In Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond traces the development of right-wing movements in the United States since the end of World War II. In doing so, she places the Christian Right, which emerged as a cohesive movement of its own in the 1970’s, in the larger context of conservative American politics. Diamond argues that, like right-wing movements in general, the Christian Right has been concerned with the three broad issues of promoting capitalism, resisting communism, and, most importantly, preserving traditional morality. One of her specific aims is to expose flaws in the common leftist claim that most rightist movements, the CR in particular, are somehow “radical” or “extremist”, and acting outside the realm of acceptable political activism. She suggests that if liberals insist on oversimplifying their opponents, they will be far less successful in promoting their own goals than they would be if they tried to understand all the complexities of right-wing movements. (Diamond is, as she readily admits, an ideological opponent of these movements, and so an underlying motivation for writing this book is likely to give fellow liberals a better ability to counter the Right.) To improve the Left’s understanding of how the Right operates, she consistently reiterates that such movements as the Christian Right have since their beginning had members and allies among political, academic, and economic elites.

The intended audience of this book is clearly liberal, so the mere fact that Diamond’s own opinions are readily apparent is not a significant detriment to the authority her argument will have on its intended audience. Just as Ralph Reed’s After the Revolution had no reason to soften its portrayal of staunch liberals and progressives whose opinions he had no hope of changing, there is no reason Roads to Dominion needs to paint conservatives in a more positive light than Diamond believes they deserve. However, her frequent use of “scare quotes” around the labels the Right applies to things (such as “pro-life” and “freedom fighters”) does potentially undermine her argument. The fact that she doesn’t take these labels seriously suggests that she may not take the Right itself seriously enough to be a good authority on how its movements have developed in the past 50 years.[1] Just as she criticizes other liberals for too-quickly dismissing so many movements as too radical or extremist, one might criticize Diamond for too-quickly dismissing many of the labels those movements use as universally misleading or contradictory. To understand why many evangelical Christians supported people they saw as freedom fighters in Central America, one might do well to look more closely at what kind of freedom contras were seen to be fighting to preserve.

A more important weakness Diamond’s book has is a lack of relating right-wing movements to contemporary left-wing movements that may have been working for the same goals. It’s great to see how diverse the Right’s reactions to the (First) Gulf War were, but it would also be useful to see how conservative opponents of the war interacted with liberal anti-war activists, if at all. But apart from pointing out how many neoconservatives were previously liberals, Diamond doesn’t seem to spend much time on the frequent permeability of the center that divides Left and Right. For liberals who want to organize against the Right, it is at least as useful to see that the Right isn’t always clearly divided from the Left as it is to see that it isn’t some monolithic extremist movement filled with nazis and Klansmen.

Questions for Discussion

1. How much interaction was there between paleoconservatives opposed to the first war in Iraq and the liberals just as opposed to the war but for completely different reasons?

2. How are so many people able to reconcile their hatred of current national enemies, such as Osama bin Laden, with their avid support of these same individuals, who have never qualitatively changed their tactics, back when they were fighting real or alleged Communists?

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[1] The fact that she disagrees with the accuracy of the labels is another matter entirely. I need not believe all pro-life individuals are truly concerned with the sanctity of life to leave the term outside of any scare quotes. Unless, of course, I am drawing attention to a specific contradiction, such as when discussing the “pro-life” warmonger currently residing in the White House…