What do American conservatives believe? The answer used to be simple. You believed in the genius of capitalism, the importance of U.S. superpower, and the glories of the Judeo-Christian tradition. When in doubt, you invoked Ronald Reagan. A working knowledge of a few big names in the modern right's canon—a little Russell Kirk here, some Irving Kristol there—was enough to qualify you for a position as a promising voice on the right. The CliffsNotes version was available in George Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. If you didn't have time for any of that, nobody worried much. There were enough disagreements to allow for debates that made you feel like an independent thinker, but not so much that it would ever be in doubt which team you belonged to—the Republicans, always the Republicans.


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