Confronting the New Conservatism: The Rise of the Right in America

William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, George F. Will, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, John Bolton - these are today’s neoconservatives - confident, clear-cut, and a political force to be reckoned with. But how to define this new conservatism? What is new about it? In this volume, some of today’s top political scholars take on the charge of explaining, defining, and confronting the new conservatism of the last twenty-five years. The authors examine the ideas, policies and roots of this ideological movement showing that contemporary neoconservatism has been able to blend many of the aspects of social conservatism - such as religious populism and nationalism - with economic liberalism and the rhetoric of equality of opportunity and individualism. The contributors to Confronting the New Conservatism offer a trenchant analysis and substantive critique of the neoconservative ethos, arguing that it is an ideology that needs to be better understood if change is to be had.