The New Deal and Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, there is almost a frenzy to explain what went wrong with Republicans and what con-servatives must do to be a viable part of the national conversation. “Whither conservatism?” seems to be the political question of the day. Our answer is: Go back to come back. History often contains signposts for the way forward, and we think that is most certainly the case here. The particular historical trail we propose to travel in this book started when we taught a course to public policy graduate stu-dents on “The Roots of the American Order.” We concluded that the American republic was defined and established in three crises during its history: (1) the Founding crisis, (2) the Civil War crisis, and (3) the Great Depression and New Deal crisis. We challenged students to understand what a crisis is, not from secondary sources but from the perspective of those who lived and led the way through it. Each of these crises defined or redefined the very nature of the American republic.