Corey Robin

In The Reactionary Mind, political scientist Corey Robin makes a strikingly bold claim about the right's political and intellectual foundations. He contends that from the eighteenth century through today, the right has been united by a defense of inequality and privilege and by a deep hostility to all forms of progressive politics. The book ranges widely, covering figures as various as Edmund Burke and Antonin Scalia, John C. Calhoun and Ayn Rand, Joseph de Maistre and Phyllis Schlafly.

Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin

The Reactionary Mind

Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is "boring," said the founding father of the American right. "Devoting your life to it," as conservatives do, "is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." With this unlikely conversation began Robin's decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what's truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them? Tracing conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution, Robin argues that the right is fundamentally inspired by a hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market, others oppose it. Some criticize the state, others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality. Despite their opposition to these movements, conservatives favor a dynamic conception of politics and society--one that involves self-transformation, violence, and war. They are also highly adaptive to new challenges and circumstances. This partiality to violence and capacity for reinvention has been critical to their success. Written by a keen, highly regarded observer of the contemporary political scene, The Reactionary Mind ranges widely, from Edmund Burke to Antonin Scalia, from John C. Calhoun to Ayn Rand. It advances the notion that all rightwing ideologies, from the eighteenth century through today, are historical improvisations on a theme: the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.

Nicholas Hanemann

Lower review since I'm not as tied in to the line of argument or reasoning in this book as I feel would allow me to maximally benefit from it. That's not saying that it would necessarily be better if it were explicated further within though, just that the conceptualization of conservativism is strikingly different from the synthesis I've put together through my reading up to this point. The strongest aspect is the best description I've yet read of how the right uses left jargon (to co-opt not their aims but the sentiment).

Tldr: not as coherent as "Listen, Liberal" by Thomas Frank, though contains a glimmer of an equally cogent historical counternarrative.

The Reactionary Mind Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin

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