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To: H-1960S@H-NET.MSU.EDU Subject: Roche on _The Conservative Sixties_ The New York Times this morning featured an article about an alternative marketing strategy for a movie called Christmas with the Kranks. The film, which has apparently been universally panned by critics, has borrowed heavily from the Mel Gibson playbook. Rather than cherry-pick or even mangle some otherwise underwhelming review from some obscure newspaper or radio program, the film’s marketers have relied upon a few good quotes from largely religious broadcasters. Largely as a result of this marketing scheme, the movie has enjoyed modest success. Bypassing the usual strategy of marketing a film, reminded me of the subjects of _The Conservative Sixties_ in a couple of ways: first, this volume does not rely upon the usual declensionist model of the 1960s or the backlash argument that has, until very recently, dominated the study of conservatism; it takes its subjects seriously and recognizes that they were part of a fundamental shift in American political culture. But more importantly for this discussion, the book’s essays describe the creation of an alternative political model for sixties politics – a sort of parallel 1960s universe. This project began, like so many I suppose, in the midst of another. When I was writing an essay for David Farber’s and Beth Bailey’s _Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s_, I framed it around a question – was the conservative movement of the 1960s a white backlash (the dominant interpretation) or part of a more longstanding political tradition that Nixon once described as the Silent Majority. The argument that the conservatism that emerged in full force by the late 1960s was primarily a backlash against the excesses of hippies, student radicals, and black activists is familiar to us all. But in my own work I had seen how voters in one part of the nation (easily the reddest section of one of the reddest states – Texas) struggled for decades to find a way to express their dissatisfaction with the trends in American political culture and shifts in national policy. David and I decided to put together a book that might capture some of the emerging trends in the study of recent American politics and of the 1960s – the conservative sixties. We were deliberate in our choices and actively sought out scholars who were interested in exploring the founts of conservatism and bringing them into the 1960s rather than finding them there. The idea was to show how people learn that their political philosophy could be described as “conservative.” To unhinge the word conservative from its association with the silk-stockinged bankers of a Thomas Nast cartoon and attach it to the sort of rugged individualism preached by Goldwater and Reagan was no easy task. Removing class from the equation was crucial. What that gives us is a new way to consider the political culture of the postwar world. As David argues in the opening essay, one of the defining characteristics of 1960s politics is how communities (both geo-political and other forms) attempt to define a set of values and protect them from the onslaught of a dominant national culture – and this takes place on the left as well as the right. Conservatism, in this equation, becomes less about class (or even status) and more about formulating and articulating an alternative to the national political culture. To get there, the essayists got down to the grass-roots. As historians of the 1960s we have indelible images of how the left organized and took their fight literally to the streets, but other than a few fleeting moments – Barry Goldwater thundering about extremism in the Cow Palace – we don’t see the conservative movement. Conservatives organized around the coffee table and planned meetings at the hair salon. While their counterparts on the left were trying the change the world, they were trying to get one of their own elected to the school board. From the way the John Birch Society was organized, to the efforts of evangelical intellectuals to try to stay one step ahead of the sexual revolution, to the different ways that conservatives from Phyllis Schlafly to the local bookstore owner tried to think through their political philosophy in a period of profound change, the book showcases the ways that the movement came together. Along the way, I think it does a pretty good job of showing the newer interpretations of American politics and offers some important amendments to 1960s historiography. Jeff Roche
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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