The modern American conservative movement, which began taking on a distinct form in the 1950s, was always a pluralist grouping. Under its banner were marshalled, among others, traditionalists, classical liberals, social and religious conservatives, libertarians, national security hawks, and Southern agrarians. These groups disagreed about many things; nonetheless, they were bound together for decades by hostility to progressivism, the New Deal, and socialism; and by deep opposition to Communism and the Soviet Union.