page_title: Timeline of modern American conservatism
section_title: 1940s
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of modern American conservatism / Chronology of events / 1940s
caption_attribution_description: Cover to the propaganda comic book "Is This Tomorrow"'
context_page_description: This timeline of modern American conservatism lists important events, developments and occurrences which have significantly affected conservatism in the United States. With the decline of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party after 1960, the movement is most closely associated with the Republican Party. Economic conservatives favor less government regulation, lower taxes and weaker labor unions while social conservatives focus on moral issues and neoconservatives focus on democracy worldwide. Conservatives generally distrust the United Nations and Europe and apart from the libertarian wing favor a strong military and give enthusiastic support to Israel.
  Although conservatism has much older roots in American history, the modern movement began to gel in the mid–1930s when intellectuals and politicians collaborated with businessmen to oppose the liberalism of the New Deal led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, newly energized labor unions and big city Democratic machines. After World War II, that coalition gained strength from new philosophers and writers who developed an intellectual rationale for conservatism.
context_section_description: 1943
  Medical missionary Walter Judd (1898–1994) enters Congress (1943–63) and defines the conservative position on China as all-out support for the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and opposition to the Communists under Mao. Judd redoubled his support after the Nationalists in 1949 fled to Formosa (Taiwan).
  The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is founded in Washington "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate."
  1944
  March: Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian-born British economist, publishes The Road to Serfdom, which is widely read in America and Britain. He warns that well-intentioned government intervention in the economy is a slippery slope that will lead to tight government controls over people's lives, just as medieval serfdom had done.
  The weekly magazine Human Events is founded by Frank Hanighen and Felix Morley with a significant contribution from ex-New Dealer Henry Regnery. Ronald Reagan later says that the magazine "helped me stop being a liberal Democrat."
  1945
  Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), having fled the Nazis, becomes professor of economics at New York University (1945–1969) where he disseminates Austrian School libertarianism.
  1946
  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) is appointed professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Previously a Keynesian, Friedman moves right under the influence of his close friend George Stigler (1911–1991). He founds the market-oriented Chicago School of Economics which reshapes conservative economic theory. Stigler opposes regulation of industry as counterproductive; Friedman undermines Keynesian macroeconomics.  Friedman wins the Nobel Prize in 1976 and Stigler in 1982.
  November 5: Republicans score landslide victories in the House and Senate in off-year elections and set about enacting a conservative agenda in the 80th Congress.
  1947
  June: Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Act, designed by conservatives to create what they consider a proper balance between the rights of management and the rights of labor. Unions call it a slave labor law; Truman vetoes it and both houses override the veto.
  1948
  Deep South Democrats led by Strom Thurmond split from the National Democratic Party to form the pro-segregation States' Rights Democratic Party or Dixiecrat party. They are protesting support for civil rights legislation in the party platform and make Thurmond their nominee for president in the 1948 election. Nearly all return to the Democratic party in 1949.
  Scholar Richard M. Weaver publishes Ideas Have Consequences, which influences intellectuals to question sophistic interpretations of literature.
  June: Liberal Republican Thomas Dewey again wins the Republican nomination, to the frustration of conservatives.
  November: Pundits are astonished when Dewey loses to incumbent Democrat Harry S. Truman in the presidential election.
caption: Warning against communism, 1947
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