Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States

The book opens with the immediate aftermath of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, when the anticommunist policies of the United States government encouraged the growth of right-wing movements. Continuing through the 1960s and beyond, chapters examine the influence of right-wing groups within the Republican Party and the rise of white supremacist groups in response to the gains of the civil rights movement. We see the transformation of the neoconservatives, from a small band of Cold War liberal intellectuals into a bastion of support for Reagan era foreign policy. The book traces the development of the Christian Right, from its early activity during the Cold War period straight through to its heyday as a powerful grassroots movement during the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout the book, Diamond explains the Right's fifty-year quest for power. She shows how we can understand and even predict the Right's influence on day-to-day policymaking in the United States by observing some consistent patterns in the Right's relationships with political elites and government agencies. In some predictable ways, the Right engages in both conflict and collaboration with state institutions.