Power and history: The political thought of James Burnham

Francis, Samuel T.

University Press of America

The 1992 presidential election campaign showed just how deep were the divisions within the Republican party. In this provocative collection of essays, Washington Times columnist Samuel Francis argues that the victory of the Democratic party marks not only the end of the Reagan-Bush era but the failure of American conservatism. Francis cites a number of reasons for the failure. After contributing to Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1981, leaders of the New Right divorced themselves from popular discontents and pursued democratic globalism, a policy inconsistent with the theories of the Old Right. The success of the "managerial revolution " - the shift of power from the bourgeois elite to a managerial or corporate elite - spawned a new kind of conservative, the neoconservative. Francis shows that by the end of the Reagan administration, neoconservatism was the dominant faction of the American Right. While the Old Right had sought smaller government, the Reagan and Bush administrations contributed to one of the largest expansions of the federal government in history. While the Old Right promoted cultural conservatism, "multiculturalism" and "political correctness" had become powerful forces by the beginning of the 1990s. Viewing the intellectual, political, and social changes in the American conservative movement, Francis discusses such individuals as George Will, Joseph McCarthy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Whittaker Chambers. He also reflects on the meaning of such ideas as equality and democracy, and the role of elites in American society and culture. The changes of the last decade have led to a virtual disappearance of the political Right. Beautiful Losers is a timely look at a crucial moment in the history of American conservatism, when, for the first time since the New Deal, the nation faces the prospect of political democracy without an oppositional force to liberalism.

Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism

History

Americas

Univ of Missouri Pr

*Leviathan and Its Enemies* is Samuel T. Francis's magnum opus on political theory and the history of the modern world, which had been lost to the world after his untimely death in 2005 and is published here for the first time. This edition includes new introductory and critical essays by Jerry Woodruff, Fran Griffin, and Paul E. Gottfried. In his Introduction, Jerry Woodruff writes, "Following [James] Burnham, Sam believed a new ruling elite emerged in 20th-century. . . . the growth of giant corporations, the expansion of government power and bureaucracy, and the widespread emergence of mass organizations gave birth to a powerful class of skilled professionals to guide and manage the vast operations of the means of economic production, which, on a smaller scale, were once in the hands of private entrepreneurs and their families. As a result, the old ruling bourgeois elite, along with its political and social institutions and its view of society and politics, were replaced by a new "managerial elite," with a world outlook that set out to remake society according to its own interests, and which was hostile to any bourgeois remnants in conflict with that project."

Leviathan and Its Enemies

Radix

Leviathan and Its Enemies is Samuel T. Francis's magnum opus on political theory and the history of the modern world, which had been lost to the world after his untimely death in 2005 and is published here for the first time. This edition includes new introductory and critical essays by Jerry Woodruff, Fran Griffin, and Paul E. Gottfried. In his Introduction, Jerry Woodruff writes, "Following James] Burnham, Sam believed a new ruling elite emerged in 20th-century. . . . the growth of giant corporations, the expansion of government power and bureaucracy, and the widespread emergence of mass organizations gave birth to a powerful class of skilled professionals to guide and manage the vast operations of the means of economic production, which, on a smaller scale, were once in the hands of private entrepreneurs and their families. As a result, the old ruling bourgeois elite, along with its political and social institutions and its view of society and politics, were replaced by a new "managerial elite," with a world outlook that set out to remake society according to its own interests, and which was hostile to any bourgeois remnants in conflict with that project."

In 'Winning the Culture War', one of the most provocative and insightful essays in this collection, Samuel Francis argues that Middle Americans must adopt an insurgent, rather than a conservative strategy. Of course, we want to conserve our culture, our way of life, and the customs and values that distinguish us as Americans.

Revolution from the Middle

Literature & Fiction

Woodruff, Jerry

History & Criticism

Middle Amer Pr

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Books by Francis, Samuel T.