Talk:Old Right

Comments

Michael Moore is a "stocky" directory? That's funny. 4.255.47.124

The following was moved from Old Guard Republicans, which I redirected to this site. Most of it is inaccurate but there is some good info that I think can be added into this article.--The_stuart 15:55, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Old Guard Republican refers to the freshman Republican US congressmen who were elected in 1946. Staunch conservatives, the Old Guard wanted to overturn and/or severely limit almost all of the legislation enacted over the previous decade and a half under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The most notable members of the Old Guard included John Bricker of Ohio, William Jenner of Indiana, William Knowland of California, George Malone of Nevada, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, Arthur Watkins of Utah, John Williams of Delaware, Karl Mundt of South Dakota, and Charles Kersten of Wisconsin. Their most notable legislative achievement was the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. The Act, which was vetoed by President Harry S. Truman, was overridden by congress. The Taft-Hartley Act essentially sought to limit the right of workers to organize and form labor unions. While keeping mostly in tact the Wagner Act, which was a key provision of the New Deal, the Taft-Harley Act allowed states to pass so-called right-to-work laws.

Most of the Old Guard were defeated in the elections of 1958, thanks mostly to efforts by union members who opposed policies they perceived as being anti-labor. George Malone and Arthur Watkins were defeated by Howard Cannon and Frank Moss respectively. William Knowland, who did not run for re-election to the Senate (his seat was won that year by Clair Engle, a Democrat who garnered over 57% of the vote) lost a bid for governor of California to Pat Brown. Knowland, who many considered a serious contender for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1960 if he was able to win the gubernatorial election, was never considered a viable candidate for public office again. The most surprising loss to the Old Guard, though, came with the defeat of John W. Bricker to Stephen M. Young in Ohio’s senate race. Bricker, a former three-term governor and 1944 vice-presidential candidate, had been considered "invincible" in Ohio. However, his enthusiastic endorsement of the proposed right-to-work amendment to the Ohio state constitution gave him a surprise loss at the hands of Young, who was over 70 years old at the time of the election, by five percentage points.

Libertarian

Libertarian? They didn't foster abolition of laws against narcotics and prostitution, didn't need to fight "gun control," and wouldn't, I think, have traded with the communist nations instead of starting up the Cold War! The word "libertarian" is itself quite antagonistic and needs rework. I really hate anachronisms wherever I find them, because for some reason I keep thinking that people these days are smarter than Shakepeare thinking that Julius Caesar had a clocktower in his village. --Sobolewski 15:30, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

They are all isolationists, but otherwise I think you are right. The terms belong to different eras, and the political philosphies are sufficiently disticnt that the differences shouldn't be smudged over. Rather than "reworking" the word maybe we should just delete its first use from the article, leaving the one in Rothbard's quotation (unless we drop the quotation too). -Willmcw 22:15, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Chronology

The chronology in the intro needs some work, as it currently runs together the interwar period of Robert Taft with the 1912 election in which his father, President William Howard Taft was a candidate. I'll work on it. Kaisershatner 15:55, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

While Robert Taft (a cousin of mine, as is his RINO grandson, just to drop names) was certainly the leader of the post-war isolationists, he was merely continuing a long American political tradition. Isolationism was already a political dead letter by the time Taft would run for president (1948) and certainly taking the dirt nap with the election of Ike and a Democrat congress in '52 (and with the Democratic control of the House).

Obviously, he'd have to included in any article on Isolationism itself, or the political history of the Fifties, his inclusion in this disambiguation is inappropriate given his ineffectual efforts to implement, or convince a majority of Americans, of his foreign policy ideas.

PainMan 22:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Reason for changes, additions

1. I felt that brief description of the so-called "Old Right" was incomplete. Opposition to the (eventually failed) policies of the "New Deal" was founded not on opposition to helping the downtrodden but on a sincere belief that the states should be the primary shapers of domestic life in the US (this doctrine is sometimes, usually pejoratively by its opponents, as States' Rights.

2. The proper term for the opposition to "foreign entanglements" is Isolationism. It began long before the 1920s; in fact in began with Washington's Farewell Address, warning his successors, and the country, against involvement in the politics and wars of Europe. While excellent advice for a weak, fledgling republic, the policy always clashed with the ever-present need to protect American trading ships and became increasingly inverse in proportion the growth of American power.

Isolationism was, arguably, the strongest component in keeping the United States out of WWI until 1917. In fact, Wilson won re-election in 1916 largely because of his appeal to isolationists, embodied in his campaign slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War". However, Wilson's adherence to isolationism was almost certainly political expediency given his later vigorous prosecution of the war and his almost-messianic adocacy of his "Fourteen Points". By 1917, Germany's "unrestricted" U-boat attacks on American shipping and the Zimmermann Telegram--coupled with the dawning on many--non German- --Americans of the very real possibility that Germany might prevail on the battlefield--eroded the isolationist position to the extent that Wilson was able to persuade to cooperate in his leading a very divided country into the Great War.

Therefore to date Isolationsim from the 1920s is simply not historically accurate.

Furthermore, I felt that without listing what succeeded the so-called "Old Right" the description is incomplete (a more accurate term that "Old Right" is probably "Country-Club Republicanism").

This so-called "Old Right"'s disdain toward what later would be called the "Roosevelt Coalition" the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt were welding together. The maintenance of this coalition, had won the Democrats five successive presidential elections (1932-1948); and would help maintain Democratic control of the House of Representatives for 40 years (1954-94).

Therefore, I felt it was necessary to include William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, respectively, the philosophical founder of Movement Conservatism as well the two architechts of the practical victory of the movement's ideology and policies--which would later be bundled together under the term Reagan Conservatism (I recognize the anachorinism of using the term before the late '60s when Reagan became the leader of the conservative faction of the GOP as against the "Country Clubbers" emodied by Reagan's later Vice President and President, the Elder George Bush).

Goldwater and, successfully Reagan, began to reach out to the "Roosevelt Coalition" with, eventually great success--especially with European-Americans in the South and blue collar workers in the Rust Belt; African-Americans remained aloof, as they do to the GOP to this day, always giving 90%+ of their votes to the Democratic candidate regardless of who that candidate was).

3. I felt the entry on the UK's "Old Right" was incomplete and, frankly, could have been better written. I claim no deep level of knowledge of British domestic parties/politics and, therefore, didn't feel comfortable writing about them (without doing the necessary research).

Someone more familiar with the subject should, imo, do what I've done for the American part of the article.

PainMan 22:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)