cover image Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism

Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism

Samuel Francis. University of Missouri Press, $37.5 (237pp) ISBN 978-0-8262-0907-8

This collection of provocative articles and review essays by a Washington Times columnist deals variously with the quarrel between the Old Right and the Neoconservatives, the emergence in the last decade of multiculturalism and political correctness, as well as the shifting of traditional moral, sexual and social norms. Three essays are especialy noteworthy: a controversial piece called ``the Cult of Dr. King'' considers the apotheosis of the slain civil rights leader; a discussion of Senator Joseph McCarthy explains why his ghost continues to haunt us 30 years after his death; and an illuminating reevaluation of Whittaker Chambers elevates his standing as an American writer. Francis argues that virtually every cause taken up by American conservatives over the past three decades has been lost and that the conservative movement has transformed itself into near-extinction. The New Right ``must recognize that its values and goals lie outside and against the establishment and that its natural allies are not in Manhattan, Yale and Washington but in the increasingly alienated and threatened strata of Middle America.'' (Oct.)