Topic summary
American conservatism
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Conservatism in the United States.
Types
Conservative leaders in the United States have not always represented a single school of thought, and American conservatism has evolved since it began emerging in the 1950s as one of the nation's predominant ideologies. Barry Goldwater, a U.S. Senator from Arizona, for instance, was an advocate for free enterprise in conservatism, which he made a centerpiece of his 1964 presidential campaign. Two decades later, in the 1980s, Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University and the Moral Majority, was primarily an advocate for traditional moral and religious social values. The history of American conservatism has also been marked by tensions and competing ideologies. During the Reagan era of the 1980s, a coalition of ideologies, known as "the Three Leg Stool" or "Fusionism', emerged, including three distinct segments of American conservatives: social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and war hawks.