Hollis Knode
HIST 6393-Twentieth Century
Andrew, John A. III. The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and
the Rise of Conservative Politics. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
When people think of the sixties, peace signs, demonstrations, and the
counterculture usually come to mind. There are bookshelves full of works that attempt to
explain the counterculture, examine the counterculture, and understand the
counterculture. One word that does not typically leap to the forefront of the brain when
that decade is mentioned would be the word “conservative,” or the phrase “conservative
movement.” That is why John A. Andrew III’s The Other Side of the Sixties is a welcome
piece of the puzzle that is the sixties. In it, Andrew attempts to outline what was going on
at the other end of the spectrum, focusing on the radical right-wing group, Young
Americans for Freedom (YAF). He identifies this as one of the three major student
groups, including it with SDS and the SNCC. The YAF was basically an attempt to reject
the more moderate conservatives of that time, such as Nixon and previously, Eisenhower.
The book traces the YAF from its inception (created by William F. Buckley, Jr.,
among other conservatives) in late 1960 through the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Similar to the SDS and their Port Huron statement (only two years earlier), the YAF
gathered at Buckley’s estate in Sharon, Connecticut, and came up with the Sharon
Statement, which contradicted itself a bit when it called for liberty and political freedom,
while at the same time implying that national interests could be placed ahead of
individual rights, which seem to be ideas that stem from Cold War rhetoric (a very anticommunist group).
The goal of the YAF was to penetrate the Republican Party at the grass roots in
order to effect policy. They wanted to get conservatives – not moderates – in control of
the party so that conservative politics might become more mainstream. Though their
candidate, Goldwater, did not win the election in 1964, the young conservatives did not
quit. In fact, quite a number of conservative leaders come out of this group, including
politicians such as Pat Buchanan.
The Other Side of the Sixties is a very well-written, thoughtful look at an area of
that decade that has been grievously overlooked. It might be interesting, however, to
know more about the YAF after the defeat in 1964, something into which Andrew does
not really delve. It might also be wise to include in the study more than just one radical
conservative group. The counterculture movement had many such groups, and it is not
impossible to believe that there were a few more on the right end of the spectrum. While
a few are mentioned (such as the John Birch Society, for example), the author does not
really give many details about them as a more well-rounded study might do. Overall,
however, this is an excellent addition to the literature of the sixties.