Summary Of Suburban Warriors The Origins Of The New American Right

Nick Melvin

4/24/17

Book Review 7

Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton University Press, 2015.

Lisa McGirr, professor of history at Harvard University, investigates the grassroots conservative attempts in the 1960s and 1970s to revitalize the diminishing Republican Party which assisted in creating a new right and the subsequent conservative revival in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan. McGirr’s book, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right, was mainly written for a scholarly audience and to give a viewpoint on the oversimplified tale that conservatives in this era were non progressive and backward minded. McGirr implies that

McGirr implies that suburbs of Orange County were typical of suburbs widespread throughout the nation that were also involved in the new right development incorporating Cobb County Georgia and Scottsdale Arizona. McGirr mentions that Orange County’s conservative infrastructure began with a reliance on the military industrial complex during the World War II defense development throughout the Cold War and government defense contractors who had ant-communist and conservative beliefs surged in mainly from the mid-west. California was amidst the most flourishing states economically and proposed jobs in high tech services and careers that captivated a multitude of educated entrepreneurs. While Orange County grew, business and real estate prospectors flowed in and among the military impact and business entrepreneurs, Orange County expanded into a conservative refuge of small scale government, anti-communist, protestant ethnic community, low tax. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Orange County embraced everything that the Republican Party was, prosperity, religious ethics, anti-left politics, and an association of grassroots advocates. McGirr points out that Orange County is a contemporary suburb of highly educated and accomplished people which discards the assumption that conservatives are backward

McGirr implies that they are the “kitchen table protestors” because of the activism in the neighborhoods. (6) They created community meetings, assembled in cafes throughout the community to debate everything from communist overthrow to liberal social procedures conquering schools like sex education. According to McGirr, Orange County integrated libertarianism and customary evangelical conservatism jointly in this development. McGirr mentions that they were not insurgents but instead accepted restricted government and attempted to generate a stage that pleaded with a bigger group through the ideology of individual entitlement and private property rights while also grasping social conservatism. It was a fascinating mix according to McGirr mainly because libertarians are not social conservatives but their usual unification was anti-communism and the opposition to developing federal government. McGirr believes that women were a crucial component of the authoritative achievements in the communities. In order to be certain, McGirr explains that even though they were effective in the politics of the new right, the Republican platform still envisioned women’s roles as being family manager and “protectors of their children’s morality.”