Mobilizing Resentment CL: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers

In this surprisingly uninformative study of right-wing politics, Hardisty attempts to explain the ascendance of what she calls the New Right, that awkward marriage of libertarianism with social conservatism exemplified by the cooperation between Newt Gingrich and the Christian Coalition. She traces the seeds of the New Right's success back to the early 1970s, when strategists such as Jerry Falwell began to politicize conservative white Christians. Her theoretical discussions are strong, especially when she dissects the various flavors of libertarianism, but she fails to link those ideological concerns meaningfully to real-world politics. The founder and executive director of Political Research Associates, an organization that monitors right-wing politics, Hardisty makes no bones about her own political opinions, which reside far to the left of the spectrum. In the end, she is less concerned with understanding political conservatism than with exhorting progressives to strengthen their arguments in order to win the allegiance of those now being courted and won over by the right. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and progressive activists will find some of her advice well worth heeding. But readers looking for an authoritative analysis of American political conservatism won't find it here. Worse, though Hardisty tries to see the ""human"" element of conservative social and political movements, she still exhibits a classic form of liberal contempt. It's one thing to disagree passionately with conservatism, quite another to view the New Right as something intrinsically undemocratic rather than as a wholly legitimate part of democracy's clamorous existence. (Sept.)