# The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 *First published 1976 by Basic Books. Revised edition 1996 (ISI Books). 30th anniversary edition 2006 (ISI Books, with new preface). ~608 pages. Author: [[George Nash]], independent historian, Harvard PhD.* The definitive history of postwar American conservative thought — the book that mapped the intellectual genealogy this entire KB tracks. Originating as Nash's Harvard doctoral dissertation, it became, in historian Jennifer Burns's assessment, "literally the first and last word on the topic." No other single work provides as comprehensive a guide to the figures, texts, institutions, and internal tensions that produced the American conservative movement between the end of World War II and the rise of [[Ronald Reagan]]. The book is the origin of the **three-strands taxonomy** — the framework that organizes postwar conservatism into libertarianism ([[Libertarianism]]), traditionalism ([[Traditionalism]]), and anti-communism — and the account of how fusionism ([[Fusionism]]), brokered primarily by [[Frank Meyer]] at [[National Review]], held the coalition together. Nearly every page in the People/, Organizations/, and Ideologies/ sections of this KB exists within the intellectual map Nash drew. ## The Argument ### The Problem of Definition Nash opens with the question that dogged postwar conservatism: what *is* it? In the 1940s and 1950s, "conservatism" in America had no coherent intellectual identity. Lionel Trilling could write in 1950 that liberalism was "not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition" in the United States, and that conservative impulses expressed themselves only in "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." Nash's project is to show that Trilling was wrong — that a genuine conservative intellectual movement was taking shape even as he wrote — and to explain what that movement believed and how it cohered. ### The Three Strands Nash identifies three distinct intellectual traditions that converged to form the movement: **Libertarianism and classical liberalism.** The anti-statist tradition that opposed the [[New Deal]], Keynesian economics, and the expansion of federal power. Key figures: [[Friedrich Hayek]] (*[[The Road to Serfdom]]*, 1944), Ludwig von Mises (*[[Human Action]]*, 1949), [[Milton Friedman]] (*[[Capitalism and Freedom]]*, 1962), Albert Jay Nock (*Our Enemy, the State*, 1935), and [[Ayn Rand]] (*[[Atlas Shrugged]]*, 1957). Institutional base: the Foundation for Economic Education (founded 1946), the [[Mont Pelerin Society]] (founded 1947), the University of Chicago economics department. **Traditionalism.** The philosophical-cultural conservatism that recoiled from modernity's assault on order, community, moral absolutes, and transcendent values. Key figures: [[Russell Kirk]] (*The Conservative Mind*, 1953), [[Richard Weaver]] (*[[Ideas Have Consequences]]*, 1948), Robert Nisbet (*The Quest for Community*, 1953), and the Southern Agrarians. Institutional base: *Modern Age* (founded 1957 by Kirk), the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (founded 1953 by Frank Chodorov, later renamed [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]]). **Anti-communism.** The militant, often ex-radical opposition to Soviet communism that provided the movement's urgency and its most passionate converts. Key figures: [[Whittaker Chambers]] (*Witness*, 1952), [[James Burnham]] (*[[The Managerial Revolution]]*, *The Struggle for the World*), the ex-Communist intellectuals who understood Marxism from the inside, and the Cold War national-security hawks. The anti-communist strand provided the emotional energy and existential stakes that made the conservative coalition feel necessary rather than merely intellectual. ### The Tension Nash does not pretend these strands were naturally compatible. The libertarian-traditionalist split was real and deep: Libertarians like [[Ayn Rand]] and [[Frank Meyer]] (before his fusionist turn) argued for individual freedom as the supreme political value. Traditionalists like [[Russell Kirk]] argued that freedom without virtue, order, and community was self-destructive — that libertarian individualism was just another form of the atomizing modernity that had produced the crisis in the first place. Kirk dismissed libertarians as "chirping sectaries." [[Ayn Rand]] dismissed traditionalists (and religious conservatives generally) as mystics. [[Friedrich Hayek]] published an essay titled "Why I Am Not a Conservative" — distancing himself from the traditionalists even while sharing their anti-collectivism. ### The Fusionist Resolution Nash chronicles the process by which these strands were held together, primarily through two mechanisms: **[[National Review]]** (founded 1955 by [[William F. Buckley Jr.]]). Buckley's magazine was the institutional platform where libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists published side by side, debated each other, and gradually developed a shared political vocabulary. Buckley's editorial genius was not philosophical synthesis but coalition management — he kept the libertarians and traditionalists at the same table by focusing on shared enemies (communism abroad, liberalism at home) and by excommunicating figures who threatened coalition stability (the Randians, the Birchers, the anti-Semites). **[[Fusionism]]** ([[Frank Meyer]]'s political philosophy). Meyer argued that freedom and virtue were not opposed but complementary: a virtuous society requires free individuals who *choose* virtue rather than having it imposed by the state, and a free society requires virtuous citizens who use their freedom responsibly. This was more political formula than rigorous philosophy — critics on both sides called it a forced marriage — but it provided the intellectual justification for a coalition that was already forming for institutional and strategic reasons. ### The Political Payoff Nash traces the movement from intellectual formation to political mobilization: the [[Barry Goldwater]] campaign of 1964 (the movement's first national political expression, ending in catastrophic defeat), the regrouping of the late 1960s and 1970s, the rise of [[the New Right]] and the neoconservative ([[Neoconservatism]]) intellectuals (former liberals and leftists — [[Irving Kristol]], [[Norman Podhoretz]], Commentary magazine — who moved rightward in response to the New Left, the counterculture, and [[Great Society]] failures), and the ultimate triumph in [[Ronald Reagan]]'s 1980 election. ## Editions and Revisions The book exists in three editions, each reflecting the movement's evolution: - **1976 (Basic Books):** The original, covering 1945 through the early 1970s. Published the same year as the American Bicentennial and two years after Nixon's resignation — a moment when the conservative movement appeared politically defeated but intellectually vibrant. - **1996 (ISI Books):** Revised and updated, incorporating the Reagan era and its aftermath. Published by the [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]], itself one of the institutions Nash's book chronicles — a fitting circularity. - **2006 (ISI Books, 30th anniversary):** Further updated with a new preface reflecting on the book's reception and the movement's continued evolution. By this point the book had become the canonical reference — assigned in graduate seminars, cited in every subsequent treatment of the subject. ## What the Book Doesn't Cover The book's strengths are also its limitations, and those limitations matter for this KB: **Money and institutional infrastructure.** Nash tells the story of *ideas* — books, journals, debates, philosophical arguments. He gives less attention to the donor networks, foundations, and institutional machinery that underwrote the movement and that, in many cases, determined which ideas gained traction and which didn't. The [[Olin Foundation]], the Scaife family trusts, the [[Koch brothers]]' political network, the [[Heritage Foundation]]'s policy infrastructure — the organizational architecture that turned intellectual conservatism into political power — is not Nash's primary subject. This KB fills that gap. **The populist transformation.** Nash chronicles the movement through its *intellectual* phase. The story of how intellectual conservatism was gradually displaced by media conservatism (talk radio, [[Fox News]]), then by populist nationalism, then by Trumpism — the story of the movement's de-intellectualization — is beyond Nash's scope. The three-strands taxonomy describes the movement's formation; it does not fully account for what the movement became. **The racial dimension.** Nash's account of the conservative movement's intellectual development does not foreground the role of racial backlash — the [[Southern Strategy]], the white resistance to civil rights, the suburban revolt against integration — in building the movement's political coalition. This is the most significant analytical gap in the book, and subsequent historians (notably Rick Perlstein in his multi-volume history) have argued that Nash's intellectual-history approach systematically understates how central racial politics were to the movement's growth. ## KB Significance This book is the single most important secondary source for the intellectual genealogy this KB tracks. The connections documented across People/, Organizations/, Ideologies/, and Media/ pages are, in large part, connections Nash identified first. The three-strands framework — libertarianism, traditionalism, anti-communism, fused at [[National Review]] — is the architectural blueprint for the movement's first generation. But the KB's scope extends far beyond Nash's. The financial infrastructure (Koch network, dark money, donor-advised funds), the media ecosystem (Fox News, talk radio, digital right-wing media), the legal-institutional strategy ([[Federalist Society]], judicial capture), and the populist-nationalist turn (Tea Party, Trump, MAGA) are all downstream of the intellectual movement Nash chronicles but are not part of his story. Nash drew the first map. This KB extends it into territory he did not — and in some cases could not — cover. ## See Also - [[George Nash]] — the author - [[Russell Kirk]] — traditionalist pole - [[Friedrich Hayek]] — libertarian pole - [[William F. Buckley Jr.]] — institutional synthesizer - [[Frank Meyer]] — fusionist bridge - [[Whittaker Chambers]] — anti-communist pole - [[National Review]] — the coalition's institutional home - [[Irving Kristol]] — the neoconservative strand Nash added in later editions - [[Barry Goldwater]] — the movement's first political vehicle - [[Ronald Reagan]] — the movement's political triumph - [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]] — publisher of the definitive edition