The dominant forces of American conservatism remain wedded, at all costs, to the Republican Party, but another movement, one with its roots in the pre-World War II era, has stepped forth to fill an intellectual vacuum on the right. This Old Right first rose in opposition to the New Deal, fighting both statism at home and the emergence of an American empire abroad. More recently this movement, sometimes called paleoconservatism, has provided the ideological backbone of modern populism and the opposition to globalization, with decisive effects on presidential politics. In Revolt from the Heartland, Joseph Scotchie provides an intellectual history of the Old Right, treating its main figures and defining its conflict with the traditional left-right political mainstream.

As Scotchie's account makes clear, the Old Right and its descendents have articulated an arresting and powerful worldview. They include an array of learned and provocative writers, including M.E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and Murray Rothbard, and more recently, Clyde Wilson, Thomas Fleming, Samuel Francis, and Chilton Williamson, Jr. Beginning with the movement's anti-Federalist forerunners, Scotchie traces its developments over two centuries of American history. In the realm of politics and economics, he examines the anti-imperialist stance against the Spanish-American War and the League of Nations, the split among conservatives on Cold War foreign policy, and the hostility to the socialist orientation of the New Deal. Identifying a number of social and cultural attitudes that define the Old Right, Scotchie finds the most important to be the importance of the classics, a recognition of regional cultures, the primacy of family over state, the moral case against immigration. In general, too, a Tenth Amendment approach to such recurring issues as education, abortion, and school prayer characterizes the group.

As Scotchie makes clear, the Old Right and its grass-roots supporters have, and continue to be, a powerful force in modern American politics in spite of a lack of institutional support and media recognition. Revolt from the Heartland is an important study of a persisting current in American political life.

Reviews
"The Old Right and its grass-roots supporters continue to be a force in modern American politics in spite of a lack of institutional support and media recognition. Revolt from the Heartland is an important study of a persistent current in American cultural and political life." - The Roslyn News; "[Revolt from the Heartland] is an essential and valuable contribution to American intellectual history in the last decade of the last century." - Samuel Francis, The American Conservative; "Joseph Scotchie sketches a concise intellectual portrait of the conservative tradition that since the late 1960s has been gradually pushed aside by a school of thought known as neoconservatism.... [He] has performed quite a valuable service in this precis of American conservative thought." - Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Southern Partisan"



Book Information
ISBN 9780765805843
Author Joseph A. Scotchie
Format Paperback
Page Count 146
Imprint Transaction Publishers
Publisher Taylor & Francis Inc
Weight(grams) 249g