Talk:Old Right

message: Michael Moore is a "stocky" directory?  That's funny. 4.255.47.124
The following was moved from Old Guard Republicans, which I redirected to this site. Most of it is inaccurate but there is some good info that I think can be added into this article.--The_stuart 15:55, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: The chronology in the intro needs some work, as it currently runs together the interwar period of Robert Taft with the 1912 election in which his father, President William Howard Taft was a candidate.  I'll work on it.  Kaisershatner 15:55, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Chronology

message: 1. I felt that brief description of the so-called "Old Right" was incomplete.  Opposition to the (eventually failed) policies of the "New Deal" was founded not on opposition to helping the downtrodden but on a sincere belief that the states should be the primary shapers of domestic life in the US (this doctrine is sometimes, usually pejoratively by its opponents, as States' Rights.
2. The proper term for the opposition to "foreign entanglements" is Isolationism.  It began long before the 1920s; in fact in began with Washington's Farewell Address, warning his successors, and the country, against involvement in the politics and wars of Europe.  While excellent advice for a weak, fledgling republic, the policy always clashed with the ever-present need to protect American trading ships and became increasingly  inverse in proportion the growth of American power.
Isolationism was, arguably, the strongest component in keeping the United States out of WWI until 1917.  In fact, Wilson won re-election in 1916 largely because of his appeal to isolationists, embodied in his campaign slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War".  However, Wilson's adherence to isolationism was almost certainly political expediency given his later vigorous prosecution of the war and his almost-messianic adocacy of his "Fourteen Points".  By 1917, Germany's "unrestricted" U-boat attacks on American shipping and the Zimmermann Telegram--coupled with the dawning on many--non German- --Americans of the very real possibility that Germany might prevail on the battlefield--eroded the isolationist position to the extent that Wilson was able to persuade to cooperate in his leading a very divided country into the Great War.
Therefore to date Isolationsim from the 1920s is simply not historically accurate.    
Furthermore, I felt that without listing what succeeded the so-called "Old Right" the description is incomplete (a more accurate term that "Old Right" is probably "Country-Club Republicanism").
This so-called "Old Right"'s disdain toward what later would be called the "Roosevelt Coalition" the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt were welding together. The maintenance of this coalition, had won the Democrats five successive presidential elections (1932-1948); and would help maintain Democratic control of the House of Representatives for 40 years (1954-94).  
Therefore, I felt it was necessary to include William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, respectively, the philosophical founder of Movement Conservatism as well the two architechts of the practical victory of the movement's ideology and policies--which would later be bundled together under the term Reagan Conservatism (I recognize the anachorinism of using the term before the late '60s when Reagan became the leader of the conservative faction of the GOP as against the "Country Clubbers" emodied by Reagan's later Vice President and President, the Elder George Bush).
Goldwater and, successfully Reagan, began to reach out to the "Roosevelt Coalition"  with, eventually great success--especially with European-Americans in the South and blue collar workers in the Rust Belt; African-Americans remained aloof, as they do to the GOP to this day, always giving 90%+ of their votes to the Democratic candidate regardless of who that candidate was).
3. I felt the entry on the UK's "Old Right" was incomplete and, frankly, could have been better written.  I claim no deep level of knowledge of British domestic parties/politics and, therefore, didn't feel comfortable writing about them (without doing the necessary research).  
Someone more familiar with the subject should, imo, do what I've done for the American part of the article.
PainMan 22:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for changes, additions