Who Stole Conservatism?: Capitalism and the Disappearance of Traditional Conservatism

A compelling explanation of how conservatism is no longer what its founders intended and how it has been transformed into a tool of materialist economics and emptied of much of its original meaning.During Americas 19th-century Gilded Age free-enterprise capitalist ideas distorted and deeply obscured traditional political conservatism. Conservatism today argues distinguished historian Mario R. DiNunzio is a grotesque version of the ideology crafted by its founders including John Adams in America and Edmund Burke in England.This compelling book provides a survey of conservative thought and its transformation that originated in the late 19th century exposing the influence of that transformed conservatism on 20th-century American politics―from Hoover to Goldwater to Reagan and on to the Tea Party. It explains the historical foundations of conservative thought and the radical transformation of conservatism into a vastly different ideology primarily concerned with the defense of unfettered capitalism and extreme rights of individuals as opposed to the values of traditional conservatism: community good order tempered change and enduring values. DiNunzio challenges conservatives and scholars of conservatism to confront the differences between what passes for conservatism in modern-day American politics and the tenets of the original conservative tradition.Explains how conservatives and progressives differ in their ideologies but are not absolute oppositesDocuments the range of influences across history that created and molded the cultural and political ideology of modern conservatism such as the French Revolution large-scale capitalism in the Gilded Age Social Darwinism and Andrew Carnegies gospel of wealthSuggests that modern liberals have reasons to respect and learn from some of the tenets of classic conservative political thought