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 America''s 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 politicsfrom 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.