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AYN RAND AND AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN THE COLD WAR ERA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

PATRICK ALLITT*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Emory University E-mail: pallitt@emory.edu

Extract

An American conservative movement developed rapidly after World War II. It brought together intellectuals and politicians opposed to the New Deal in domestic policy and Soviet communism in foreign policy. The movement's first presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, lost the election of 1964 but its second, Ronald Reagan, won the election of 1980. It has remained an influential force in American life up to the present, despite strong internal contradictions, which include disagreements about centralized power, about religion, about tradition, about elites, and about the free market. To some of the movement's early luminaries, such as Russell Kirk, free-market capitalism was the antithesis of conservatism since it required perpetual innovation and the sweeping away of traditional forms. To others, such as Ayn Rand, capitalism was the heart and soul of conservatism because it alone preserved the dignity and freedom of the individual.

Type
Review Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 On the development of the movement and its various component groups see Nash, George, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, since 1945 (New York: Basic, 1976)Google Scholar; and Allitt, Patrick, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities throughout American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

2 Tuccille, Jerome, It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand (New York: Stein and Day, 1971)Google Scholar.

3 Wolff, Tobias, Old School: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2003)Google Scholar.

4 Chandler, Alfred, The Visible Hand: The Managerian Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

5 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic, 1974)Google Scholar; idem, “On the Randian Argument,” in idem, Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 249–70, Galt incident 261.