Watch on the Right Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era

The ascendancy of conservatism in the last twenty years is an unprecedented episode in American intellectual & political history. In "Watch on the Right," J. David Hoeveler, Jr., gives us enlightening, often immensely entertaining, portraits of the key thinkers behind this "revolution." As Hoeveler writes, "conservative thinkers hang their hats on many different racks," & this book dramatizes for us the breadth of the conservative coalition as exemplified by the eight writers surveyed: William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, Robert Nisbet, Irving Kristol, Hilton Kramer, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., & Michael Novak. These eight "gurus" of the right represent a very wide spectrum of conservative thought, but Hoeveler also considers the present-day conservative renaissance against the literary background that has given the movement its identity since Edmund Burke. Amid the multiple voices unifying themes do emerge. American conservatives share a hostility toward the liberal "new class" - the professional media & academic elites & the entrenched government bureaucracies that still believe in the perfectibility of society by enforced social engineering. Moreover, conservatives of all persuasions are united in struggling to sustain traditional values against the onslaught of revolutionary capitalism & technology, & all are profoudly hostile to imperialistic communism on the Soviet model.Hoeveler, J. David, Jr. is the author of 'Watch on the Right Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era', published 1991 under ISBN 9780299128104 and ISBN 0299128105.