Fighting a New Deal: Intellectual origins of the Reagan Revolution, 1932--1952

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dc.contributor.advisorHaskell, Thomas L.
dc.contributor.advisorMcCann, Samuel G.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberMatusow, Allen J.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberTwyman, William Gaines
dc.contributor.committeeMemberSher, George
dc.contributor.committeeMemberAutrey, Herbert S.
dc.creatorEow, Gregory Teddy
dc.date.accessioned2013-10-25T18:29:19Z
dc.date.available2013-10-25T18:29:19Z
dc.date.issued2007
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation locates the origins of the modern conservative movement in the intellectual history of the 1930s and 1940s. I argue that it was during the years of the Great Depression, when laissez-faire capitalism was most discredited, that a group of conservative academics and intellectuals began to lay the foundations for its postwar resurgence. Angered by the New Deal, those intellectual activists honed their free market ideology and began to develop a network through which to distribute it. As a result, they began to lay the intellectual and institutional foundation for the conservative movement. This dissertation recovers a number of narratives that reveal the rudimentary makings of a movement. It was during the 1930s and 1940s that economist Henry Simons worked to turn the University of Chicago's economics department into a bastion of free market sentiment; Leonard Read, after a decade of free market advocacy, created the first libertarian think tank, the Foundation for Economic Education, in 1946; legal scholar Roscoe Pound, worried by the spread of legal realism in the academy and growth of government in Washington, dramatically moved to the political right to make common cause with conservatives; Albert Jay Nock, his protégé Frank Chodorov and Felix Morley created a network of conservative writers and publications that paved the way for William F. Buckley's National Review ; and writers such as Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson made the case for laissez-faire in the pages of popular publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and the New York Herald Tribune . Historians have generally attributed the rise of the modern right to the conservative political mobilization in response to the civil rights movement, campus agitation of the 1960s, and the campaign for women's rights. As a result, historians tend to view the modern conservative movement as a distinctly postwar social and political phenomenon. This dissertation enriches that account by revealing the ties the modern conservative movement has to the years of the Great Depression and the debate over the government's role in the economy.
dc.format.extent295 ppen_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.callnoTHESIS HIST. 2007 EOW
dc.identifier.citationEow, Gregory Teddy. "Fighting a New Deal: Intellectual origins of the Reagan Revolution, 1932--1952." (2007) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/75005">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/75005</a>.
dc.identifier.digital304804768en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/75005
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.
dc.subjectAmerican history
dc.subjectEconomic history
dc.subjectPolitical science
dc.subjectSocial sciences
dc.subjectIntellectual origins
dc.subjectReagan Revolution
dc.subjectConservatism
dc.subjectLibertarianism
dc.subjectLegal realism
dc.titleFighting a New Deal: Intellectual origins of the Reagan Revolution, 1932--1952
dc.typeThesis
dc.type.materialText
thesis.degree.departmentHistory
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanities
thesis.degree.grantorRice University
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy
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