wallace: Politics of Protest? -- Wallace in Context: Reaction, Realignment, and a Society in Crisis -- Studies of "Profamily" Activists: "Status Politics" Revised and Revisited -- The Creation of the "New Right": Organizers, Ideologues, and the Search for a Constituency -- Locating the Moral Majority: The Religous Factor -- The "New Right" and the 1980 Election: The Religious Factor Reconsidered -- pt. 5. The American Right Wing in Perspective -- Two Interpretations of the Right Wing: Lipset and Rogin -- Conclusion: The American Right Wing in Perspective.