미국 신우파의 역사적 위치(1974-1989)

An Interpretation of the New Right in America, 1974-89

This paper aims at criticizing the perverted liberal-leftist interpretation on the historical meaning of the New Right in recent American history. In other words, it is intended to refute the liberal-leftist contention connecting the American New Right movement in the 1980s with the European fascist or Nazi movements in the 1930s. The American New Right movement. however, was an utterly different one from the European Radical Right in its ideological foundations. The American New Right were individualists who wanted to keep their society free, competitive, laissez-faire, less-governmental, local, and libertarian, while their European counterparts were collectivists who intended to keep their society totalitarian, state-controlled, and under hero-worship. The American New Right dreamed a republic of the self-reliant or independent middle-class citizens, while their European conterparts were the dependent or poor masses satisfied with a gigantic welfare state managed by the “benevolent” dictators. The American New Right were the Protestant Christians who tried to keep their country Calvinist or Puritan, and moral. while their European counterparts tried to keep their society secular and Pagan.