Old Right (United States)

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In the United States, the Old Right, were a faction of American conservatives who both opposed New Deal domestic programs and were also non-interventionists opposing entry into World War II. Many were associated with the Republicans of the interwar years led by Robert Taft, but some were Democrats. They were called the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their anti-communist New Right successors, such as Barry Goldwater, who were interventionist in foreign policy (although a great majority of Old Right intellectuals were passionately opposed to communism and socialism). Many members of the Old Right were laissez-faire classical liberals, some were business-oriented conservatives like Herbert Hoover; others were ex-radicals who moved sharply to the right, like John Dos Passos; others, like the Southern Agrarians, dreamed of restoring a premodern communal society.

[edit] Views

1936 cartoon shows GOP building its platform from the conservative planks abandoned by the Democrats

The Old Right emerged in opposition to the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. By 1937 they formed a Conservative coalition that controlled Congress until 1964. In 1939-41 they were non-interventionist and opposed entering WWII. The Old Right's "America First" attitude was organized by the America First Committee. Later, most opposed NATO and US military intervention in the Korean War.

This anti-New Deal movement was a coalition of multiple groups: (1) intellectual individualists and libertarians, including H. L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, Garet Garrett, Raymond Moley and (from a different direction), Walter Lippmann; (2) laissez-faire liberals, especially the heirs of the Bourbon Democrats like Albert Ritchie of Maryland or Senator James A. Reed of Missouri; (3) pro-business or anti-union Republicans, such as Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft; (4) conservative states-rights Democrats from the South; (5) pro-business Democrats such as Al Smith, the founders of the American Liberty League, and William Randolph Hearst; and (6) soured radicals, such as Father Charles Coughlin.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Members

Influential members of the American Old Right include:

• politicians: Robert Taft, Herbert Hoover, Al Smith, James A. Reed, Bennett Champ Clark, Lewis Douglas, Hamilton Fish III, Howard Buffett
• businessman Robert E. Wood, John J. Raskob, and the American Liberty League
• publishers Robert R. McCormick and William Randolph Hearst, Frank Gannett, Henry Luce, R.C. Hoiles
• journalists: Raymond Moley, John T. Flynn, Oswald Garrison Villard, Westbrook Pegler and Garet Garrett
• scholars: Harry Elmer Barnes, Richard M. Weaver, and Frank Lawrence Owsley
• celebrities: Charles Lindbergh, Lillian Gish
• tax resistance leaders: John M. Pratt
• authors H. L. Mencken, Robert Frost, Zora Neale Hurston, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, Frank Chodorov, Albert Jay Nock, Isabel Paterson, Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, Louis Bromfield, Leonard Read, Francis Neilson, Felix Morley, F. A. Harper, and the Southern Agrarians, notably Frank Lawrence Owsley, John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson as well as William Faulkner.

Jeff Riggenbach argues that some members of the Old Right were actually classical liberals and "were accepted members of the "Left" before 1933. Yet, without changing any of their fundamental views, all of them, over the next decade, came to be thought of as examplars of the political "Right.""^[1]

[edit] Southern Agrarians reject modernity

The Southern Agrarian Wing of the “Old Right” drew on some of the values and anxieties being articulated on the anti-modern right, including the desire to retain the social authority and defend the autonomy of the American states and regions, especially the South. [Murphy p 124] Donald Davidson was one of the most politically active of the agrarians, especially in his attacks on the TVA in his native Tennessee. As Murphy [2001 p 5] shows, the Southern Agrarians:

"Rejected industrial capitalism and the culture it produced. In I'll Take My Stand they called for a return to the small-scale economy of rural America as a means to preserve the cultural amenities of the society they knew. Ransom and Tate believed that only by arresting the progress of industrial capitalism and its imperatives of science and efficiency could a social order capable of fostering and validating humane values and traditional religious faith be preserved. Skeptical and unorthodox themselves, they admired the capacity of orthodox religion to provide surety in life."

However, the Southern Agrarians were very much a different breed as opposed to the list of what is now thought as "Old Right", such as the list of individuals above. In contrast to many of the Southern Agrarians, many on the Old Right, such as Hamilton Fish and Rose Wilder Lane, embraced free markets, industrial development, and civil rights.

[edit] Legacy

The successors and torchbearers of the Old Right view in the late 20th century and current era are the paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians. Both of these groups often rally behind Old Right slogans such as "America First" while sharing similar views to the Old Right opposition to the New Deal. Of late, the Old Right has seen a resurgence due to the presidential campaign of Ron Paul.^[2]

[edit] References

• Crunden, Robert, ed., The Superfluous Men: Critics of American Culture, 1900-1945, 1999. ISBN 1-882926-30-7
• Wayne S. Cole; America First; The Battle Against Intervention, 1940-41 (1953)
• Doenecke, Justus D. "American Isolationism, 1939-1941" Journal of Libertarian Studies, Summer/Fall 1982, 6(3), pp. 201-216. online version
• Doenecke, Justus D. "Literature of Isolationism, 1972-1983: A Bibliographic Guide" Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 1983, 7(1), pp. 157-184. online version
• Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffery O. Nelson, eds. American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (2006)
• Paul V Murphy, The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2001)
• Ronald Radosh. Prophets on the right: Profiles of conservative critics of American globalism (1978) on Charles A. Beard, Oswald Garrison Villard, Robert A. Taft, John T. Flynn and Lawrence Dennis. Radosh has since become a neoconservative.
• Raimondo, Justin. An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (2000)
• Raimondo, Justin. Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (1993)
• Rothbard, Murray. The Betrayal of the American Right (2007)
• Schneider, Gregory L. ed. Conservatism in America Since 1930: A Reader (2003)

[edit] External links

• "The Life and Death of the Old Right" by Murray Rothbard

[edit] Notes