Bachmann’s must read list
One of Michele Bachmann’s favorite books is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins.
Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take on the Civil War, known as the “theological war” thesis, had little resonance outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century, when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles.
I did not know this. Really. “The godless North”? That’s a bit of a flub, for a start – the North was hardly godless. And as for the South as a Christian nation, aren’t we always being told – we atheists – that we stupidly overlook the wonderful wonderfulness of religion for instance its vital role in the abolition of slavery? Yes, we are. So if the South was “a Christian nation” what becomes of that claim?
More Wilkins:
Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. . . . The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.
Slavery was a matter of “men giv[ing] themselves to a common cause”? (Where did the women go?) What would that have been then? The enrichment of white men who owned fertile land for growing cotton? The preservation of white people from hard labor in a hot humid malarial climate? Funny idea of a common cause.
For several years, the book, which Bachmann’s campaign declined to discuss with me, was listed on her Web site, under the heading “Michele’s Must Read List.”
I keep hearing people say “I hope she’s nominated.” Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. Don’t think she couldn’t win.
‘Don’t think she couldn’t win.’
it’s a very dangerous time for america — and she certainly can win.
Exactly. In this madhouse, anyone can win.
It’s both amazing and depressing that at a time when we’ve got people rioting in the streets, I can still say with a straight face that American politics scares the shit out of me.
Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.
No! No, no, a thousand times, no! Bachmann is the closest thing I’ve seen to proof that there is a god because if there is she’s almost certainly a sign of the apocalypse.
Funny then, how every community in the South that’s big enough for a church has at least two. I particularly don’t understand the fetishization of the Confederacy from someone from the North who (presumably) had a pretty standard northern Midwest education. I can understand it from Southerners — when I moved from Wisconsin to Florida in high school, no one there had ever even heard of Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman, or anyone else Black, and history teachers really soft-pedaled slavery.
My husband is one of those who says “I hope she’s nominated”, because that’s what the electorate deserves. Except that we’re still part of the electorate, and it is not a fact that things can’t get worse.
[…] Ophelia Benson: One of Michele Bachmann’s favorite books is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven […]
It is bad enough that she will wildly profit. It is so embarrassing to be from the same state!
Where did the women go?
Silly question, the black women were all busy giving birth to their owner’s babies or getting more made.
Oh no they weren’t, they were out in the fields. Giving birth only takes a few hours, after all!
“it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect.” Between the owner and the property? Really? I’m afraid I burst out laughing. Sounds like this author is part of that wing of the loony South that does civil war reenactments with the South winning.
well, the CSA certainly were a Christian Nation in a way the USA aren’t and never were. While the US Constitution makes sure to be a purely secular document, the Constitution of the CSA is a Christian document:
“We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.”
Ah! I knew that, but I’d forgotten it. Lizza obscured that (accidentally, I assume) by saying “the South” instead of “the Confederacy.”
Thank you Jadehawk.
Actually had this argued to me by one of the guys I work with. He’s college educated with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering.
I know damn well, she can win. To a lot of people she isn’t crazy. She just has the courage to say what’s been forbidden because of ‘political correctness.’
This is antihistorical and evil nonsense. However, of course the South was more Christian than the North, and of course slavery was given a religious rationale. And it has been pointed out by historians that the debate about slavery, to the extent that it was conducted in theological terms, was won by the Southerners. They had Biblical backing for their arguments, while abolitionists were forced to appeal to moral arguments of a universal nature. I would say that there are a substantial number of people who chose atheism for this reason. I’m not one of them, because I think there are no gods, so the moral question doesn’t arise except as a “what if…?”. I imagine, though, that especially in the case of people brought up in a religious household who were religious when young, the entanglement of religion with slavery would be of immense importance.
If Sen. McCain (who singlehandedly crashed no less than five(5) aircraft during his military career, and spent time in Brainwash Camp) hadn’t been the candidate for President, I regard it as not entirely unlikely the Repubicans could have won the last election with Hockey-Mom Helicopter-Hunting Lipstick-Lickin’ Tribune-Breedin’ (practically in-flight) Vice-candidate Collage-triple-dropout, accidentally turkey-killin’ media mogul, Soviet-Seer Governor Whazzernameagin (AK), who unfortunately could’nt quite satisfactorily explain why she had accidentally “targeted” shooting victim Senator Gabrielle Giffords.
Fortunately, the old geezer was not quite able to hide the perpetual sneer emanating from his inner self. Kinda like how Nixon lost the first time due to his 5 o’clock barber shadow on that newfangled thang, TV. Boy, did HE ever git hissown <Expletion deleted> back.
So, United People of The States, BE VIGILANT. Margins be thin, always. Register, and vote.
I keep saying that to people. Sure, Bachmann’s a joke–but it stops being funny in a real hurry if she’s elected.
And especially Bachmann. (And Palin, and Cain, etc.) These are people who thrive on being rejected and renounced and written off by the liberal intelligencia. When we smarty-folks hold up our noses and dismiss them out of hand, all we do is play into their own identities. (I’m an outsider fighting for the common man! Look at how much I piss off these know-it-all insiders! C’mon, let’s go have a beer…)
I’ve figured it out. Bachmann’s history of the US sounds like it was written by Harry Turtledove.
true dominionists — they want to transform american secular society into a theocracy.
i don’t suppose anyone for a moment thinks that theocrats would ever be represented by serious candidates — no, their candidates will necessarily be along the lines of bachmann, palin and the rest.
these people are fascists… and they’re wrapped in flags and carrying crosses.
One problem with Lizza’s treatment of the Wilkins book, is that he doesn’t explicitly point out what’s wrong with it. He seems to take a more-educated audience for granted.
Ok, in my own case, he’s right. But I still fault this approach: one of my pet peeves is the false equivalence made between both sides of the Civil War in the popular imagination. The standard line seems to be, “yeah, slavery was wrong, of course, but look at how noble, brave, dashing and daring the Southern generals were!” Even in places like Gettysburg (!!!) it’s tough to find any serious moral condemnation of the Confederacy. It’s all about tactics and personalities.
I rarely use the term “Confederacy” anymore. I prefer the acronym, “TIDOS,” which stands for “treason in defense of slavery” (borrowed from “Lawyers, Guns and Money”). I hate the use of “soft tactics” like Lizza’s to describe this garbage, particularly since Bachmann and her tea party base represent just as big a danger to this country as her Civil War hero did (see Michael Lind’s article in Salon for more: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party ).
If you visit right wing websites (foxnation, free republic, etc) you find a frightening wave of Neo-Confederates, a post-Obama election groundswell of “the South shall rise again” and “Take back our white nation.”
Couple that with Perry’s allusions to secession and one wonders if the Tea Party is not proposing revolution but rather another civil war.
In visiting conservative sites, one thing becomes crystal clear: the anti-Obama motivation is chiefly racial in nature. I’m surprised MSM does not pick up on this as it is being openly discussed by Tea Partiers.
Elly – that was the standard line for nearly a century after the Civil War. The historiography of Reconstruction was horribly biased, and that’s what generations of school children got. There’s also dear old Gone With the Wind, and before that there’s Birth of a Nation.
Groan. It’s all so depressing.
When will the American Civil War ever end?
A couple of years ago, I had a prolonged on-line debate with a very intellgent guy from Georgia (mathematician, software engineer, skeptic, non-religious pantheist) who got it into his head that the North fought the Civil War in order to keep collecting taxes and import duties from the Southern States — and not to prevent the spread of slavery to territories west of Kansas & Misssouri. Why did he believe this? Because he read on Wikipedia that shortly before or after the attack on Ft. Sumpter, President Lincoln vowed that he would simply enforce the laws and “collect the duties and imposts” without sending out the troops. Massive citations from scholarly works on economic history would not convince this guy that import duties from Southern States were just not an important part of federal revenue. Maybe it’s something in the water or in the soil, or in the food served at church suppers.
Don’t be silly, what Turtledove wrote is a hell of a lot closer to reality; even when he was writing about aliens invading during WWII
One problem is that Media does not take this seriously; they keep referring to it as a wacky fringe. Trust me, I lived in the deep South, and the “war of Northern Aggression” is being fought in schools and barbeque parties. I moved from the North and was called a Yankee, usually in a friendly way, but still…..
This is deeply embedded in the Southern culture, this sense that the Northern victory in the civil war is illegitimate and must be rectified.
People think I’m talking crazy until I direct them to mainstream conservative websites where this neo-confederate thinking is gaining traction.
Me too. I was born in Atlanta, and my father was born and raised there. Although it wasn’t heavy-handed, I grew up with various “cute” remembrances of my dad’s “rebel yell,” and quips like “save your confederate dollars, boys, the South will rise again!” Even my “progressive” California schools never really grappled on the horror of it all. Thus, I entered adulthood with a relatively benign view of the Confederacy (when I thought about it at all, which wasn’t often). Obviously, I learned differently, but it didn’t happen until I was an adult; as a result of my own, independent reading.
My kids’ school educations weren’t too different from my own, unfortunately. Schools are cowed by the right wing – conservative parents can make teachers and administrators’ lives miserable, since they’re aggressive, tenacious and often pretty well-organized. I was in a position to make up the difference, but not many parents have either the time or the background to do this.
Not surprisingly, there’s now a Republican war on history, to accompany the one on science (example here: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/textbooks/ ). Methinks we skeptics need to start recruiting historians, in addition to scientists!
I know, there was that insane hoo-ha in Texas last year…
Not even last year; just this last February (though there was another Texas hoo-ha about history in 2009).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history
Ophelia: just on the history front, I’ve got a pretty decent scholar doing a piece on how the GOP is currently undermining and confecting its own history. I’ll let you know when it’s complete and up on the blog.
Although obviously the population of the northern states was just as overwhelmingly Christian as the southern ones, there is one sense in which this is true. The United States Constitution is a document which never mentions God or Jesus, a creator or any other deity. This is one of the things that so outraged some more theocratic Christians at the time of ratification and later. During the Civil War, a group of pastors spearheaded an effort to introduce Christian language into the US Constitution. They of course failed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_amendment
In contrast to the secular US Constitution, the Confederate States Constitution was explicitly theistic invoking “the favor and guidance of Almighty God”. The United States (i.e. the North) wasn’t godless, but it was (and is) secular in a way that the South wasn’t conceived to be. Is it any wonder then that today’s theocrats are more sympathetic to the rebellion that they are to the United States?
#23 Jeff D,
I’ve always assumed that the immediate cause of the Civil War was the secession of the so called ‘Confederate States’, not slavery itself. BTW, I’m not American and I don’t claim any detailed knowledge of the subject whatsoever, apart from Hollywood’s version.
James Loewen’s written a lot about this. I was particularly struck by his chapter in “Lies Across America” on the “fall” of Richmond at the end of the war – he refers to it instead as the liberation of Richmond. I have to admit, this framing of it initially caught me by surprise, although it makes perfect sense… when you see it through a different set of eyes.
Goes to show you how pervasive pro-confederate propaganda really is. Even in the North, the Civil War is basically a story told by white people, about other white people – other than the obligatory nod(s) towards figures like Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, African-Americans are basically treated as props. Wilkins’ book is an extreme example, but all the more dangerous, since there’s a white audience that’s primed to hear what people like him have to say.
Great, skep law. That’s a rich subject.
<blockquote>The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.</blockquote>
Oh yes, a ‘common faith’ that was aggressively substituted for whatever cultural beliefs had to be beaten out of the enslaved race. If they had any ‘culture’ left after 80% of their fellow captives died on the voyage over, that is, and assuming that the Christian Missionaries hadn’t already paid a visit to them at home prior to capture.
I can hardly read those excerpts without dry heaving. The book in its entirety would surely kill me.
Elly @26–My upbringing was somewhat similar to yours–I was ‘in’ the South for some time as a child, but inhabiting a much more urbanized, homogenized region, so didn’t get too much of the raw culture until I went back as an adult. I vividly remember the gift shop I wandered into at the Lookout Mountain (near Chattanooga) Battlegrounds–wall to wall confederate flags, Southern Pride as bold as brass. Explanations from my brother-in-law that many people in the area had had ancestors on ‘both sides’ of the conflict and thus generally felt pretty neutral about the outcome. You know, either way would have been fine, really.
Wow.
Wow squared… ’cause the display also put the lie to the claimed “neutrality.” There were Tennessee regiments that served in the Union – as he said, “many people in the area had had ancestors on both sides.” So why honor only one?
Never mind, I know the reason. Tennessee also thinks highly of Nathan Bedford Forrest – a former slave trader, war criminal and “founding father” of the KKK.
Suffice it to say, this stuff creeps me out…
RJW,
The reason the Confederate states seceded was because Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election on a promise to stop the spread of slavery into new states. Remember this, because it’s very important. The secession wasn’t about defending slavery in the southern states because Lincoln had already accepted that compromise. The secession was prompted by the understanding that if slavery was illegal in new states, then eventually the slaveholding states would be politically isolated on the issue. So in fact the secession was motivated to *spread* slavery to other states against the promised policies of the newly elected president.
There are, as always, other factors at work and Confederate sympathisers tend to point to disagreements with the North over tariffs and other political disputes, but this is all smoke and mirrors. While those disagreements were real, if you read the actual words that were being spoken in Congress, and the actual words that were being printed in pamphlets, and the actual words that were being written in newspapers, then there is no hiding from the fact that the single defining feature of the Confederacy was its refusal to abandon slavery — to the point where they would wage war in order to prevent *new* states from having anti-slavery laws.
Throw in the fact that the Confederacy rebelled when they didn’t get the presidential election result they wanted *and* the fact that the Confederacy fired the first shots, completely unprovoked, on a federal barracks in order to provoke a war, and there is nothing left for Confederate sympathisers to hide behind. I can understand taking pride in one’s southern roots, but the Confederate flag is a symbol that ought to be held in utter contempt.
That’s the thing, isn’t it. Considering what it has symbolized–still symbolizes–it should evoke nothing but shame from any American. Yet look at how some of the southern states have fought to keep the emblem as part of their State Flags or other official representations. Years of horrific abuse and discrimination be damned, it’s part of our heritage.
Are the United States to be sealed in a Slo-Time envelope within which time would pass almost infinitely slowly until the end of the Universe, perhaps?
Well Summer-the-little-stripey-cat is now really alarmed. She does not want to live in a country run by ‘dominionists’ and neither do I. One might have thought that the ‘moral compass’ of these great christians would require them to tell some semblance of truth but it seems any lie will do if it furthers their cause in some way.
As for the North attacking the South – did the evil federals destroy their own Fort Sumter as a casus belli? I thought that worked out different – silly me.
And Bachmann’s hero Lee was lucky not to have been executed for treason – he did violate his oath of allegiance to the US after all! But then, had I been Jeff Davis, I would have hanged him after Gettysburg for his criminal stupidity.
Oh – and never underestimate the role of the churches in bringing Adolf Hitler to power.
@MyaR #5:
Yes but they are not of equal size or community influence……In this part of rural Virginia there are two baptist churches. One is a large redbrick complex with church, conference rooms, huge paved parking area and a daycare centre with all the playground stuff, that even has it’s own traffic light (one of only two in “town”) – the other a small slightly dilapidated white clapboard building with mud parking lot and no facilities other than the church. It exists to this day, nearly fifty years after the end of Apartheid in America, because?
Guess which church is which?
Elly mentioned @26 the need for skeptics to start recruiting historians as well as scientists; I mentioned @29 that I had at least one such historian ‘up my sleeve’ on this issue, and then Ophelia pointed out @33 that the way the GOP is currently confecting its own history is ‘a rich subject’.
If you’re a thoughtful conservative or classical liberal (I incline more to the latter than the former, but I’m a Conservative in the UK, and our tradition is very different from that in the US), then what is happening across the Atlantic is heartbreaking, representing the transmission into US conservatism of the same cavalier disregard for the truth that Ophelia discussed with respect to the political left in Why Truth Matters. If it’s any consolation, thoughtful conservatives like it about as much as thoughtful progressives (ie, not at all).
Our first guest piece on ‘Postmodern Conservatism’ is here:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2011/08/11/postmodern-conservatism-guest-post-by-lorenzo/
RJW (#22)
I suppose it will be when we admit defeat and surrender. But we don’t have to do that. I think we should keep fighting. The Christianists like to puff themselves up to scare off opponents, but I don’t think they’re really all that strong. Many Christians, even fairly conservative ones, think these people are out of their minds, and in the final analysis will vote for Obama over Bachmann. That’s a bet, though I hope it will never come to a test.
Yes, I have friends in the UK and Canada, who can scarcely believe what they’re seeing.
I thought Lorenzo’s article made some good points. But he skirts the issue of race (the Samuel Johnson quote is the lone exception), which is perhaps unfortunate. While the impulse of the conservative is to resist change, this impulse has driven many to take stands on the wrong side of history, not to mention human decency and dignity. Conservatives like William F. Buckley, who was well-versed in the intellectual heritage discussed in the post, nonetheless staunchly defended segregation for years, before finally moderating his views.
In this, the “heritage” that our modern (or post-modern, if you will) American conservatives seem to be defending is that of the Know-Nothings, a nativist party founded to resist immigration and restrict voting/citizenship. The Know-Nothings also used threats of violence and intimidation to achieve political ends – a tactic that’s reflected in the mainstreaming of eliminationist rhetoric by the right wing.
Thus, the drive to “turn ‘conservative’ into a ‘hurrah’ word” could also be seen as a blatant attempt to do an end run around the moral contradictions inherent in the the desire to “defend and resist.” This makes more sense to me than positing “PoMo” conservatism as an alternative to social conservatism. While they may have experienced “some difficulties” with the latter (such as in the fight over gay marriage), overall, they’ve been more successful than I would have imagined in rolling back abortion rights, restricting access to other reproductive health services, quashing unions and undermining public education (in more ways than just pushing for Creation Science/ID).
The piece was already 3500 words — very long for a blog post, and he had to stop somewhere! He also (when we discussed this) wanted to focus on making up history and economics to suit one’s position, rather like Marxists did when they thought everything that had ever happened could be explained via historical materialism or the labour theory of value. What Bachmann is doing with her peculiar take on the Civil War, or the Fed is doing with monetary policy has no basis in reality; it is as though history and economic policy can be built on an empirical foundation no bigger than the head of a pin.
The same thing applies to Bachmann’s (and even some more mainstream Christians’) view that Christianity informed our law and made it more humane. This is simply false — if anything, the contrary applies, as I pointed out on the other Bachmann thread. Is is as though the people asserting it think they can ignore every entry level textbook on legal history, whether it be of Roman law or common law.
If we can at least get the facts straight, then we can have a political/economic/legal argument (which is where the genuine political differences will inevitably emerge).
No-one gets to have their own ‘facts’, however. The tendency to want one’s own facts (or to deny them due weight) is a characteristic of postmodernism, formerly a disease confined to the left.
Not any more.
Well, there’s the rub… since there’s only one side in this particular dispute that’s actually interested in making political, economic and legal arguments (often bad ones, but let’s set that aside for the moment). For PoMo conservatives, it’s not a negotiation – they’re fighting a war. And – as the saying goes – “in war, truth is the first casualty.”
Sure, there are truly reasonable conservatives around, but they have little-to-no influence. These days, a “reasonable conservative” is one who used to serve on the front lines (so to speak), but is now voicing some doubts. David Frum is one example, and the language he uses in this post – http://www.frumforum.com/were-our-enemies-right – is telling. He speaks of “enemies” – not “opponents,” and while he’s willing to admit that he “…can’t follow where most of [his] friends have gone,” he’s still not at the point where he can change his vocabulary. The right has assumed that the political opposition isn’t just wrong – it’s illegitimate – for too long for him to think in any other terms.
To the extent that the folks trying to get the facts straight and make political, economic and legal arguments are demonized as “enemies” (and Frum is far from alone in this), there can be no dialog. Bachmann is succeeding for this reason: to the extent that she’s perceived as dangerous by rational people, she will be embraced. Matt Taibbi stresses this point in his recent Rolling Stone article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michele-bachmanns-holy-war-20110622
This is why what we see from across the pond looks so bizarre, and why it’s so hard for us to grasp what’s going on over there. That said, I have had some Mitt Romney supporters turn up at our place — maybe they can head Bachmann off at the pass.
One can only hope.
SkepticLawyer@44
The tendency to want one’s own facts (or to deny them due weight) is a characteristic of postmodernism, formerly a disease confined to the left.
Is this a UK thing? When I was in college in the Reagan years my most blatantly – and self-identified – Post-Modernist English professors were also more than a tad right-wing.
#36 Chris Lawson,
Interesting, it appears that, if the Confederate states had been less bellicose,slavery might have survived longer in the US.
#42 ernie keller,
Good luck.
That’s because the termites have been gnawing away at the foundation for a long time – at a distance, the “house” looked solid, but was crumbling all the same. The Christianists started small: putting activists into local party positions; taking over city councils and school boards (these are positions that most average citizens shun). In addition, they set up their own parallel institutions (colleges and think tanks) to create and nurture ideologically pure intellectuals, strategists, pundits, legal/legislative staffers and candidates for higher office (aka “wingnut welfare”).
They also worked to chip away at various protections, such as the Fairness doctrine and regs that limited media consolidation. Thus, the media is now largely free from any obligation to serve the public interest. So it doesn’t – “infotainment” is more interesting than factual information. As Taibbi points out:
The speed and ease of communication is what makes the current situation so toxic. In addition to creating parallel institutions, they’ve been able to exploit television and the internet to create an entire parallel universe (there’s even a “Conservapedia,” lol!). Thus, the kerfluffle over “epistemic closure” that briefly engaged the right-wing blogosphere last year. The few voices on the right raising this concern were basically blown off, since the radicals currently driving us off a cliff aren’t concerned with ideas, only power. They’ve achieved stunning success so far, so they have no incentive to back down.
Read Why Truth Matters, where the loony postmodernists infected the left, to the left’s great detriment. And largely wrecked it.
That said, Terry Eagleton is wholly Britain’s fault, something for which we are deeply ashamed.
They aren’t all that strong – if you look at their numbers. But they wield outsized influence, since – let’s face it – no matter how much they complain, a lot of Americans don’t vote. If they aren’t motivated, our so-called “independents” will likely stay home. And “Vote Obama: sure you’re out of a job, and he cut your benefits… but at least he’s not crazy!” isn’t very motivating. The teahadists smell blood: they’ll be out there in force on election day.
Of course, that’s a worst case scenario: FWIW, I don’t think Bachmann will win the nomination. Nonetheless, she will still be a force to be reckoned with, and whoever does get the nomination (Romney?) will have to appease her. A Republican victory could net her a cabinet or agency position… which will allow her to do even more damage than she can as a US Rep.
Ha! Not all of you. The Guardian still publishes him, for a start.
Uh-oh.
There is a fine line between “hoo-ha” and hooha. Since some recent visitors to B&W have exhibited a tendency toward reading comprehension problems, this could lead to trouble.
Don’t be surprised to find a few comments cropping up elsewhere along the lines of, “Nanny Ophelia just called Abbie a crazy twat!!!! The hypocracy, it burns!!!!1111!!!! Plus, she’s so stupid she doesn’t even know the difference between Texas and Oklahoma!!!!!”
skepticlawyer@50
Read Why Truth Matters, where the loony postmodernists infected the left, to the left’s great detriment. And largely wrecked it.
I’m not disputing that postmodernism has reared it’s ugly head on the left, I’m questioning the assertion that it was “formerly confined to the left”. The examples shown of post-modernist thought infecting the modern right-wing are in fact the same kinds of things found on the right for generations. “The tendency to want one’s own facts (or to deny them due weight)” was and is one of the defining characteristics of the McCarthy anti-communist witch hunts, of the John Birch Society, of the segregationists, the creationists, the eugenicists and the anti-miscegenationists and no doubt other groups I’m not remembering of the top of my head.
I also don’t dispute that there has always been a left-fringe variant of the same kind of anti-thought. What I do maintain is that what has been happening on the right over the last thirty or forty years is that the “post-modernist” right has acquired a measure of organization, discipline and power, backed by wealth and media influence, that the left never had. Further, post-modernism on their part is clearly at least as much a deliberate political strategy as an unfortunate cultural tendency.
Ugh. I despise nursery euphemisms. They’re just so …
Silly, and unnecessary. And infantilising, though I suppose infantilising infants is at least comedically redunda- I mean appropriate.
I think the Tea Party has peaked. Reason: they elected people to Congress who have embarrassed themselves, even in the eyes of many conservatives. Independents will return to Obama, and if Bachmann or Perry is nominated Obama will be reelected comfortably. It won’t be a landslide, and turnout will be low since many voters will be disgusted with politics and too undiscriminating to fix blame where it belongs. Ordinarily that favors the out party, but not this time. Many prospective voters now see Republican extremists as saboteurs, the unfortunate consequence from the Republican point of view of admitting exactly that, as Sen. McConnell has done.
Mitt Romney is the best choice, and everyone except the far right will probably end up supporting him for the nomination. That would be a smart move for Republicans. The question is, is there enough of the old center-right GOP to pull off the maneuver? With help from sympathetic independents, I think it could happen. Otherwise, Obama is going to win.
Maybe it won’t happen that way, but until I see a plausible argument that extremists now control the field all over the country and not just in ultra-red districts, I’ll stick with my prediction. Either it’s Romney or the GOP is going down in flames.
She has just win a poll by the republicans. in Iowa. Like Franlin Roosevelt said “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”
[…] of the criticisms of my essay on post-modern conservatism was that I did not deal with the race issue. Race struck […]