Themed Book Review on Gender and Conservatism Raised Right: Fatherhood in Modern American Conservatism

Abstract

This is quite a novel book, and indeed almost a novel in itself. The (anti)hero is “modern American conservatism,” born (in Dudas’s account) in 1955 with the publication of William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Our Mission Statement” in the first issue of his own National Review. Dudas’s novel of education recounts the highs and lows, triumphs and tribulations, of this discursive character (i.e., “modern American conservatism”) through the Ronald Reagan era in state and federal politics, Clarence Thomas’s tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, and on to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as a concluding flourish. Crucially, though, we have a “figure” here, a discourse, a trope that is central to Dudas’s narrative, as opposed to the (apparently) real men — Buckley, Reagan, and Thomas — whose personalities are not really their own. As Dudas presents his conservative troika of titans, they are instead avatars of a paradox. The paradox is this: how do political actors embrace both the radical independence of “rugged individualism” and submission to the authoritarianism of “fatherly rule”? This paradox is clearly of interest to political theorists, as it pits the moral and political individualism of rights discourse against the dependency and subservience of authoritarian and gender-hierarchical patriarchalism. Dudas takes this opposition pretty much as read and formulates his