Lisa McGirrReseñas

Another book I read for school but this could definitely be read by anyone interested in this subject. It's well-researched and well-written. It's probably not the most entertaining read; it's very information-heavy and repetitive at times. However, if you're interested in prohibition, this is a good book to learn more about the socio-history in that time period.

In Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right, Lisa McGirr argues, California “conservative activists and the movement they forged are essential to understanding the rightward shift in American politics since the 1960s. Far outside the boundaries of respectable politics in the early 1960s, the Right expanded its influence on the national scene in the late 1960s and 1970s and vaulted to national power with the Reagan landslide of 1980” (pg. 5). She suggests “that it is only within the context of the Cold War; postwar demographic transformation; the dynamics of economic, cultural, and political change; and their cumulative impact on the values and beliefs of ordinary people that we can uncover the process by which the modern American Right was made” (pg. 12). McGirr continues, “Focusing on western conservatism, then, tells a somewhat different story that cannot be subsumed under the North-South civil rights dichotomy that has so much dominated our narratives of the 1960s” (pg. 15).
McGirr writes, “Orange County had a higher proportion of homeowners than the nation as a whole – and this high rate of home ownership contributed to a germinating conservative political culture. The weekends spent remodeling, landscaping, and improving property, along with concerns over property taxation, all reinforced a conservative ethos” (pg. 43). She continues, “The middle-class men and women who populated Orange County found meaning in a set of politics that affirmed the grounding of their lives in individual success and yet critiqued the social consequences of the market by calling for a return to ‘traditional’ values, local control, strict morality, and strong authority” (pg. 53). According to McGirr, “The right-wing revival was not an irrational, momentary outburst of psychologically maladjusted men and women, as liberals hoped and believed…the resurgence of grassroots mobilization on the Right was a result not of strength but of a lack of political power and influence within national politics, and even conservatives’ chosen party” (pg. 66). These grassroots campaigns were anti-communist and pro-free enterprise. They were composed mostly of the middle class and those who aspired to it while trying to preserve their white, Christian, middle class status. The John Birch Society was one example.
Discussing Barry Goldwater, McGirr describes how some middle class, white, anti-communist Christians picked him as their mantle-bearer as his unlikely defeat of Rockefeller proved the possibilities of grassroots politics. Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater, however, which led to anger toward liberals. McGirr writes, “The cultural criticisms of Orange County’s conservatives responded to the discontents created by the dynamics of capitalism. Orange Countians lamented the decline of family authority, the emphasis on change and innovation, the undermining of community, and the decline of the importance of locality – all of which resulted from the growth of large-scale institutions and the concentration of economic and political power that are part of the functioning of a free-market economy” (pg. 163). This fostered a worldview that was very middle class, white, Christian, and patriotic. The conservatives opposed big government, viewing it as the liberal replacement for god. Further, they were anti-Civil Rights as a result of the opposition to big government. All of these views relied on an “other” to demonize, either communists, liberals, atheists, or someone else.
Discussing Reagan, McGirr writes, “From the start, Reagan set a different tone for his campaign than Goldwater had, working to build a new model of conservative respectability that would enable him and other conservatives after him to become viable electoral contenders” (pg. 196). Reagan was less extreme than Goldwater due to his decreased militancy, but was equally distrusting of government. Reagan’s 1966 gubernatorial win and Nixon’s 1970 presidential win were in no small part thanks to Orange County and its history of political activism, with a conservative surge stemming from the uncertainty of the 1960s. This led to a final move away from more extremism, conspiracy theories, and groups like the John Birch Society and toward single issues that were more successful in motivating people, including liberals, to support conservative causes. These included free speech, abortion, sex education, and others.

You can read my review at the New York Journal of Books:

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/war-alcohol-prohibition

The author focuses on the rise of the far-right in Orange County. Although it is a good book, I preferred the book "Before the Storm" which covers similar material.

Good, but not great: McGirr's book traces the rise of what I would call the (white, middle-class) suburban right and the Christian right, beginning in the early 60s. The new right coalesced around anti-Communism, laissez faire capitalism, states' rights and local government, the "traditional" family, Christian values, individual economic responsibility, and low taxes.It was the suburban Christian right that first brought these views together. Barry Goldwater, who ran for President in 1964 against Johnson, was an early exemplar of new right views. However, his strong opposition to the Civil Rights acts won him the lower South and, along with his virulent anti-Communism, helped him lose the rest of the country. The suburban Christian right shed the virulent and conspiratorial anti-Communism that they initially directed at domestic enemies; south-eastern politics moved away from the New Deal order and shed legal segregation and overt biological racism; they all joined their Christian and conservative forces and formed a conservative coalition behind Ronald Reagan. McGirr's is a "bottom up" analysis that begins with the grass roots social base of the suburban Christian right, using Orange County as a prototypical case study. She also examines the interplay of grass roots leaders, rank and file members, regional business elites, and national intellectual and political leaders. The book doesn't delve into how the suburban right teamed up with south-eastern conservatives, but their shared Christianity, shared social conservatism, and shared opposition to civil rights, busing, and affirmative action makes it fairly easy to guess what that part of the story in general looks like. However, McGirr's would be a better book if she examined some of these connections, at least briefly. This is what makes the book good but not great. Post-script: Today, the Cold War is over, terrorism has replaced communism as America's global enemy, and George W. Bush has combined the Christian right with the post-Cold War, neo-conservative, neo-imperialist right. Bush has tried to combine anti-terrorism, neo-imperialism, and Christian conservativism without provoking Christian-Islamic antagonisms--antagonisms already strained by Christian conseravtive and neo-conservative support for Israel. These topics would make an interesting post-script to McGirr's book.