This looks like a good book:

From the War of 1812 to the 1898 Spanish-American War, the main opponents of foreign military adventures were people motivated by aversion to either empire or emperor. But their anti-imperial critique wasn’t obviously leftist or proto-Chomskyite. The characters Kauffman sketches are decentralist, traditionalist, and constitutionalist. Many were businessmen with fairly conservative politics. The Anti-Imperialist League, for instance, was funded in part by Andrew Carnegie; it nearly fractured when it endorsed William Jennings Bryan for president 1900, because he opposed—wait for it—the gold standard.

Progressives played a leading role in agitating for both the Spanish-American War and Woodrow Wilson’s subsequent crusade to the make the world safe for democracy, although their ranks also included some notable dissenters, such as Hull House founder Jane Addams and the radical essayist Randolph Bourne. People on the right were also active in opposing those wars and the subsequent fight against Hitler as well. Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio), “Mr. Republican,” opposed U.S. entry into World War II until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and he wanted to keep American troops out of Korea.

Conservatives are champions of authority and tradition, values that usually go hand in hand. The United States was weird because it was founded by radical liberals with rabidly anti-authority political views. As a consequence, there’s a tension between that part of the American right that chooses authority over tradition, and the part that chooses tradition over authority.

Unfortunately, as the 18th century recedes into history, the it’s becoming ever easier for today’s leaders to invoke the founders not as intellectuals with important thinkers but as generic rhetorical props. Use their quotes about liberty in the abstract, and ignore their critical views on (among other things) centralized government power, organized religion, standing armies, and empire. Ron Paul is, I think, a more authentic champion of the founders’ values than any of the “conservatives” who defend the Bush administration, but unfortunately most conservatives’ knowledge of history is so deficient that they don’t even see the tension.