The Conservative Movement

The Conservative Movement arose to answer three major concerns. The first concern of the Conservative Movement was to repeal New Deal programs. Over the years this transformed into more of a fight against “big government” and New Deal programs were the central pillar of “big government”. The next goal of the Conservative movement dealt with the destruction of Communism and creating a foreign policy that exemplified this desire. According to the Conservative Movement, Communism was seen as a threat to America and the rest of world, and conservatives saw liberal foreign policy on Communism as weak and wanted to change US’s foreign policy to be more aggressive. Finally, the last concern of the Conservative movement was the continuance and protection …show more content…
He said “The root evil is that the government is engaged in activities in which it has no legitimate business” referring to the federal government’s creation of social welfare programs and laws that according to Conservatives, was the right of the state to make. (S&L 62) Goldwater’s most popular stance, however, comes farther down the page, when he says the magic words that every conservative at the time had been thinking “The government must begin to withdraw from a whole series of programs that are outside its constitutional mandate”. Goldwater went past “establishment” Republicans who the Conservative Movement saw as “temporizers” who were unwilling to fight communism and repeal the New Deal (S&L 59). The Conscience of a Conservative united the Conservative Movement and served as a platform for years …show more content…
General MacArthur, in his farewell speech to Congress, perfectly described the conservative movement’s stance on communism, before the Conservative Movement truly existed. In his speech, MacArthur calls communism a global threat and advocates for military action to stop the communists(S&L 44). MacArthur continues, saying that against the Communist’s, there can be no appeasement, only victory or else their “successful advance in one sector threatens the destruction of every other sector”(S&L 44-45). The Conservative movement repeats this same ideology for the next 40 years, Communism is a threat to America Communism must be stopped. The Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative group during the 1960’s, stated in their manifesto the same belief shared by MacArthur, stating that Communism was a grave threat and that victory was more important than coexistence. Regan, for his 1980 presidential nomination acceptance speech, echoed the same seriousness shared by MacArthur 29 years earlier, stating how the Soviets threatened the United States and her allies and that the US wasn’t doing enough to match the Soviets in terms of Defense spending, inferring that the US was