UP FROM CONSERVATISM: Why the Right is Wrong for America

For nearly a decade, Michael Lind worked closely as a writer and editor with the intellectual leaders of American conservatism. Slowly, he came to believe that the many prominent intellectuals he worked with were not the leaders of the conservative movement but the followers and apologists for an increasingly divisive and reactionary political strategy orchestrated by the Republican party. Lind’s disillusionment led to a very public break with his former colleagues on the right, as he attacked the Reverend Pat Robertson for using anti-Semitic sources in his writings.

In Up From Conservatism, this former rising star of the right reveals what he believes to be the disturbing truth about the hidden economic agenda of the conservative elite–and about their cynical ‘cultural war’ strategy for acquiring and maintaining political power.

The Republican capture of Congress in 1994 did not represent the conversion of the American public to conservative ideology. Rather, it marked the success of the thirty-year-old ‘southern strategy’ begun by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. In the past generation, the GOP has been transformed into a party dominated by right-wing southerners like Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey. The party of Lincoln has been captured by the political and philosophical heirs of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis.

The U.S., Lind concludes, could use a genuine ‘one-nation’ conservatism that seeks to promote the interests of the middle class and the poor as well as the rich. But today’s elitist conservatism poses a clear and present danger to the American middle class and the American republic.

Penetrating in its analysis and insight, savage in its wit, Up From Conservatism is a timely exposé of the new Republican majority, and it adds an important and funny voice to the 1996 campaign season.