THE NEW RIGHT PAPERS

by Robert--Ed. Whitaker ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 20, 1982

Those who are looking for a coherent presentation of the theoretical underpinnings of the so-called New Right will have to look elsewhere. Whitaker (A Plague on Both Your Houses) has collected a dozen articles by as many contributors--including direct-mall whiz Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich, director of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress--that constitute a repetitive, code-worded polemical attack on liberals, the Ivy League, the ghost of Nelson Rockefeller, ""the Establishment,"" and other bogys. Samuel T. Francis, a legislative assistant to newly-elected Senator John East of North Carolina, has a go at the new class of administrators in large corporations and federal programs (heirs of James Burnham's ""managerial class""); and calls for a Middle American Revolution (MAR) to overthrow that elite and move in itself. Along the way, he endorses the idea of National Review editor Jeffrey Hart (also included in this anthology) of a ""Caesarist strategy"" of capturing the presidency in order to remake the ""bureaucratic-managerial apparatus that now strangles the latent dynamism of the MAR-Sunbelt social forces"" in the name of the traditional American value of economic growth. Weyrich, noting that ""the Panama Canal has been given away, Taiwan is gone, the Middle East is going,"" is still not without hope: ""it is basic to my philosophy that God's truth ought to be manifest politically."" Thomas Fleming (""editor of the Southern Partisan, a quarterly journal representing the Southern intellectual traditionalist viewpoint"") is convinced that ""the destruction of the family began long ago in the apparently innocent decision of state and local governments to provide for schools. Public education, the proudest boast of democratic America, has turned out to be the principal weapon used by the enemies of the family."" For a more reasoned view, see Irving Kristol.

Pub Date: March 20, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1982

Categories: NONFICTION