 | ||
The Old Right was an informal designation used for a branch of the American conservatism, which never became an organized movement. Most members were Republicans, although there was a conservative Democratic element based largely in the South. They were called the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors. Among the latter were Barry Goldwater, who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s and favored an interventionist foreign policy to battle international communism. The Old Right typically favored laissez-faire classical liberalism; some were business-oriented conservatives; others were ex-radicals who moved sharply to the right, such as the novelist John Dos Passos. Still others, such as the Democrat Southern Agrarians, were traditionalists who dreamed of restoring a pre-modern communal society. The Old Right's devotion to anti-imperialism was at odds with the interventionist goal of global democracy, the top-down transformation of local heritage, social and institutional engineering of the political Left and some from the modern Right-wing. The "Old Right" was unified by opposition to what they saw as the danger of domestic dictatorship by President Franklin Roosevelt. Most were unified by their defense of natural inequalities, tradition, limited government, and anti-imperialism, as well as their skepticism of democracy and the growing power of Washington.
Contents
The Old Right per se has faded as an organized movement, but many similar ideas are found among paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians.
History and views
The Old Right started in the Republican Party (GOP) split in 1910 and was influential inside the party into the 1940s. They pushed Theodore Roosevelt and his liberal followers out in 1912. From 1933, many Democrats became associated with the Old Right for their opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal Coalition, and with the Republicans formed the Conservative Coalition to block its further progress. Conservatives disagreed on foreign policy, and the Old Right favored non-interventionist policies regarding Europe at the start of World War II. After the war, they opposed President Harry Truman's domestic and foreign policies. The last major battle was led by Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft, who was defeated by Dwight D Eisenhower for the presidential nomination in 1952. The new conservative movement later led by William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan adopted the domestic Anti-New Deal conservatism of the Old Right, but broke with it by demanding an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy.
Historian George H. Nash argues:
Unlike the "moderate," internationalist, largely eastern bloc of Republicans who accepted (or at least acquiesced in) some of the "Roosevelt Revolution" and the essential premises of President Truman's foreign policy, the Republican Right at heart was counter-revolutionary. Anti-collectivist, anti-Communist, anti-New Deal, passionately committed to limited government, free market economics, and congressional (as opposed to executive) prerogatives, the G.O.P. conservatives were obliged to wage a constant two-front war: against liberal Democrats from without and "me-too" Republicans from within.
The Old Right emerged in opposition to the New Deal and FDR personally; it drew from multiple sources. Hoff says, "moderate Republicans and leftover Republican Progressives like Hoover composed the bulk of the Old Right by 1940, with a sprinkling of former members of the Farmer-Labor party, Non-Partisan League, and even a few midwestern prairie Socialists."
By 1937 they formed a Conservative coalition that controlled Congress until 1964. They were consistently non-interventionist and opposed entering WWII, a position exemplified by the America First Committee. Later, most opposed U.S. entry into NATO and intervention in the Korean War. "In addition to being staunch opponents of war and militarism, the Old Right of the postwar period had a rugged and near-libertarian honesty in domestic affairs as well."
This anti–New Deal movement was a coalition of multiple groups: business Republicans like Robert A. Taft and Raymond E. Baldwin; conservative Democrats like Josiah Bailey, Al Smith and John W. Davis; libertarians like H. L. Mencken and Garet Garrett and mass media tycoons like William Randolph Hearst and Colonel Robert R. McCormick.
In his book Conservatism: Dream and Reality, Robert Nisbet noted the traditional hostility of the right to interventionism and to increases in military expenditure:
Of all the misascriptions of the word ‘conservative’ during the last four years, the most amusing, in an historical light, is surely the application of ‘conservative’ to the last-named. For in America throughout the twentieth century, and including four substantial wars abroad, conservatives had been steadfastly the voices of non-inflationary military budgets, and of an emphasis on trade in the world instead of American nationalism. In the two World Wars, in Korea, and in Viet Nam, the leaders of American entry into war were such renowned liberal-progressives as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. In all four episodes conservatives, both in the national government and in the rank and file, were largely hostile to intervention; were isolationists indeed..
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 exemplars of the political 'Right.'"
Internal differences
While outsiders thought Taft was the epitome of conservative Republicanism, inside the party he was repeatedly criticized by hard-liners who were alarmed by his sponsorship of New Deal-like programs, especially federal housing for the poor, and federal aid to public schools. The real estate lobby was especially fearful about public housing. Senator Kenneth Wherry discerned a "touch of socialism" in Taft, while his Ohio colleague Senator John Bricker speculated that perhaps the "socialists have gotten to Bob Taft." This distrust on the right hurt Taft's 1948 presidential ambitions.
The Southern Agrarian wing 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. Donald Davidson was one of the most politically active of the agrarians, especially in his criticisms of the TVA in his native Tennessee. As Murphy (2001) shows, the Southern Agrarians articulated old values of Jeffersonian Democracy:
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.
Legacy
Paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians are often considered the successors and torchbearers of the Old Right view in the late-20th century and the 21st century. 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 and involvement in The Second World War against Hitler, (including Old Right objections to economic programs (and loans of naval equipment) to supply England, through the famous 'Blitz' of 1941 'Britain's Finest Hour', viewing such international involvement as likely to involve the US further. Recently, it has been suggested that some of the ideas of the Old Right have seen a resurgence in the 2008 presidential campaign of Ron Paul and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.