NATIONAL REVIEW MODERN AMERICAN CONSERVATISM AND THE STRUGGLE TO "SAVE" THE U.S.A. FROM COMMUNISM, LIBERALISM AND RACIAL INTEGRATION (1955-1959)

The movement known as modern American conservatism takes shape in the 1950s with at least two main objectives: in the international arena, to fight the threat come from international communism; at home, to subvert the dominance of New Deal liberalism, whose influence on government, society and culture allegedly weakened the United States' position in the Cold War and put its best national values at risk. This article analyzes some of the premises of this conservatism, based on the main conservative periodical of this era, National Review, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr. In particular, it examines how the magazine treated the end of the racial segregation in public schools, decreed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954.