Nuclear Country: The Origins of the Rural New Right (Haney Foundation Series)

Stock, Catherine McNicol

ISBN 10: 1512827894 / ISBN 13: 9781512827897

Editore: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025

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Summary:"This book locates the gradual commitment to all aspects of New Right conservatism on the Northern Plains in the experience of militarization and nuclearization. It argues that, over the course of several decades, white men and women in North and South Dakota from both sides of the aisle figuratively shredded the evidence of their commitment to Populist anti-militarism. On the other hand it does not claim-however tempting it might be-that militarization and nuclearization are the sole reasons for these shifts. At the very least the out-migration of small farmers in the postwar period, long the backbone of Populist organizations and the Democratic Party, indisputably changed the political landscape, particularly because they have been "replaced" by military families and energy workers. Instead it contends that militarization and nuclearization, the full scope of which remain hard to discern, were the historical developments most essential to the creation of the Rural New Right, that they can be best seen in this often-overlooked region, and that they link men and women in the Dakotas to people in the rest of the country and even the world. This book also makes clear the author's view that a great deal is lost when "material" values of militarization and global power take the place of more "spiritual" values of seeking community among our diverse humanity"-- Provided by publisher.

Codice articolo 8js614

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Nuclear Country: The Origins of the Rural New Right (Haney Foundation Series)
• Editore: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1512827894
• ISBN 13: 9781512827897
• Rilegatura: Soft cover
• Condizione: New
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • American History

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Militarization and nuclearization were the historical developments most essential to the creation of the rural New Right

Both North Dakota and South Dakota have long been among the most reliably Republican states in the nation: in the past century, voters have only chosen two Democrats, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, and in 2016 both states preferred Donald Trump by over thirty points. Yet in the decades before World War II, the people of the Northern Plains were not universally politically conservative. Instead, many Dakotans, including Republicans, supported experiments in agrarian democracy that incorporated ideas from populism and progressivism to socialism and communism and fought against "bigness" in all its forms, including "bonanza" farms, out-of-state railroads, corporations, banks, corrupt political parties, and distant federal bureaucracies—but also, surprisingly, the culture of militarism and the expansion of American military power abroad.

In Nuclear Country, Catherine McNicol Stock explores the question of why, between 1968 and 1992, most voters in the Dakotas abandoned their distinctive ideological heritage and came to embrace the conservatism of the New Right. Stock focuses on how this transformation coincided with the coming of the military and national security states to the countryside via the placement of military bases and nuclear missile silos on the Northern Plains. This militarization influenced regional political culture by reinforcing or re-contextualizing long-standing local ideas and practices, particularly when the people of the plains found that they shared culturally conservative values with the military. After adopting the first two planks of the New Right—national defense and conservative social ideas—Dakotans endorsed the third plank of New Right ideology, fiscal conservativism. Ultimately, Stock contends that militarization and nuclearization were the historical developments most essential to the creation of the rural New Right throughout the United States, and that their impact can best be seen in this often-overlooked region's history.

Informazioni sull'autore

Catherine McNicol Stock is the Barbara Zaccheo Kohn '72 Professor of History at Connecticut College and author of Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain.