This doctoral dissertation examines the relationship between the American conservative movement and Richard Nixon between the late 1940s and the Watergate scandal, with a particular emphasis on the latter's presidency. It complements the sizeable bodies of literature about both Nixon himself and American conservatism, shedding new light on the former's role in the collapse of the post-l945 liberal consensus. This thesis emphasises the part played by Nixon in the slow march of American conservatism from the political margins in the immediate post-war years to the centre of national politics by the late 1960s. The American conservative movement is treated as a diverse epistemic community made up of six distinct sub-groupings - National Review' conservatives, Southern conservatives, classical liberals, neoconservatives, American Enterprise Institute conservatives and the 'Young Turks' of the New Right - which, although philosophically and behaviourally autonomous, remained intimately associated under the overall leadership of the intellectuals who operated from the National Review. Although for nearly three decades Richard Nixon and American conservatives endured each other in a mutually frustrating and yet seemingly unbreakable relationship, Nixon never became a fully-fledged member of the movement. Yet, from the days of Alger Hiss to those of the 'Silent Majority', he remained the political actor best able to articulate and manipulate the conservative canon into a populist, electorally successful message. During his presidency, the administration's behaviour played a crucial role - even if not always deliberately - in the momentous transformation of the conservative movement into a more diverse, better-organised, modernised and more efficient political force. In the process, conservatives consciously and successfully used Nixon in their quest to gain acceptance as the legitimate sparring partners of the liberalism that had hitherto dominated post-1945 American politics. This doctoral dissertation examines the relationship between the American conservative movement and Richard Nixon between the late 1940s and the Watergate scandal, with a particular emphasis on the latter's presidency. It complements the sizeable bodies of literature about both Nixon himself and American conservatism, shedding new light on the former's role in the collapse of the post-l945 liberal consensus. This thesis emphasises the part played by Nixon in the slow march of American conservatism from the political margins in the immediate post-war years to the centre of national politics by the late 1960s. The American conservative movement is treated as a diverse epistemic community made up of six distinct sub-groupings - National Review' conservatives, Southern conservatives, classical liberals, neoconservatives, American Enterprise Institute conservatives and the 'Young Turks' of the New Right - which, although philosophically and behaviourally autonomous, remained intimately associated under the overall leadership of the intellectuals who operated from the National Review. Although for nearly three decades Richard Nixon and American conservatives endured each other in a mutually frustrating and yet seemingly unbreakable relationship, Nixon never became a fully-fledged member of the movement. Yet, from the days of Alger Hiss to those of the 'Silent Majority', he remained the political actor best able to articulate and manipulate the conservative canon into a populist, electorally successful message. During his presidency, the administration's behaviour played a crucial role - even if not always deliberately - in the momentous transfonnation of the conservative movement into a more diverse, better-organised, modernised and more efficient political force. In the process, conservatives consciously and successfully used Nixon in their quest to gain acceptance as the legitimate sparring partners of the liberalism that had hitherto dominated post-1945 American politics.

This thesis examines appropriations of ancient Greek thought in modern American conservatism from World War II to the second Iraq War. It questions the depth of conservatives' engagement with antiquity and explores how contemporary concerns have influenced modern interpretations of ancient texts. It also examines how the application of these interpretations has reinforced and invigorated conservative critiques of modernity. Chapter One looks at the reception of Greek thought after World War II, when different factions joined together to form the modern conservative movement. Chapter Two examines two European immigrants whose thought influenced the right in the 1950s and 1960s: Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, who both engaged more deeply with Greek thought than their immediate predecessors. Chapter Three investigates the origins of neoconservatism in the 1960s and 1970s. Whereas earlier conservatives had been attracted to Platonic absolutism, neoconservatives were drawn to Aristotle when developing a conservative social science. Chapter Four evaluates conservative critiques of higher education in the 'Culture Wars' of the 1980s. During this period, the 'Great Books' approach, with its emphasis on 'western civilization', came to be viewed as elitist. A number of conservative polemicists sought to restore the former 'Great Books' focus, but the apogee of this reaction came with Allan Bloom's Plato-inspired The Closing of the American Mind (1987). In Chapter Five, the focus shifts to foreign policy debates in the 1990s and 2000s, when antiquity was used both as a rhetorical device to paper over irresolvable conflicts and in a genuine effort to theorise problematic issues. This thesis uses tools from reception theory and intellectual history to assess the decisions of modern appropriators - what they used, adapted or omitted - within the context of broader social and political shifts.

This thesis examines the career of American conservative activist George S. Benson (1898-1991), who served as President of the Church of Christ–affiliated Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas (1936-1965) and rose to national prominence in the early 1940s, when he established the National Education Program. This examination provides an interpretation of the nature, origins and influence of modern U.S. conservatism. By focusing on the period from the 1930s to the mid-1960s, this work builds on a number of recent studies that have demonstrated the significant advantages to exploring modern conservatism beyond the social and political tumults of the 1960s and 1970s. Benson’s efforts also reveal some flaws in the analytical paradigm that dominates the literature on the modern right: the transition between conservatism’s marginalization in the 1930s and its recapture of the political mainstream by the late 1970s. Tempering this ‘rise of the right’ narrative by accepting both the importance and incompleteness of this resurgence provides the basis for the more nuanced approach that defines this work. Benson’s efforts to promote conservatism were defined – perhaps in equal measure – by failures, successes, and innovations. As a result, his career provides a new perspective on the boundaries of modern conservatism. Much of the work on conservatism focuses on either elites or grassroots activists. Benson operated within a space between these two groups that has rarely been explored. His career relied, almost exclusively, on the financial support of conservative businessmen, who shared his desire to effect a political re-education of the American public. To do this, Benson utilized a remarkable range of outlets for his message, which included a newspaper column, a radio broadcast, a relentless speaking schedule, and the production of approximately fifty films. He also made pioneering efforts to increase the influence of conservatism within the education system. Benson’s appeal to businessmen also resided in his construction of an innovative discourse for communicating the virtues of unfettered corporate capitalism and challenging its critics. Drawing on his own youthful experiences in Oklahoma, one of the last ‘frontier’ outposts, as well as the mythology of frontier individualism and the discourse of populism, Benson offered a folksy rebuke of ‘big government’ and embraced the corporate world as the heir to these virtues (despite the obvious contradictions). Benson’s faith ensured that religion became the second pillar of his ‘Americanism.’ His economic outlook constituted a prescient departure from Church of Christ traditions that, like those of many Southern fundamentalist and evangelical groups, harbored long-standing concerns that economic modernity constituted a destabilizing and amoral influence over a society that required order, stability and a primary dedication to non-worldly ideals. Moreover, Benson offers a new insight into the confluence of the traditionalist and libertarian wings of the right, a defining feature of the modern conservative movement. Benson’s political vision resonated most profoundly in the South and Southwest, where the heartland of modern conservatism emerged from a collision between the region’s remarkable postwar economic transformation and its preexisting religious and political culture. In a more general sense, certain themes within Benson’s crusade, notably including the power and influence of organized labor, provided key successes for the right during these years. These successes were testament to the importance of favorable circumstances, but Benson’s career was defined by the conviction that a more effective communication of conservatism would solve the right’s problems throughout the nation; one key argument of this work is that the message itself had notable limitations. These limitations, in turn, reveal a more profound ambiguity towards conservatives’ economic message within American political culture, the shortcomings of religious conservatism, and the problematic and incomplete nature of Benson’s efforts to ‘fuse’ economic and social conservatism. On the other hand, that conservatives’ ambitions were not met during this period does not suggest that Benson operated in an era of political comity; in one important respect, conservatives such as Benson helped to constrain political discourse and ensure the persistent moderation of their opponents.

This thesis offers a new policy history of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency responsible for providing grants to artists and arts organisations in the United States. It focuses in particular on the development of conservative perspectives on federal arts funding from the 1950s to the 1980s, and hence, illuminates the broader evolution of conservative political power, especially its limits. The most familiar narrative holds that the Endowment found itself caught up in the Culture Wars of the late 1980s when Christian right groups objected to certain federal grants, particularly to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Robert Mapplethorpe's Self-Portrait with Whip. This thesis, however, uncovers the older origins of conservative opposition to state support for the arts, analyses conservative conceptions of art, and illuminates the limited federal role the right sought to secure in the arts in the post-war period. Numerous studies have analysed the meanings and origins of the Culture Wars, but until now, scholars had not examined conservative approaches to federal arts politics in a historical sense. Historians have generally been too interested in explaining change to the detriment of examining continuity, but this approach under-emphasises the long-term tensions that underlie seemingly sudden political eruptions. This work also offers a deep account of the conservative movement and the arts world, an area that has so far been almost completely ignored by scholars, even though a focus on marginalised players is essential to understanding the limits of conservatism. In a general sense then, this thesis evaluates the range and diversity of the conservative movement and illuminates the overall odyssey of the right in modern America. In so doing, it provides a new insight into the ways we periodise political history and also invites a broader view of how we understand politics itself.