Soc_121_4/14/2026

Session 5: the anti-communist small government right

  • fear of communism

    • spread through the cold war by both republican and democratic administrations

    • this fear affected americans conciousness as we saw in public opinion

      • we saw this through the contruction of fallout shelters and propaganda within entertainment during that period

  • McCarthyism

    • fear of domestic communism helped fuel the right \

    • the height of mccarthyism was from 1950-1954

    • in 1950 there was a speech by Wheeling WV, McCarthy said he held in his hand a list of 205 names of communists working in american office positions however he never released those names

    • however over the next four years HUAC held dozens of hearings to hear testimony’s from those that were suspected of being communists

  • legacy of Mccarthyism

    • CONTEXT

      • soviet union has just gotten the bomb which was its first atomic weapon

  • The conservative intellectual attack on the liberal consensus

    • william f buckley wrote a book called god and the man at yale published in 1951 when the author was 25 years old

    • bucklys thesis rested on two propositions

      • yale was anti christian and anti capatalist

      • yale alumni have a right and duty to insit it teach christianity and individualism

  • many leaders of the right were sons of self made buisnessmen

    • william f buckley was the son of a wealthy oil amn from texas

    • barry goldwater family owned an upscale department store in arizona

    • L.Brent was buckleys liutenant and the ghost writer for goldwater. his father owned an advirtizing agency for nebraska

    • robert welch who founded the john birch society …

  • william f buckley and the national review

    • came from a wealthy family and had a strong opposition to the socialist left founded partly because of personal experiences of buckleys father whose oil holdings were threatened by the mexican goverment

    • buckley showed a rebel spirit as eearly as his freshman year in college and saw himself as an intellectual revolutionary against the established liberal order

    • he founded the national review …

  • barry goldwater and the goldwater campaign of 1964

    • 3 ideas that animated the right in the 1950s and 1960s

      • first idea

        • human freedom required the goverment to stay out as much as possible from economic life

      • second idea

        • human morality depended on stable structures of authority goverened by a strict moral code

  • Goldwaters conscience of a conservative

    • book was published in 1960s and was really popular in college bookstores

    • by 1964 he sold 3 million copies

    • in his book he talked about one target which was government bureaucracy

      • he wanted to reduce bureacracy to increase freedom of the US population

    • advocated moral code

      • rugged idividualism

        • stated there are laws of god and truths of god which inform the concept of conservatism and under which the US should operate

      • at the same time he was what we would call a libertarian

      • he was most interested in small goverment and personal freedoms and was not aligned with many political ideologies regarding restricitng peoples freedoms including abortions and other simular ideas

  • humanitarianism image for a philosophy of pure greed

    • join an idealistic struggle to defend the uncommon individual against the mass of people it was an appeal to those who wanted to stand out against the masses. it also overlapped with risemans inner directed man from the lonely crow and with the philosophy of another popular writer

  • which social groups supported the right in the 1950s and early 1960s

    • right wing conservatives like goldwater were more prevalent amongst small buisnessmen, among with southerners and those living in more rural small towns

  • Did the right out organize the left

    • according to maurice isserman and mciheal kazin conservatives began building a mass movement earlier than did the new left

    • they also sustained morale and kept expanding their numbers

    • the left blazed through the 60s like a meteor which reshaped the culteral landscape particularly in gender and race. and the right established itself as a unified potent political movement during the same decade therefore making its organizational movements lasting longer

  • from a small remnant in liberal america to a sizeable movement

    • many leaders of conservatism got their start in the goldwater campaign which included william rehnquist, micheal deaver, jesse helms, phyllis schaflly and george will

  • John Birch Society

    • located in Orange County

    • had a set of beliefs in conspiracy

    • believed that President Eisenhower, the Supreme Court, and all protesters against nuclear disarmament and black rights were involved in a conspiracy to enslave mankind

    • By 1963, the John Birch Society had nearly 10,000 members, who were most popular in the suburbs of the South

  • was this the time that the democrastic party was associated with the kkk