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Conservatism grew popular as many Americans become disillusioned with the radical changes of the 1960s: draft dodgers, drugs, feminism, student rebellions, and youth culture. Lisa McGirr tied the declension of liberalism directly to the ascendency and traced the lineage of the relatively, new right-wing conservatism in America. She engaged in a microstudy of Orange County, California, a large Los Angeles suburb that includes Anaheim. She relied heavily on oral histories to trace conservative developments by focusing on grass roots activism during the Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan campaigns. McGirr directly refuted early 1960s historians, "Scholars such as Daniel Bell, Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset viewed right wing activists as motivated less by any coherent set of ideas or rational politics than psychological distress. This excessively psychological approach distorted the understanding of American conservatism."

McGirr analyzed Ronald Reagan's role in expanding the base and influence of Conservatism and refuted univocal, reductionist explanations. "Reagan's 1980 presidential election brought new respectability to conservative ideas in the national discourse. McGirr studied the local social bases that produced for the Reagan victory. She contended that lower-middle-class ethnics in the east contributed, but didn't form the core." McGirr discounted the belief that modern conservatives are reactionaries who want to restore a rural past. "Conservatism has changed in the past 100 years, jettisoning anti-Catholicism and embracing a consumer culture, It is the combination of preservationism and adaptation that helps explain the right's staying power."

Source:

Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors

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