Taking the Adversary Seriously: History and Condescension
Let me plunge right in, thusly: I've been absolutely riveted by the right-wing response to the book. It's been an extraordinarily useful X-ray of our political moment. There have been three distinct categories of response; here, I'll focus on one of them--a response that, like a coin, has two opposite but interconnected sides: the conservative obsession with, and refication of, the notion that liberals are best described as "condescending."
Exhibit A--the first side of the coin--came in its purest form from Mark Hemmingway of National Review. He interviewed me for the magazine's web site. It was a surreal experience. First question: "It's my general sense that liberal or popular historians don't seem to be very interested in conservative history and ideology. Why are you?" In other words: why is the left--except for Perlstein!--so condescending that they refuse to take the right seriously.
This was so dead wrong--turned around 180 degrees from the facts on the ground, to be exact--that I hardly knew where to begin.
I spent the last two weeks touring for Nixonland: Seattle, the Bay Area, Southern California, Washington, Chicago, New York. Liberal audiences have been flocking to support the book. And, at just about every stop (including at an early reading at Georgetown in April and at the progressive Take Back America conference in March) the most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed of my readers, the ones presenting themselves most early and eagerly at the signing table for a chat, were the graduate students doing dissertations, or the former undergrads who did a senior theses, on the history of the right. People who, quite humbingly for me, take my life's work of attempting to write about conservatives and conservatism with empathy as a role model for their own intellectual lives. I have a pocketful of business cards to prove it--because, dammit, if you're the one who's doing that dissertation or did that senior thesis, I want to read it. There's been an absolute expositionexplosion of intellectual interest among liberals on the right. You might even say, not exaggerating too much, that making sense of the right-wing ascendency--its ideas, its tactics, the window it provides onto deeper themes in U.S. history, and, even more, the window it provides onto the successes and, more crucially, the failures of the American left in the period of its own post-Depression and post-World War II ascendency--has been the signal intellectual project on the left for at least a decade a more. It's fascinating, and telling, that a smart guy like Mark Hemmingway missed this.
And miss it he has. After I filled in some of the chapter and verse of his errors on the academic tip, he granted the point, then came back, "Well, even if the perception is changing in academic circles, the notion that is still prevalent among the left is that somehow Reagan and the religious right sprung from the skull of Athena fully formed in 1980 and there wasn't a lot of movement conservatism preceding that."
This is wild stuff. Mark seems to have cut from the transcript of the interview the part where he asked me what "angry left-wing bloggers"--if memory serves--make of my strange new argument that the history of the right is something they should be taking seriously. Perhaps leaving that on the cutting room floor was for the best, from his perspective, for I may well have huffed back rudely (for I am something of an angry left-wing blogger myself) that he really should have done his homework before venturing to interview me on this subject. A search of Angry Left-Wing Blogger Central--Daily Kos--and "Perlstein" and "Goldwater" yields an ad nauseum cache: this thread from spring of 2004 on favorite books, kicked off by a recommendation of Before the Storm and followed by all kinds of folks intoning "study the right" like numbskull New Lefties used to intone "study Che" in the 1960s; this one from November of '04 entitled "Why Every Democrat must learn about Barry Goldwater"; this comment from two weeks ago; this one from two weeks ago; etc., etc., etc.....
And as early as 2003, Angry Left Wing Bloggers were helping sustain what amounted to an a veritable para-punditocracy literature comparing and contrasting Howard Dean's and Barry Goldwater's movements to capture their respective political parties.
(Conservatives weren't the only ones who missed the emerging liberal obsession with the history of the right; my publisher, who had just taken my Goldwater book out of print, did, too, allowing me to do a steady business in orphaned copies out of my very own stash--I still do! Make your eBay bid today!)
The right is getting most everything wrong these days. This notion that a condescending left (except for Perlstein!) still can't take conservatism seriously: that's just one more thing to add to pile. But the more interesting question--why do I think it matters? What relevance might it bear for our own political movement, an astonishing period of flux in which the long right-wing ideological ascendency seems to be decidedly reversing?
Consider the other side of the "condescending" coin: the reaction that says, well, Perlstein's just another condescending liberal, too.
That was George Will's take in his New York Times review, to wit:
Perlstein treads a dead-end path blazed by Hofstadter, who seemed not to understand that condescension is not an argument. Postulating a link between "status anxiety" and a "paranoid style" in American politics -- especially conservative politics -- Hofstadter dismissed the conservative movement's positions as mere attitudes that did not merit refutation. Perlstein, too, gives these ideas short shrift.As the pollster Samuel Lubell had already noted before the 1952 election, "the inner dynamics of the Roosevelt coalition have shifted from those of getting to those of keeping." Perlstein keenly sees that some liberals "developed a distaste" for the social elements they had championed, now that those elements were "less reliably downtrodden" and less content to be passively led by liberal elites.
The masses bought television sets and enjoyed what they watched. But Newton Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (and formerly Adlai Stevenson's administrative assistant) declared television a "vast wasteland," thereby implicitly scolding viewers who enjoyed it. When New York was becoming a lawless dystopia, with crime, drugs and homelessness spoiling public spaces, August Heckscher, the patrician commissioner of parks under Mayor John Lindsay, sniffily declared that people clamoring for law and order were "scared by the abundance of life."
A Newsweek cover story on Louise Day Hicks, who led opposition to forced busing of school children in Boston, described her supporters as "a comic-strip gallery of tipplers and brawlers and their tinseled overdressed dolls ... the men queued up to give Louise their best, unscrewing cigar butts from their chins to buss her noisily on the cheek, or pumping her arm as if it were a jack handle under a truck."
This was truly soupy and strange. He says my argument is mere liberal condescension, which he calls a "dead end" in explaining the appeal of the right. Well, yes, I agree! Which is why I gave all those examples of the mind-numbingly idiotic ways left-wingers condescended to the right during the period I was writing about, the very ones he deploys to show how annoying condescending liberals are--Newton Minnow, August Hecksher, the knuckleheads at Newsweek who disparaged Louise Day Hicks's supporters so ham-handedly that, as I point out in the book, Hicks was able to run the Newsweek quotes in her own ads!
(Just to add a brief aside: I can't read more than a paragraph of Hofstadter on conservatism at a time. I find him teeth-gratingly condescending. Am I thus condescending as well? That, of course is for the reader to decide. George Will thinks yes. Here is an example--and I've been getting a lot of this--of a conservative who profoundly disagrees.)
I'm running long. So let me cut it short. The liberals and leftists I write about were condescending asses. That's one of the main points of the book! Let me throw down here: I damn well I think I'm a better critic of liberal condescension in the 1960s and '70s than George Will is. It's just, simultaneously, there's simply no way to sustain the argument that liberals are condescending now in anything like the way they were then. I'd warrant I'm better at explaining the organic reasons why Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew appealed to ordinary white middle class Americans embrace conservatism-- "the inner dynamics of the Roosevelt coalition have shifted from those of getting to those of keeping"? That's my quote, too--than George Will is, as well. I certainly am a better critic than George Will is of how mountebanks and hacks haved aggrandized their own power by exploiting ordinary Americans reasonable expectation for order and security in their everyday lives (not to put too fine a point on it: George Will is one of those hacks).
I would class most of the liberals I respect in exactly the same way, in fact. Exhibit A in my argument: all those thoughtful dissertations about the right's ideas and evolution. Exhibit B: the intense affection my attempt to empathize intellectually with the right has inspired on the left. I would never want to claim that any large population of human beings is free from sweeping sins like "condescension." But I do feel safe in arguing that the notion that the left is still defined by the same condescension towards conservative Americans as they were during the historical period I write about is simply fantastical.
I'll go further: the fact that conservatives keep on trying to do so strikes me, as a liberal, with absolute delight. The left has changed and matured; and our adversaries on the right haven't even begun to reckon with that change. They still think we're all John Lindsay and Abbie Hoffman (who is, truth be told, probably treated as harshly in my pages as Richard Nixon). When I say Americans are still stuck in the categories of "Nixonland" even as the objective reality those categories seek to describe have largely slipped away, my most forceful possible argument is the prose of George Will. His "liberals are condescending" trope is the only way a conservative like him knows how to talk about liberals. Even as an entire new generation of American voters probably has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
The Germans have a word, vergangenheitsbearbeitung, or "working through the past," to describe that nation's attempt to achieve something that, while not nearly as world-historic, dramatic, or portentous, is structurally similar to what has been happening on the American left over the last decade or so, apparently without many conservatives noticing: doing the hard work of reckoning with collective errs, facing up to them, unflinchingly staring them down, and restoring a community to balance by transcending them as best as we mortal humans can.
Liberals are quite simply not the patronizing asses, oblivious to the reality of our ideological adversaries, that we were during the period I write about. Don't believe me? Consider some historical examples.
In 1960, when college students began flocking to buy Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, the American left's image of a conservative was of a plutocrat in monocles and spats (and what kind of working-class voter could ever be attracted to that? Conservatism: nothing to worry about!).
That was stupid. No one would do that any more.
In 1966, when Ronald Reagan began surging toward the GOP gubernatorial nomination in California, Esquire, the leading edge of a certain smug center of liberal opinion, graciously allowed that the "Republican Party isn't bankrupt, or isn't that bankrupt that it has to turn to Liberace for leadership."
That was stupid. No one would do that any more.
In 1969, when Richard Nixon gave perhaps the most politically successful speech in the history of the presidency, an Ivy League anti-war leader responded, "What Nixon has tried to show is that there is a silent majority behind him. We know better."
That was stupid. No one would do that any more--for, without bothering to consult the Harvard New Left, the American people had just bounced the president's approval rating from 52 to 68 percent practically overnight.
Once I was reading old New Republics from early 1980, and, though I can't just now pin down the citations, recall some of the liberals there taking Ronald Reagan's presidential prospects about as seriously as, well, Liberace's.
That was stupid. No one would do that any more.
I could multiply the examples endlessly. Liberals used to be really, really, really condescending. They're not anything like that degree of condescending any more. That so many conservatives find us precisely that condescending now is, to borrow, like conservatives these days are habitually doing, the antiquated argot of another age: it's a stone trip, man.
Dig it: they still think we're all August Hecksher and Abbie Hoffman. Just like in 1960 we still thought they were all wearing monocles and spats. As a custodian of the past and an advocate in the present, let me offer conservatives a historical observation: that kind of stubborn condescension--that kind of refusal to take the intellectual work of your ideological adversaries seriously--is not healthy for a movement's political future.
Liberals may well treat Republican campaign tactics, respectfully. But that's no evidence that they don't -- properly -- treat conservative ideology with the condescension it deserves.
May 26, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't agree. One cornerstone of conservative ideology in the 1960s and '70s was that people had a right to expect a modicum of law and order in their neighborhoods and public spaces. Liberals, as I hope NIXONLAND demonstrates, did--again, to beat up on old August Hecksher--often roundly patronize that reasonable expectation.
May 26, 2008 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . law and order in their neighborhoods . . . .
Indeed; how dare MLK march through the neighborhood of Cicero, Il.?
Liberals weren't expressing condescension; they were expressing outrage!
May 26, 2008 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because you're probably going to get more grief on this comment, let me say I agree with it. And I know you don't mean fear of marches of MLK and his cohorts, you mean violence in the streets and an ever growing crime rate which wasn't at all sufficiently addressed by many Dems in power.
I might add that believing so added to my schaudenfraude when I saw Donald Rumsfeld end up resorting to a similar theme, which he probably had more than once in the past derided as "liberal excuse-making," when he could think of nothing else regarding questions about looting by Shia in post-invasion Iraq:
CNN, April 12, 2003May 26, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wasn't Rummy talking about the Bush White House?
May 26, 2008 10:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Crime grows, generally, as a consequence of demographics -- how many 16-25 year old males are in the population at any one time. As Milli Vanilli might say in respect to the growth in crime from 1965 to 1990, "Blame it on the Boomers."
I will agree that many Democrats allowed themselves, self-satisfiedly(?), an excess of intellectual honesty when it came to addressing the electorate's fear of criminality -- and often appeared to be blaming the victims. Supporters of civil liberties are too easily caught in that position.
When liberals are asked to abandon their first principles -- to abandon constitutional protections in order to appear "tough on crime" -- how should they respond?
May 26, 2008 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's far too simplistic. The crime rates went up way faster than the demographic bulge, and the 1960s relaxation of social restraints, some of which put a lid on crime and breaches of accepted decorum, was a cultural revolution, not just a demographic surge. People across the country were scared--white, black, and any other race--that lived in areas that were impacted by it. Sure, television amplifies the problems, but that's far more true today than it was then. Liberal condescension is precisely of this sort: taking problems that people experiencing them are upset about, and then telling them that they're obviously racist. Human societies do crave a certain amount of order--a point that our leaders in Iraq figured out far too late to make a difference. Read Elias Norbert or the people who've studied crime rates in America (Eric Monkkonnen, Roger Lane) over a longer haul.
May 27, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't George Will example number one for a condescending Republican/conservative?
May 27, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
My reaction when I read that line from Will was "Hell, George Will has made an entire career of condescension."
May 28, 2008 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent point. I hope that the academic interest you've documented in the history of the Right will also come to inform our practical political strategies.
I also hope that you're right that we really *don't* view the other side as condescendingly as we used to.
To support your claim it might be worth noting (on Memorial Day) that today's anti-war discourse displays absolutely *none* of the contempt for men and women in uniform that colored resistance to the Vietnam War.
May 26, 2008 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, not to get all revisionist vis-a-vis your thoughtful comment, Alex39, but in actual fact the right--or more specifically, World War II veterans in organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion--was consistently more disrespectful to returning Vietnam veterans than the left was. I write about this in NIXONLAND with regard to Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and this book makes the case pretty convincingly, I think.
See this post of mine:
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/legionnaires-diseased-2
May 26, 2008 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting. That certainly does revise my mental model of the Sixties. I suppose I'm going to have to read your book! ;-)
May 26, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I always sensed this at the time, but to me, as a teen, it seemed more involved with "the generation gap" and culture wars. Once in a while there would be that rare bird, a young returning Vietnam vet still maintaining a crew cut, all gung-ho on his experience, and be raring to re-up, or to live the life and values of his parents, well that's the kinda young guy that was still welcome at your local VFW post. It was sort of like this: according to the old VFW conservative cranks, the good ones were polluted by all the dirty hippie draftees who didn't want to be fighting the war, listening to rock n roll music and taking drugs. Overall, it was the idea that the whole generation was no good, spoiled, didn't have to grow up during the Depression, don't know what it is to work hard, fight hard, yadda yadda. The returning vets, they were torn between generational culture war that solidified more while they were away, and most chose eventualy to assimilate more to their own generation's culture than the older one. This was seen as further rejection of what the older folks saw as their sacrifices, they wanted appreciation and respect from the younger generation, younger vets bonding, instead they get yoynger vets that looked at them like a reminder of all the crap they had to deal with over there from officers, i.e, "you just don't understand, old man, it's not the same as it was then."
In my area in the Midwest, at least, to talk of a VFW post was to use a good metaphor for old conservative fogies who hated "what the younger generation is doing to this country."
May 26, 2008 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
My Depression-Era/WWII-Generation parents loved and treasured me as much as I loved and utterly respected them, but we never resolved the conflict of generations whose experiences differed so widely.
Most of my friends and high school classmates identified with the professional boxer Cassius Clay (later Mohammed Ali) who refused induction into the draft, saying: "I ain't got nothin' against no Viet Cong." Neither did most of us. We had never heard of, let alone met, a Vietnamese of any persuasion whatsoever. Certainly, no Vietnamese had ever threatened us or our country.
Yet my parent's generation could not separate one "evil" (Fascist Germany and Japan) from another "evil" (no matter how nebulous and fantastical) like "Monolithic World Communism." The American government cynically manipulated these good people in the interests of grasping and maintaining a grip on political power; but my parents could neither see nor accept this truth.
Many of us youth, on the other hand, felt much more threatened by a government nearer to home: one that seemed dangerously deranged from reality -- like the one we have again in America today. My mother would ask of me when I resisted all that "Vietnam" meant: "Who will protect us from our enemies if you don't?" Since I couldn't vote at the time, I replied: "Who will protect me from my own government if you don't?" We never resolved that conflict of perspectives, so we just let the years pass in relative peace with as little discussion of the open sore as we could manage.
Having said this, I do not for one moment accept as "condescending" my profound understanding of cynical fascism and its exploitation of inchoate fear and loathing in America. I've lived through and survived more than a half-century of it. To openly address the subject and rigorously analyze its seething viciousness does not constitute "looking down on" anybody. In fact, that loaded lizard-language emotional cattle prod deserves no respect whatsoever and I grant it none. The rabid right in America has grown so used to intimidating "the liberals" with little more than cheap word-magic that the radical reactionaries refuse to give up the easy sleeze. Who can blame them when even Rick Perlstein agrees to play along to their tune and in their own chosen terms?
For may part as an osensible "leftist," "anti-war," and "liberal" Vietnam Veteran, I simply name and describe the virulent fascist virus where and when I see it. If the poor little "misunderstood-and-disrespected" fascists have gotten their little fascist feelings hurt, then too ... damn ... bad ... for them. I couldn't care or sympathize less. They can call that clear-eyed and experienced attitude anything they want. I reserve the right to call it anything I want.
Bottom line: Never passively accept the terminology and dialectics of your fascist enemy or you will implicitly ingest and assimilate his poison propaganda into your own protoplasm. Mr. Perlstein, of all people, ought to know his asymetrical semiotic guerrilla warfare better than to morbidly mouth melliflously modulated mush like "condescension." I prefer "informed disgust." And had my dear, departed parents lived to see ROUND TWO of this stupid quagmire soap opera, as I have, I do believe that this time they would see things my way and agree that we should -- in words they would not hesitate to use -- "throw the bastards out."
May 26, 2008 9:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Perstein:
As a victim/veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972), I appreciate your observations about the mostly right-wing abuse we "losers" encountered from the WWII/VFW types upon our return from Southeast Asia. General Chuck Yeager, the famed Army test pilot, gave voice to this ignorant prejudice when he once said: "Those boys in Vietnam just had something missing in their characters." Stuff like that.
We didn't "win," you see. Therefore we had no value as potential propagandists (if not human recruiting posters) for endless Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism. Even worse from the radical "conservative" wingnut point of view, many of us quagmire survivors had (and have) the annoying (to right-wingers) habit of uttering blasphemous critiques of the whole sorry lurch towards browbeaten crypto-fascism that has characterized America's self-inflicted imperial decline from Tailgunner Joe McCarthy in the 1950s through Deputy Dubya Bush half-a-century later. Not so much a vicious circle as a downward spiral.
Gore Vidal had it right when he called Americans "among the most easily frightened people on earth." And a nation of arrogant, intimidated losers like that require nothing so much as a wounded or homeless veteran upon whom to project their own vicarious, frustrated fascism -- if not their saliva.
Thank you again for your comments. They open a door to a dark cellar that America has not yet even begun to explore. Whether the country will survive long enough to even begin looking, though, seems something of a moot point at this late date.
May 26, 2008 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rick,
I sometimes wonder what kind of a country we'd have today if conservative talk radio never came into existance.
There are no doubt some that listen to Rush, Hannity and O'Reilly who are educated, conservative intellectuals, but they listen for entertainment.
I think the vast majority of these fans, at least all those I have come in contact with, are vacuous, a mile wide and an inch deep; followers who believe anything the host says, and probably never had an original thought, but who rush to the polls to vote Republican, building the gallows the Republicans will use to hang them.
May 27, 2008 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's why they're called Dittoheads. So they'll never ever have to think twice.
May 27, 2008 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder whether it will help that we are now a bit more self-conscious about the complexity of class relations. Even in the 80s, I think, historians and pundits tended to rely on a straightforwardly economic model of class. You heard a lot about "socioeconomic status," as if social and economic distinction were effectively the same thing.
Now, I hope, we're a little more aware of the risks entailed in identifying the Left with an "educated" class. Whether the insight comes from Pierre Bourdieu or from some less consecrated source, academics do seem to realize that education is itself a mode of social stratification, rather than an objective sign of the wisdom and inevitability of one's opinions.
But this may be mainly an academic insight. I'm not sure whether it will have any practical effect on the popular image of the Left as a condescending cultural elite.
May 26, 2008 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rick,
As a graduate student studying the history of the American intellectual conservative movement, I can say that you are unfortunately correct in your assessment of the academy's recent interest in taking the right seriously. I say unfortunately, because by the time I publish, the market for scholars of conservatism will be markedly diminished.
I'm halfway through your book, and the recurring theme that I find most interesting concerns the inability of liberals to understand public acceptance of conservative ideas and rhetoric. California Governor Pat Brown was simply stunned that his constituents couldn't grasp the reality of the student unrest at Berkeley.
How can liberals effectively fight back against the sort of Reagan demagoguery typified by his criticisms of 'sex-crazed student insurrectionists' for political benefit? The same could go for many cultural issues. How can liberals combat conservative cultural politics without delegitmizing the concerns of ordinary voters while not legitimizing the line of conservative attack, which would marginalizing certain allied groups (feminists, gays, blacks, even students)?
May 26, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll defer to Rick. But surely it helps that we have fewer "sex-crazed student insurrectionists" these days. If that were still a major social issue, it's not clear to me that any clever tactic could resolve the dilemma you describe.
But is it still a dilemma? The Left seems exceedingly well-behaved these days.
May 26, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I mean, I recognize the analogy that might be drawn between student protest and, say, gay people getting married in public. But it seems to me that there's a real difference between a Left that noisily threatens public order on the nightly news, and a Left that wants to get married.
Perhaps my own ideology is blinding me to the concerns of people who do perceive gay marriage as the same sort of threat to public order. But it seems to me in any case that Pat Brown's sort of response -- look, this is a local problem, and my hands are tied -- becomes more persuasive when the perceived cultural "threat" doesn't have the appearance of an actual insurrection.
May 26, 2008 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't read Rick's book yet (ordered, not yet arrived) but I lived through the 60's and period since. I was in high school when the birth control pill hit, and it changed everything within a period of five to ten years.
Before that middle class sex was limited to marriage and outside that by the threat of pregnancy. One very bright girl in my graduating high school class ('61) had a full scholarship to MIT in Math and lost it when she became pregnant. Everyone thought that was completely appropriate. I married a fellow student in our senior year at college (66) and the two of us were treated to a lecture by the Dean of Women about the evils of sex in motel rooms and the role of the college in Locus Parentus. Being pre-boomer I volunteered for the Army and wound up spending three years in Germany (loved it) and when I returned I had culture shock because of the changed attitudes, not the least being sexual.
That's where the accusation "sex-mad" came from. Between the pill and penicillin, there was no reason to avoid sex outside marriage. Two decades later AIDs hit, and changed everything again so that that period is now a strange one, more difficult to understand.
And I hit that generation barrier with the WW II vets also. One reason I stayed in the Reserves for the next two decades was that civilian life made no sense to me. The civilian friends I had in those days were a lot like what I suspect an anthropologist would call friends in the tribes he was studying and trying to understand. All the old rules had been blown way (properly, it seemed) and there was nothing left to stand on. As I say, my culture shock was returning to America in 1970.
The other thing I was always aware of was the Cold War. It was always there, and public policy was always geared towards it instead of democracy and competitive market economics. The Cold War was like strange and threatening background music that was always playing behind everything. After living through that, it's clear that the conservatives today are nostalgic and want to bring back that same music. Only today the old orchestra is disbanded and all they can do is play scratched recordings through bad speakers. "Islamo-fascism" will never replace "Communism" and Iran is no USSR.
It's been an interesting period ("May you live in interesting times." and I have) and I found an understanding of a lot of it in "The Gathering Storm." I'm looking forward to "Nixonland."
May 27, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . California's glorious, world-beating system of higher education . . . .
Shows what a fool Pat Brown was.
For 90% of Californians whose kids couldn't get in, anyway -- at least not into Berkeley or UCLA -- those students were nothing but the pampered offspring of high income earners who were sending their kids to school on everybody else's dime.
May 26, 2008 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen - I don't know about the state of the UC schools of that era. But the UC system now is much more diverse in terms of parental income than its peer institutions. The percentage of students on Pell grants at Berkeley and UCLA is incredibly high. An article in the NY Times magazine recently predicted that UCLA may become the City College of the 21st century, as many first generation college students (mostly from immigrant parents) attend. Also, in terms of graduate education, Berkeley, LA, Davis, Santa Barbara, Irvine, San Diego, and San Francisco are all top schools.
May 26, 2008 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hello Rick:
Are you aware of Lt. Col. Pat Lang's assertion that he was indeed spat upon in the context of his military service during Vietnam???? He- on his blog insists that this did indeed happen.
Here's the catch....He states that he was spat upon as he was shipping out ....at an airport in Honolulu, HI. Not his "return"
May 26, 2008 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is important. Do you have a link?
May 26, 2008 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
It happened to me and I'm from Hawaii!
May 26, 2008 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really?
Mind letting us in on the details of this phlegmatic assault upon your uniformed self?
May 26, 2008 11:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I, too, have read Colonel Lang's anecdotal account of a single alleged "spitting" incident as he transitted through some airport, somewhere; but I don't lend it much credence. While in the Navy, I served for almost a year-and-a-half in the San Franscisco Bay Area (Vallejo and Monterey) and frequently flew standby (all I could afford) -- in my Class-A uniform -- into and out of Oakland and San Fransisco airports. Never once did anybody "spit" on or at me.
As well, when I finally did ship out to Vietnam in the summer of 1970, I flew out of Travis Air Force Base along with most other military service personnel bound for Southeast Asia. I never saw any "dirty fucking hippies" anywhere on that military facility spitting on anybody. Frankly, we enlisted types had more to worry about from crab lice in the transit barracks mattresses than we did from anti-war protesters who, after all, only wanted to help keep us alive by demanding that our government not send us needlessly to our deaths. How dare those "dirty fucking hippies" give a shit whether we lived or died! The NERVE of those people! Why could they not just remain silent and allow us all to die needlessly for nothing without making such an embarrassing fuss about it? Most of our countrymen did. Just like they do today. Colonel Lang can say or think whatever he wishes about that era. I just don't agree with his point of view.
May 26, 2008 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alex,
The left is certainly 'better behaved' nowadays, but rather than citing 'sex-crazed student insurrectionists,' conservatives make hay of gay pride parades. But the wackiness isn't really the point. How should liberals approach the immigration issue (illegal and legal) without marginalizing the concerns of low-income workers fearful of competition, or suburban parents fearful of rising gang activity in the schools?
May 26, 2008 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay. Immigration is a good example, because it does present itself as a law-and-order issue, and it's not easy to defer to local authorities. And I admit that our dilemma vis-a-vis that issue seems as puzzling as the one you describe facing Pat Brown.
May 26, 2008 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't really speak to the author's attitudes as represented in his larger body of work, but I do think this post *misses entirely* the definition of "condescension" that I associate with liberals toward the right, today.
Today, liberals don't condescend to conservative political operatives, think tanks, or free market fundamentalists. They condescend to conservative voters and citizens, the whole body of whom are portrayed as entirely continuous with the most highly caricatured specimens it is possible to unearth.
Right wing political operatives may be spinning this story about the "liberal elite," but what enables them to do so is actual attitudes that I myself see practically everyday. We inhabit, evidently, a whole red country of Pa Kettles and persecutory bible thumpers.
This is alienating. It's alienating me. This is far more damaging than the "underestimating the enemy" perspective that the author presents as the definition of "liberal condescension" in this post. Until this gets good and worked out--and as it's deeply ingrained, I don't expect it to happen too quick-- I don't see much of a liberal victory on our horizon.
May 26, 2008 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Try lowering your standards slightly. When the foot soldiers on both sides are completely free of condescension, we won't see a liberal victory -- we'll see the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.
That may take a while, though. In the meantime, I'll settle for leaders who set the right tone. For instance, I was cheered by this speech, delivered by a relative newcomer at the 2004 Democratic convention.
I'd say that's close to the right tone. If only we could get that guy to run for President.
May 26, 2008 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
"As a custodian of the past and an advocate in the present, let me offer conservatives a historical observation: that kind of stubborn condescension--that kind of refusal to take the intellectual work of your ideological adversaries seriously--is not healthy for a movement's political future."
So, in other words, it's already hard for me to take you *too* seriously. I'm still more inclined to give it to them.
Alas.
May 26, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I'd say that's close to the right tone. If only we could get that guy to run for President."
Well, okay. But it is too bad that you also need to stick at least half a dozen socks in his mouth when he goes off script and has to extemporize.
Like I said, deeply ingrained.
May 26, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
One cornerstone of conservative ideology in the 1960s and '70s was that people had a right to expect a modicum of law and order in their neighborhoods and public spaces. Rick Perlstein
The humble prayer of Nixon's sainted, nativist, true American "silent majority."
Except that here's what the "modicum of law and order" really called for: the freedom to lynch Emmett Till and Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; to blow up a church and kill four teenage girls; for the National Guard and police to shoot anyone in Newark or Detroit who happened to be black; for Chicago's finest to riot and a year later, to murder Fred Hampton while he slept; for the Ohio National Guard to kill students who just happened to be walking across campus -- their campus; for Mississippi police to shoot students at Jackson State; for Cicero residents to throw brickbats and anything else likely to wound at marchers; for New State Police to assault Attica; for construction workers to attack demonstrators in lower Manhattan with the full-throated approval of Nixon. I could go on -- and on.
It had nothing to do with "conservative ideology." "Law and Order" was code for "Keep the Ni**ers in their Place" and let us white folks continue to enjoy the benefits of our whiteness.
As I said, above, Liberals weren't condescending; they were outraged.
May 26, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen,
One can be both outraged and condescending. No one is suggesting that liberal outrage against racism (for example) was or is misplaced. But that doesn't preclude the existence of liberal condescension towards ordinary citizens' (of all races) concerns for law and order. We can have both our moral outrage and our blindspots at the same time.
May 26, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup.
Just as long as we all understand that any absence of "law and order in [our] neighborhoods and public spaces" was the result of the criminality of the police, the military, and the "justice" system.
Those who justified, excused, or whole heartedly supported that criminality (and those who did, did so because it helped them maintain their undeserved status) got from Liberals not condescension but contempt. That they were "upset" when they recognized themselves as being the objects of that contempt is just too bad.
May 26, 2008 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Crimes - Conservatives see it as a Law & Order issue and you too, except you're on the flip side of the same coin, you think it's the fault of the criminal justice system, that the Law & Order system is fascistic.
If this characterized typical "Liberal" thinking, then there's no doubt there will be a collison from the opposing perspectives.
There are many more dimensions to Crime than this - Poverty for example. Or the organized networks of gangs and why they attract so many youths in the absence of alternative societal structures.
Conservatives can be *challenged* on their confusion and conflation of remedy and root cause ( as well as Liberals), and thus the debate can be steered back to the fundamentals of society, its strengths and weaknesses.
May 28, 2008 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have to agree with Ellen. When the cost of law and order is that high, it is anything but a reasonable expectation.
May 27, 2008 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, but today they mostly seem preoccupied with things like keeping state sanctioned condom rolling demonstrations out of their local educational spaces because it undermines the moral message they hope to send their kids-- and we're talking younger and younger kids here, too, so it does become a bit of a law and order issue whether liberals like it or not.
One can debate the wisdom of that preoccupation, but it hardly seems the same order of magnitude. To hear the liberal shrills, however, it may as well be. Who's killing you, you goose?
May 26, 2008 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know. I've read TPM steadily for the past four years and haven't heard anything about students' rights to roll condoms.
I did hear a great deal about distorted intelligence and pre-emptive war, about domestic surveillance, about politicizing the Department of Justice, and lately, about transforming the military into a vehicle for domestic propaganda. I won't deny that the Left has a tendency to get shrill, but lately I think we've been focusing more on the Constitution than on condoms.
May 26, 2008 10:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
ah, mr perlstein, what a joy it is to read criticism of your book from that great champion of the common man and woman, george will. note well will's criticism of newton minow:"The masses bought television sets and enjoyed what they watched. But Newton Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (and formerly Adlai Stevenson's administrative assistant) declared television a "vast wasteland," thereby implicitly scolding viewers who enjoyed it."
doubtless, will took minow's criticism personally. the son of a professor of philosophy who specialized in epistomology, will holds a master's degree from oxford and a phd from princeton. so he surely feared that minow's criticism of the overwhelming junk on tv threatened his regular viewing of such 60s programs as "mr. ed," about a talking horse, "the beverly hillbillies," "my favorite martian," "lassie," and the ever-so-steamy "peyton place." surely, as well, will, ever a representative of the great unwashed masses, objected to the fact that minow's influence helped cause the expansion of the three national network news programs from 15 minutes to a half-hour each night, during his chairmanship. no doubt will would have preferred
that the masses he represents remained less knowledgeable about events in the nation and the world. of course, despite the fact that george will is a man of the people, he regularly peppers his writings with words that some average americans might find difficult to understand such as "dystopia," "postulated, "dialectic," and "ineluctable," and phrases such as "protracted futility," and "permutation of the entitlement mentality." now that's the kind of writing designed to appeal to viewers of "mr. ed," "lassie," and "flipper," isn't it? thank you, george, for criticizing those awful democratic elitists like newton minow, and reminding us what a real defender of the common man is like.
May 27, 2008 1:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
To pick just one point out of your list, in the 50's people read newspapers for the news. The 30 minute national news has been a major culprit in trivializing and emotionalizing the news (More Brittany, anyone?) and simultaneously destroying the newspapers. (Single city newspaper monopolies is another culprit.)
Now we get 30 minutes of what the overage entertainer Katie Couric considers to be news. Maybe we should go back to the 15 minute format, and try to find the last living TV journalist to fill it. If he exists.
May 27, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had been saving the book like a rich dessert, but I finally dipped in and appreciate it. But this commentary is deficient.
The Right, back in the day, was not advancing the sublime thoughts of Russell Kirk or Ludwig Von Mises. Their "ideas" were states rights and the destruction of nascent nationalist/socialist movements, governments, and leaders in the developing world. These ideas were contemptible and deserved condescension, not least because of the implicit endorsement of the attendant violence and misery. As Ellen of the bewitching eyeball notes, justifiable rage amplified the condescension.
Mr. Buckley knew how to behave himself in personal relations, but he also projected vicious, demagogic idiocy in his public pronouncements. (I can tell you Pat Buchanan is very affable in person too.) DeLong has treated us to a running series on the obscenities in the National Review. One I remember is a headline greeting the demise of Adam Clayton Powell: "The jig is up." Even so, Buckley was taken seriously enough for a substantially liberal audience to propel his show "Firing Line" on public television.
RP conflates the historic underestimation of the political appeal of the Right with leftist intellectual narrowness. But the Right did not advance on the basis of intellectual popularity. It advanced on the backs of race, as any glance at the changing electoral map will attest. In light of the wipeout of Goldwater, there was some reason to suspect another lightweight B-movie actor had limited horizons as well. Presently we observe disdain for acumen of Mr. Bush, not least from RP; is that intellectual narrowness?
A secondary point, liberals' political vulnerability on law and order I venture to say was part liberals are soft on blacks and blacks commit crimes, part reaction to numerous, justifiable acts of non-violent civil disobedience, and part unfounded faith in the deterrence of incarceration relative to rehabilitation. Of course there was crime and there was violence from parts of the Left. There is something there, but less than RP makes out.
May 27, 2008 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
But the Right did not advance on the basis of intellectual popularity. It advanced on the backs of race, as any glance at the changing electoral map will attest.
Max--a central theme of the book is Nixon's recognition of the opportunity to appeal to racists and to white voters who hated the dirty fucking hippies. Nixon recognized this, according to Rick, when neither conscending liberals, nor the contemporary punditocracy, nor many members of his own party. A central method Nixon used was the public rejecting intellectuals of kinds as snobs and elitists, friends of the radical-liberals who were burning down ROTC buildings on college campuses. (I'd forgotten the Kent State killings were preceded by the destruction of the ROTC building, with students interfering, successfully, with firefighters trying to quell the flames.)
A secondary point, liberals' political vulnerability on law and order I venture to say was part liberals are soft on blacks and blacks commit crimes, part reaction to numerous, justifiable acts of non-violent civil disobedience, and part unfounded faith in the deterrence of incarceration relative to rehabilitation. Of course there was crime and there was violence from parts of the Left.
Rick makes a point of the live television portrayal of the Watts riots, the first time something like that had happened in real time. While the impression one gets is that, net, there was more violence from government forces and right wing vigilantes, there was no shortage of violence from the left. Moreover, there were widespread loud, and, frankly, exaggerated statements about insurrection and revolution, by men holding up automatic rifles.
Nixon used the violent minority, the vocal and profane minority at his events (the advance teams made sure there were some there) to paint the majority of the left as profoundly in opposition to American institutions. People like Hoffman abetted him in this effort, by serving as a living manifestation of Nixon's caricature.
May 27, 2008 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Max, you really need to finish the book. Of course it wasn't (and isn't) an intellectual struggle. That's pretty much Rick's thesis.
His point is that people were genuinely afraid- for their safety and the shattering of their Weltanschauung. Much of the fear may have been irrational and racist and/or overhyped by the media and politicians. But that didn't make the fear any less real.
May 27, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andy -- My post was directed at RP's post, not at the book in toto, which as I noted I've barely begun. Though in general RP gets a little too worked up about the excesses of the 60s left. Just a little. By the way, I wouldn't call urban civil disorders -- without doubt a social cataclysm and political watershed -- an expression of 'the Left,' or any left for that matter.
I've acknowledged that those left of center were political vulnerable to the crime issue, partly on substantive (albeit debatable) grounds. But if this was an absolute deal-breaker why, as RP has noted, did the Dems do well in the 1970 off-year elections?
Jay (luv ya on Eschaton) -- RP's long suit is political and cultural history. Radical left ideas, not so much. He seems to conflate Nixon's political fortunes with the shortcomings of the left -- again I'm not judging the book. Lord knows the left was jam packed with deficiencies, but there was more there as well.
The crux of the matter: left ideas and analysis now and then are not that all-fired different in basic outline. Naturally there is a mountain of new material. To discount the past is to neglect sharp criticism of the present incarnations of "the left" -- the ideologically moderate blogosphere and its 'netroots.'
There's progressive and there's pwogwessive. We need both, but more of the former relative to the latter.
Ted -- "Mr Sawicky"? I'm not playing shuffleboard yet.
May 27, 2008 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, well.
First the t-shirt goes, and then, the beard gets trimmed, and then . . . .
May 27, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, Max.
At least I wasn't condescending to you.
- Mr. Bucklin
May 27, 2008 11:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not sure if moves the discussion further but one of the issues I face when talking to friends and family, in the south, is trying not to sound condescending but to speak of tolerance and understanding but passionately. Of course to many my speaking because of its passion seems ironic in that I am speaking of intolerance while at the same time not tolerating the lack of intellectual honesty in the discussion an any range of topics. I ask them to understand while at the same time telling them that they do not understand. Many times this approach leaves people feel that I am talking down to them. I am because I see many of their decisions as failures of them and and myslef to see the problem for what it is and face the realities that exist rather than listening to the ideology which never quite fits the reality.
I heard just this week in local political circles as well as references to national politics an effort by some to re-engage o the issue of crime. Well to be frank, I remember reading recently this year and last that crime as whole is down nationally. Of course I am sensitive like any american to the threats of terrorism as acts of crime on our soil, but if crime is down nationally and we now know that many of our prisoners are in jail because of stiff criminal penalties for drug offenders, then isn't national crime down a bunch but is offset by personal drug use/aka criminal drug use. If this is the case then why are we not having a conversation about rehabilitation? If this is the issue why are we not have a discussion about illegal drugs? If this is the issue why are we not having a conversation about the policies that have been effected throughout the nation in lowering the national crime rates?
May 27, 2008 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
pretty hilarious George Will talking about someone ELSE being condescending!
these old righties have been around so long that forever ago they adopted an idealized cartoon version of themseles as reality, while the actual venal side of them is meanwhile biting themselves in their own asses.
quite a spectacle for all now to see
May 27, 2008 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
A not especially substantive comment: someone needs to remind Mark Hemmingway that nothing and no one sprung fully-formed from the head of Athena. (Athena, of course, sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus.) Embarrassing faux-intellectualism.
May 27, 2008 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think we have some good examples of "law and order" condescension in this thread. When middle Americans in the 60's,70's, and 80's worried about safety, crime, and property values, the liberal response was often dismissive: you're just being racist, illiberal, etc.
Some were, but the upshot of liberal condescension on law and order concerns was that middle-of-the road voters who might have come our way felt impelled into the hardcore Republican "law and order" camp. By refusing to take middle America's concerns about civil order seriously, the left pushed this group towards Reagan et al. Where did Guilliani get his mandate in NYC? There was a consensus that NYC had become unbearable and people--even previously good liberals--were willing to look the other way while he attacked civil liberties in his attack on crime. It shouldn't have had to come to that.
May 27, 2008 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
So at the '68 convention, you would have suggested siding with Meany, and not McGovern? You would have rejected the idea of quotas on delegations, and left the power in the hands of the traditional power brokers?
Remember that the candidate who was nominated, and lost, was the one who had the support of the back room politicians.
"Law and order" is code for "uppity black people." How do you reconcile that with your idea that somehow the Democrats could have continued to pursue the southern white, and, ftm, the urban northern racist vote?
May 27, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
So you believe the either/or fallacy: if you take crime seriously, or listen fairly to people who take crime seriously, you must be a racist, support George Meany, etc., etc.
I'm saying that middle America's worries about crime, property values, etc. are not just racist figments of these people's imaginations. If the Dems won't take them seriously, this leaves room for republicans to make racist pogroms (a 2-fer for them!)rather than deal with the actual issues.
It's condescending--and politically stupid--to dismiss working and middle class fears by merely calling them racist, intolerant, etc.
May 27, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
My reply showed up at the bottom of the page for some reason.
May 27, 2008 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
The trouble with the "Law and order" types was that their solution was to send the police into minority districts and bust heads until criminals were scared straight. They did this with a largely white police force that operated out of bases outside the minority ghettos they were policing and were properly seen as an invading army sent in to quell the natives. It made good TV.
I live just north of the northern edge of the black area in my city which, 15 years ago was declared the most crime ridden urban area in America. A new police chief started hiring Black and Hispanic officers, placed a major substation in the center of that part of town, and began effective community policing. I checked the police reports before buying a home here nine years ago and, except for a lot of petty crime caused by the fact that the city has concentrated all the homeless shelters in one area about two miles down a major road and railroad track, there is a real decrease in crime.
The problem now is that all the major businesses moved out and left nothing but liquor stores, convenience stores 7-11 sold to immigrants, fast food places, check cashing stores and pawnshops. It's still a minority ghetto, but the police now try to protect the locals instead of repress them.Minorities don't yet fully trust the police, and I wouldn't either if I weren't white. But the change in attitudes and in how the police are deployed has made a real difference. But community policing doesn't get the big TV coverage that a gunfight or hostage situation does. The "Law and Order" types still want the TV drama and repression of the criminals rather than the reality of effective community policing.
The same "law and order" types also don't want any restriction on their ownership and possession of the firearms that still kill and wound so many people here. But this is the South where state law used to require every white man to carry his weapon at all times, even to church, for fear of slave revolts. That fear, and the resulting demand for a firearm, hasn't left us.
May 27, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another point: I often find it hard to line down anyone who I believe may be sympathetic to conservativism or some of its pundits to state clearly what they stand for. I often find myself listening to them talk about the lazy people who do nothing but collect welfare checks. I listen and then state that from my perspective that it would be counter-productive of our goverment to give handouts without having a policy in place that emphasizes getting those on welfare off of it. I talk about the societal issues, such as education, counseling and job placement as necessary tools that would aid in welfare graduation. To this most agree but yet I am still a progressive and they are still sympatethetically conservative and in the end regardless of either of our positions the situation merits progress and action. I also conclude that in reality I found no reasonable circumstance under which ever person in society will always do their part(there will always be those in our soceity who will not pull their weight so to speak, so the issue is identifying the best method that deals with this fact and undermining it is as much as possible). The only recourse is to accept the fact that we must either deal with these americans as somebody who can and needs to be rehabilitated and work back into our soceity with the proper tools so we creat that more perfect union or we can claim keep the mantra of "knowing" about these people and yet do little to help elleviate their issues which are actually our issues. Either way we have to deal with these issues, I would prefer we do it from a position of humality, understanding, support, tolerance and interest in helping our fellow Americans. As a person who was raised in a Methodist upbringing and surrouned by catholics, unitarians, episcopalians, presbytarians, muslims, jewish and agnostic this position does not seem out of balance with many of the noble words from any of these denominations or religions but it somehow seems that my position is out-of-balance with many of my peers. Who would of thunk it!
May 27, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a World War ll vet, a parachute rifleman of the 82nd Airborne who fought in Europe. I never joined the VFW or the American Legion, though I've been in local VFW Posts a number of times. Maybe that's why I never became an old conservative fogie, instead becoming an old liberal fogie instead. My wife and I were among the oldest of the Vietnam war protesters in and around Philly.
Of all the wars I've seen since my experience; Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Panama, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and now Iraq, I can only fully justify Afghanistan, but only to the extent that we were hunting for Osama. I've had second thoughts about overthrowing the Taliban because now we can't allow them to return, or can we?
Why the hell did we invade Panama?
As long as we fund the Military with over $500 billion and counting annually, we're going to be buying weapons systems that some are going to want to use. Republicans aren't "strong on defense", they're strong on the military industrial complex. The ordinary GI gets only lip service from the Republicans.
As to the spitting on vets, I was always skeptical of this chalking it up to right wing BS. I was skeptical because it appeared to me that "long haired liberal hippies" would have to hang around Philly International Airport or 30th Street RR Station for hours on end in hopes of catching a returning vet so thay could spit on him/her. What other reason would they have for being there?
Finally, I sometimes think that only a combat infantryman should be able to send others to war.
signed:
An old man with foolish thoughts.
May 27, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
only a combat infantryman should be able to send others to war.
What?? No combat artillerymen or tankers?
Other than them, I agree. Especially forbidden should be Air Force and Navy aviators.
May 27, 2008 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Richardxx asks;
"What?? No combat artillerymen or tankers?"
Richard, ya got me there. :-), of course they're included.
I once offered a tanker a deal; "If you let me drive your tank I'll let you make my next jump."
I don't know how those tankers didn't get claustrophobic in those Shermans.
May 27, 2008 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
So the question still rest along your comments with, "If the republicans only pay lipservice to GI men and women, then why is there a perception in America that many of those in uniform support those presidents mostly aligned with the right?" I am not saying that this is the truth or that it is even represntatively true but nonetheless it would appear that to many the perception is that soldiers represent a base of the republican party or at a bare minimum an independent party with conservative tendencies!
I think pointing out the spending abuses of our Military industrial complex is insightful as ever at what makes America tick. Damn that Gore Vidal, he is right yet again!
May 27, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Josh,
when I was a GI I didn't know shit from Shinola about politics and neither did most of the rest of the guys I served with. What 19/20 year old soldier/marine today has any political sophistication?
As I said in an earilier post here, too many get their political news from Limbaugh, Hannity, and
O'Reilly types.
May 27, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
The condescending attitude gets at things that Rick doesn't cover in the book (at least not so far--I'm 400+ pages in) and that, in fairness, other historians of the period miss. There was a split between liberals and labor that began in the 50s, which Tom Geoghagen has discussed briefly. It probably had to do with investigations into racketeering in unions, among other things. there's also a snobbishness about joining unions on the part of professionals and this impeded the development of teacher's unions (along with anti-strike laws directed at public employees). Unions had a blue collar tinge that bothered people--perhaps more so in the lower rungs of the middle class where people want to grasp onto whatever social status they have.
The mass movements that grew in the 60s and 70s--civil rights, anti-poverty, women, environment; none of these engaged white working class people in a meaningful way. the civil rights movement became co-opted by the old, conservative black middle class or became so dominated by extremists so that ultimately, that movement shut out the Black working class in meaningful ways.
Martin Luther King was beginning to reach out in his later days, but his own movement was fraying and he was also taking on the Vietnam war, which lessened his effectiveness. Although Bobby Kennedy did not do as well among working class whites as has been remembered, his policy stances (e.g., work not welfare) clearly could have kept the old coalition together. Since then, nada. The women's movement quickly abandoned economic issues, became pre-occupied by abortion and intramural fights over what to do with lesbians and ultimately became irrelevant to working class and, frankly, middle class women. ironically, many of these women really wanted a movement that spoke for them. Trhe environmental movement has been an embarassment and like the women's movement only talks about working class or poor people as victimized abstractions, when its convenient.
I'm a PhD with blue collar roots. My blue collar distrust of middle class professionals and their ignorance about the world has, if anything, been reinforced by becoming a middle class professional. People like my peers stood by when factors closed and labor shrank. It's taken decades to recognize the importance of unions again. The economic insecurity of conservative rule is only understood because it's filtered down to the white collar middle class.
The wingnuts have been able to exploit insecurities of social location and economics that liberals have missed. It's been easy for many "good" liberals to condescend to white working people because they perceive them as having different values. That those values may be shared by, e.g., church-going African-Americans or Latinos is missed.
The condescension and the social ignorance that went with it are/were real. What has changed is that the condescension that lies beneath the faux populism of the Right also has become obvious. For things to change, liberals have to get out of their Takoma Parks and Pasadenas and actually listen to people who live in places like Macomb County, MI or Prince William County, VA. We can't just rely on demography as destiny, because there are places where African-Americans. Latinos, the young, etc. may not want to stay in the coalition. Regionally, I think there is more hope in the Northeast, Midwest, & West--there;s still some union infrastructure in tehse places and their histories of pragmatism and communitarianism aren't entirely dead. the South will be more difficult and more complicated.
May 27, 2008 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
There was a split between liberals and labor that began in the 50s . . . .
And it wasn't due to liberal condescension!
Labor -- George Meany and his buddies -- turned fascist -- pro-war red-baiters, pro-segregationists, corrupt corporatists.
Once when asked what they wanted, labor leaders cried "More!" By the 1960s they were crying (whining and puling) "Just let us keep our perks -- please?"
By the time Reagan stuck the shiv in they'd been dead men walking for a generation.
May 27, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rick,
I agree with you that there are at least pockets of the left that aren’t condescending in the way that you say, but I’m not sure that the evidence you marshal really makes the case.
It’s true, I agree, that there is a surging interest in really understanding the mechanisms of conservative political ascendance that extends beyond your own work. Really understanding something requires some charity in interpretion – an effort to take the ideas seriously and to understand them on their own terms. And I am much impressed with your ability to take a charitable stance towards conservative ideas, and really give the ideas their due. But as for the rest of us, it doesn’t follow from the fact that we are interested in understanding conservatism that we don’t retain a condescending stance towards it. I really try to understand what’s motivating my four year old, too, and – well, I hope I’m not condescending in my approach to him, but you see what I mean. In more grand terms, the history of anthropology isn’t free from condescension, even where the goal is to develop an internal understanding of a cultural point of view.
As for the stupid things we will never do again, these strike me as not so much a function of a newfound intellectual respect as a recognition of the changed power dynamics – nobody will make those mistakes again because the terms of debate have changed, and the possibilities for gaining political power preclude (expression of) attitudes like this. Transposing the comments you cite into the last 25 years, they sound absurd. But I think that’s because this quarter century has been one where it isn’t really possible to be dismissive of conservatives in the same way it was during the century’s middle half.
So I guess my point is two-fold. First, that I’d want to see more – and different – evidence to support your thesis about changing attitudes on the left, evidence that not only are we paying attention, but that we are doing so in some sense in earnest. Second, even if you are correct to a very substantial degree, it’s probably not false to say that there is leftist condescension towards the right (and hence that there is some justification to the charge made against us, though I think the charge is motivated less by its veracity than by its effectiveness). I must admit that my understanding is colored by the fact that I’ve spent most of the past decade working in institutions that remain stuck in 1968 – led by that generation, and as prone to demonizing the right as they are averse to tailoring their message to the aim of building a bigger constituency (I used to press Before the Storm into the hands of any of my colleagues that would take it). But even if it looms unduly large in my view, that segment of the left is very much out there, even if it isn't dominant. While I hope that the emerging Perlstein left is gaining ground, we have some way to go before the charge – galling as it is from the likes of George Will – is entirely baseless, or easily refuted as such.
Thanks – I look forward to this discussion (and to reading Nixonland, once my plate is cleared a bit).
Devon Kearney
May 27, 2008 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate Mr. Sawicky’s comments and would like to add:
The condescension claim by the right was merely a branch of the overall anti-intellectual strategy (remember the eggheads) conservatives used to garner support of blue-collar voters, playing on their insecurities and fears while the clever (and well-educated) conservatives dreamed of, and now have succeeded in, screwing them by “unshackling” corporate power while retarding the power of workers in the marketplace. Another branch of the anti-intellectual strategy was to label the news media “liberal”, opening the door to more mass appeal (blue collar) news outlets like Fox, and now reaching its apotheosis, anti-intellectualism of the right undermines the very notions of “fact” and “truth,” confusing opinion with reason-based (intellectually determined) analysis. As seen under Bush, we now have policies that are utterly unmoored from reason, fact and truth, with disastrous results across the board, from Iraq to Enron and the mortgage meltdown to No Child Left Behind to the EPA.
Three things come to mind; first, it’s remarkable how successful this strategy (in concert with despicable efforts like the Southern Strategy and its evil spawn, exploiting and exacerbating racial/class/religious tensions and hatred for political gain) has been in keeping blue collar voters in the conservative fold. Liberals were condescending to conservatives because they could not believe the electorate would be swayed by such transparently base and “un-American” values. The conservative departure from and disavowal of essential principles of American democracy seemed foolish and reckless, and certainly deserved no respect until it was shown to be politically successful, but of course by then it was too late. In order for liberals to truly meet conservatives on the political battlefield and compete, they would have to jettison their intellectual baggage, their effete democratic principles, and go mano a mano with conservatives who had long since given up democratic principles in the interest of winning elections and power. Clinton-style triangulation was the first “liberal” attempt to meet the conservatives in their ruts. I do not think it was a smashing success, though it had its moments. Sadly, I think it muddied rather than clarified differences between the two parties.
Second of all, while conservatives have seized the victim role (and thus the high ground) by claiming that liberals are/were condescending to them, condescending might not be the right word. Thus, I would caution Mr. Perelstein from unabashedly admitting condescension by liberals without at least examining what liberals were really feeling about the new conservative strategies, because I would say that there is absolutely good reason for any reasonable person, liberal or otherwise, to feel such strong feelings as disgust and betrayal and incredulity at the trajectory of conservative power politics over the past decades. Condescension is a polite way of expressing disdain, and if you look at what 30 years of conservative strategy has gotten us, especially as expressed in the final distillation of it of the Bush Administration, I would say that disdain is a far too tepid response. In addition to apologizing for hurting those poor conservatives by being condescending to their cutthroat democracy-destroying movement, we might also show how what they have done has by now almost irreversibly moved us beyond democracy into some hybrid fascist corporatocracy.
Finally, it is often said in this discussion of conservative history, by Mr. Perelstein, George Packer in his review in the New Yorker, and commenters, as well as conservatives themselves, that conservatism is an ideology. While there may be a few ideas tossed in for flavor, what has made the conservative movement successful over the past decades is a rejection of ideology for strategy. After all, ideology is nothing if it is not intellectual - strains of academic thought and philosophy woven into a cohesive fabric. Gradually over the past 30 years, conservatism has abandoned ideology as it rejected intellectualism in favor of bare-knuckles power politics.
While one might for a moment be duped into thinking that say, Reagan’s notion of the federal government as corrupt, inept and a waste of your hard-earned tax dollars was an ideology, you’d be wrong on two counts. First, to the extent that it was ideological, it was an idea in service of a strategy to disenfranchise the electorate from their democratic stake in the government, with the added advantage that it left power in the hands of those who actually were running the government, as public faith and involvement in government dropped off. Secondly, if it were truly an ideology in service to democratic principles, conservatives, after discrediting government as it is, would have been pushing a discussion about what was the function of government and to what end should our tax monies be spent. You’ve heard Reagan and his sycophants railing for decades against the federal government, but you hardly ever hear conservatives say something about what good it can serve. Ideologies are discussed and debated and they exist in the context of other ideologies. Conservatives would never be so weak as to actually accord credence to anyone else’s ideology.
Eventually conservatives, around the time of the Gingrich ascendancy I suppose, dropped all pretense of collegiality, and declared all out war on liberalism and in effect, democracy. From a strategic point of view what this meant was that conservatives no longer had to maintain the pretense of legislation, they just went ahead and rammed through their programs and failing that, forced the opposition to swallow poison pills for any resistance they might offer. Every move was made in light of its political power ramifications, without consideration of larger social consequences. In declaring war, conservatives claimed a mantle of righteous certainty they didn’t deserve and which cut against the very fabric (woven of lofty, intellectually-derived, philosophically-based ideas) of democracy.
To conservatives I say, Condescension? Get over it! When you cultivate anti-intellectualism, when you reject reason, fact and truth in favor of race-baiting and intolerance and selfishness, when you declare war on your fellow citizens because they don’t agree with your narrow viewpoint, you look kind of stupid and small-minded. Exactly the kind of person who should be condescended to.
Ted Bucklin
May 27, 2008 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
These are good points. It is exactly right that the condescension charge is a political gambit, part of a larger framing war in which the right adopted a populist anti-intellectualism as a tactic for sowing division on the left.
It may or may not have been true; I tend to agree with Rick that it was. Whether you call it condescension or not, I'd argue that there are a great number of progressives who have not been very interested in developing a full understanding of the ideas espoused by conservatives, and understanding that requires entertaining the possibility that these ideas are not necessarily mere cover for a more insidious agenda. That puts us at a serious disadvantage. Even if the ideas are just window-dressing for a real agenda, understanding them on their own terms is vital: we need to understand why they resonate (or are intended to), and with what audience, if we're to effectively counter them. In this sense, I would argue for taking the condescension seriously, not as a matter of being fair and charitable to the right, but in order to fight the partisan fight more effectively.
May 27, 2008 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was at UC Berkeley in 1964-1966. It was FREE then. As I recall, we paid about $50 a semester in incidental fees, and about the same for books, but it was tuition-free. All you had to pay was living expenses, and some people lived at home. Anyone in the top 12.5% of high school could be admitted, and when I graduated from high school in 1960, one could apply in the summer for the fall semester. In short, all you needed was the grades in the right courses and to not have to work more than part time, and you were in. Yes, that eliminated many students, but nothing like the way it is now.
May 27, 2008 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, this was a reply to ixtx WAY upthread.
The book is a terrific read and really brings back those murky days of the '50s and early '60s. I remember my mother telling me in 1952 how awful Nixon was for destroying Jerry Voorhis in almost the same language as Rick uses in the book. It may have been during the Helen Gahagan Douglas election.
The condescension was very real, and as Rick describes it. It came mostly from older liberals but also some of Nixon's more privileged co-generationists. It's hard to remember now how much more class stratified things were then. I was blown away by it when I came from California in the fall of 1960 to a fancy ivy league college. Things were more casual in CA. And Nixon did have to struggle to get ahead. The book almost makes him sympathetic, even to one raised to despise him, until he pulls one of those positively dirty moves of his.
It also made me realize how tepid political discourse is today. Talk about impugning people's patriotism! Calling Helen Douglas "pink right down to her underwear" and some of the rest of it.
It's also enlightening to remember how far back the politics of resentment started. Terrific book.
May 27, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone in the top 12.5% of high school could be admitted . . . .
Any idea where all those SAT1200 dummies at Berkeley High School went?
May 27, 2008 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, the triparite system developed in California, the 1960 Master Plan, was and is a model of democracy and inclusion, the exact opposite, really, of elitism. The 12.5% only applied to the UC system. The top 33% were admitted to State schools, and the Master Plan expanded the number of junior and community colleges into the hundreds over the next decade. Tuition was ridiculously low at all levels. Virtually any adult in California had easy access to higher education, something that still can't be said for the rest of the country. The 1960 Master Plan is a far-sighted, progressive document that should be a model for the whole country, still: http://www.ucop.edu/acadinit/mastplan/mp.htm
May 27, 2008 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even in the mid-70's I was going to UC Irvine for less than $1800 per year. And if you didn't have that money programs like BEOG were readily available which would pay that for you outright; no loans!
Ellen, not sure where you got the idea that UC/Cal State in the 60's was just a playground for rich kids. Primarily white kids, yes, but that was a different problem.
May 27, 2008 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with this. And today I think there are moderates and even broadly "liberal" people who are perfectly willing to allow the hard nosed right to do their dirty work, because they can't find a way to a more moderate position dealing with liberals on certain issues.
For example, I've never seen anyone open a conversation with a liberal on illegal immigration with respect to employment issues and paying for local public services without getting slandered as a racist. Personally, I find our incapacity to make rational assessments of costs and benefits on that one completely suspect.
It mocks the whole notion of citizenship and reminds me of nothing so much as the shut down of dissent prior to the Iraq War. The cheap labor hegemony has spoken.
May 27, 2008 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Conservatives are so very loyal to their strawmen.
"Here, let me show you my favorites. In my trophy room, next to the wildebeest, at the end furthest from the fireplace, of course... Yes! The Limousine Liberal, so recognizable by his top hat and bleeding heart. Over there, his cousin, the Hollywood Liberal. I call her Babs, but I'm thinking of packing in more straw to make her a Rosie, heh, heh, heh! And, of course, the Condescending Liberal -- you see he's looking one way, away from my bronze bust of Reagan... the most silly liberal of them all! Never knew what hit 'm!"
May 27, 2008 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bat,
you forgot the the most often used strawman of the right, expecially by Bush;
"some say...." interchanegable with; "some think...."
May 27, 2008 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hofstadter's condescending point was that conservatives had nothing to conserve because they had not held real power for over 20 years. Centrists, including Eisenhower, were the real conservatives. The Right has proven time and again it can't govern and can't manage power either. What is the Right besides triumphalist warmongers, born-againers, and the crass and grasphing rich?
May 27, 2008 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding the California system of higher education, Ellen, you claim that "to 90% of Californians whose kids couldn't get in, anyway -- at least not into Berkeley or UCLA -- those students were nothing but the pampered offspring of high income earners," but these were perceptions, not reality. I grew up hearing this denigration of the counter-culture youth as "pampered" and wealthy, so it's not a trivial point to determine whether this was true. For every Bill Ayres, was there also a working-class or poor kid who made it and still thought his country was heading into hell?
I am reading Nixonland now and am learning a great deal!
May 27, 2008 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whether it's liberals being patronizing or condescending, I think the foundation of what you are talking about is actually "liberal laziness." To me, this means relying on the assumption that the electorate has observed and noted historic facts about the failure of conservativism while their opposite numbers have skillfully manipulated the psyche of the populace to bring them to power repeatedly, and curb America's appetite for what it has wanted since Hoover in spite of itself: Liberal solutions.
The history of humanity has been to move from autocracy to liberty, with intermittent returns to more conservative forms of government, usually by force, fear (real or manufactured) or both, with disastrous consequences generally but especially to those on the outside looking in. Whether it was the Japanes Americans in WWII, the poor under Reagan or innocent Iraqis under Bush II, the more modern reversions to conservative rule have all had dire, even fatal consequences. Overseas, it's been worse -- fascism.
Maybe liberals, or, the word I prefer, progressives (as opposed to regressives, and a word that also captures Teddy Roosevelt and even elements of the Eisenhower presidency) simply became overconfident. They've been assuming that since the results from a conservative government usually can't stand up to intellectual examination, whether under Harding, or Hoover, Nixon or Reagan, Bush I or Bush II, the electorate will take the time to make that examination. Now, I know this sounds condescending in itself, but anyone posting on a site like this looks at politics and policy the way devoted NBA or NHL fans have been watching the playoffs. We're into it. Most people are not. And, when they are angry, or afraid, or stressed, it's really easy to prod them into making bad decisions about the things they haven't concentrated on because they seem so remote. Yeah, kickin' Saddam's ass sounds great -- until a fill up costs $55 for a midsize car a few years later. Interestingly enough, it's the conservatives who actually lack evidence of an intellectual examination of conservativism. Goldwater looks like a genius compared to the tripe Coulter spews. Cripes, even Pat Buchanan is ahead of that curve most of the time.
This all doesn't mean, however, that the electorate lacks collective wisdom. In fact, as that wisdome spreads, the more numbers it reaches and the more forceful the impact. All current appearances are that the GOP will take it on the chin in November again, confounding so-called experts who have said it can't happen again after 2006 because, well, it never has. When masses of people think they've figured out the score, their power is overwhelming and not easily diverted. Overlooking that fact is condescension on steroids.
It's also not about "copying the tactics of the right." What progressive politicians and liberal pundits need to do is take the opportunity that has been handed to them YET AGAIN by the failure of conservative ideologies. Don't take it for granted that the reversal won't come about again, in a different disguise. In simple, direct terms, keep justifying, keep selling, keep REMINDING that the other side's snake oil has never cured anything and tends to make matters worse, while liberal ideas, like a 40 hour work week, sick pay, etc. are part of our culture's fabric.
Funny thing -- when conservatives get lazy, they might lose elections but when liberals get lazy, people end up dead.
May 27, 2008 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
See my reply to Ellen above, Bofinger - the top 33% were admitted to State universities (not the same as UC, but still outstanding higher education), and the junior college system in CA exploded in the 60's, funnelling thousands into State and UC schools. Ellen's assertion of "elitism" in CA higher education in the 60's is simply uninformed and preposterous. Nothing could be further from the truth, and Pat Brown had every reason to take great pride in his signature accomplishment. Reagan's assault on higher education was simply a cheap shot, the lowest kind of demagoguery, wholly unsupported by the facts. In other words, Republican SOP.
May 27, 2008 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to remotely imply FDR was conservative -- imprisoning Japanese Americans was his personal conservative reversion.
May 27, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
The issue is not about taking crime seriously. The issue is what is seen as a valid remedy. Leftist Democrats of the time saw the problem as something to be fixed by improving opportunity, through education, improved housing, alternatives to jail for non-violent offenders.
Nixon drove a wedge between the Michael Stivics and the Archie Bunkers by saying that the only way to deal with criminals is to get tough. You can say that's not racist if you want, and you can say that it may only have been self-interest, protecting their jobs from competition with blacks.
But he drove that wedge nonetheless. How would you suggest the democrats have prevented that from happening? And why are democrats still unsuccessfully pursuing these voters?
May 27, 2008 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was making a statement about liberals in general and what used to be called "middle America" from the 60s thru the 80s--I was not commenting on specific political events in the late sixties-early seventies.
Again, I'm trying to say that there are many voters with concerns like crime, urban decay, housing depreciation that can easily be ridiculed as merely racist, illiberal, unseemly. These voters aren't necessarily a natural republican constituency, but they turn there when they feel their concerns are being dismissed. I think this fits with Perlstein's example of John Lindsey, which I then connect to the reign of Guiliani in NYC.
I think Obama is pretty good in connecting with these other points of view--his speech on race is a good example.
May 27, 2008 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not all liberals condescended. Some of us were just flabbergasted. I came from a very conservative town. I always felt out of sync, but didn't really know why. I went away to college and found other ways of thinking; found out why I'd never felt at home in my home town. Once I had come across 'left' philosophy and it made great sense to me, I was amazed that the people back home couldn't see the logic. But for the record, I was the one condescended to, subjected to all the cliches: "Wait a few years, wait 'til you own a home, have a job, get some experience, get married, have children." All of it happened and I'm further to the left today than I was 40 years ago. My home town is what it always was, and I never go back.
May 27, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Liberals don't draw monocles and spats on Republicans in general. But in the case of Dick Cheney, his uncanny vocal and facial quirks makes it impossible not to draw him as the Penguin. I just drew him that way in a comic book shortly before reading your post!
Off topic, I know.
May 27, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have just started the book, and like it a lot.
However, the story about the George Smathers speech is completely apocryphal. I am surprised it slipped by in the editing. I hope you will get rid of it in the next edition.
May 27, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
To anyone that can answer;
Rush Limbaugh launched a voter operation called "Operation Chaos." The idea was for republicans to re register as Democrats so they could vote for Hillary in the primary, then after the primary switch back to Republican registration and of course vote Republican in the General.
the questions are;
Was Rush Limbaugh's pushing this legal?
Was actually doing this switching back and forth by a voter legal?
or was this voter fraud of some sort?
May 27, 2008 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Powkat, I can empathize as I too grew up in the conservative south and was also condescended too. I always took it as advice I could not relate to, and of course my parents are split in the political categories but both grew up in the south so they were moderate but Reagan fans. The interesting thing to me is that there seems to be a disconnect with many conservatives or those that support many of the republicans running for office these days, the people do not like or trust government, the people do not like the taxes, the people are told that crime is high every night on TV, the people are told that illegals take their health care and take their jobs while not paying taxes and so they vote for the person that is closest to that message. The disconnect starts when they stopped believing in their government and then continues when they vote for those that claim they don't believe in government. But you can be sure that these politicians will readily expand the military(national budget), readily expand our drug war (national budget), readily expand our domestic agencies who deal with national security (national budget), then put a top-down style chain of command style process within many of the agencies of the government (EPA, and BOE, DOJ) and then sit in front of the American people when any of these things fail and claim not accountability but denial, stonewalling or ignorance. There are real issues in there but how can any American elect official after official who does not believe in the power of our government to ensure at least a good attempt at the basic precept of the Preamble of the constitution?
May 27, 2008 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Josh -- take heart - I was able to convert my entire family - every one of them became a Democrat. Although my mom was ahead of her time. In 1960, 1968 and 1972 she came home from the polls and said to my dad, "I'm sorry, but I just can't bring myself to vote for that man (Nixon)." It took a little longer with my dad, but when kids I went to school with were coming home severely damanged, that was too much for him.
And this town wasn't in the South, it was in central Michigan.
May 27, 2008 7:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The ultimate example of condescension was bussing.
The upper middle class whites would never have subjected their own children to this and never did have to.
It was a cheap fix done on the backs of the poor.
Bussing proceded from the assumption that racism was a blue collar phenomenon and that blue collar whites needed to be taught a punishing lesson.
May 27, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well; short of continuing to send African-American children to rat infested schools to study out of 20 year old textbooks -- a violation of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education for which the federal courts were constitutionally required to fashion a remedy -- what other remedy, in your view, should those courts have adopted?
Please, also, consider whether your favored remedy would have been within the courts' jurisdictional power.
May 28, 2008 2:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I won't deny that many Conservative leaders are outright fascists and bigots, as are many of their followers, but the question worth asking is HOW was the population "softened" up to lean their way?
How did Hitler persuade fair, decent Germans not unlike ourselves right after a very liberal period in Germany to adopt fascism?
One area of "softening" we have ignored - we dismissed TV (correctly) as a "vast wasteland" so we turned it off and ceded it to the Conservatives who are too happy to seize its prevalence among their constituents to shape their views and perceptions.
The advent of the internet might make this separation much worse between net users and TV watchers.
Criticism of popular TV culture and denounciation of Fox News is NOT going make its viewers turn it off, it's going to make its viewers RESENT the critics as elitist and condescending.
Another area of "softening" and insidious influence is Religion. Again, we have ceded this ground.
Don't confuse the Medium with the Message - both TV and Religion are prevalent in other countries like Canada, Europe and Cuba, but their influence on their respective societies are much different.
May 28, 2008 1:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was wondering if Perlstein could comment on "Time of Illusion" by Jonathan Schell is a great book on the Nixon era, written closer to the time which is both a plus and a minus.
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Illusion-Jonathan-Schell/dp/0394722175
or
B&N:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=9780394722177&ourl=The%2DTime%2Dof%2DIllusion%2DAn%2DHistorical%2Dand%2DReflective%2DAccount%2Dof%2Dthe%2DNixon%2DEra%2FJonathan%2DSchell
May 28, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I reflect on some of these comments here:
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/taser-tuesday
"Time of Illusion" is the best book on the Nixon presidency--amazingly compact and insightful. I thoroughly relied on it for NIXONLAND.
May 28, 2008 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
And Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man is the best book on Nixon, himself.
May 28, 2008 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have to wonder how much of the misconception that liberals are uninterested in studying the conservative movement is simple projection. Conservative writers seem to have little interest in the progressive movement other than as a target of mockery and a source of straw men, and in a number of other areas have seemed to work on the assumption that the other side has similar motivations to their own, without concern for whether there's any evidence to support that assumption.
The other clue, it seems to me, is Hemmingway's reference to "liberal" historians. The attempts by Horowitz and others to perpetuate the "leftist academia" meme have created a definition of "conservative" academic that is not based on doing work about conservatism, or personally being a conservative, but on doing work that reaches the conclusion that the conservative point of view is right. Thus "liberal historians" include anyone who isn't actively pro-conservative, and an environment of honest academic inquiry will inevitably be judged "leftist" according to this anti-intellectual definition.
May 28, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Awesome Rick. This is fascinating stuff. Clearly they've never been to TBA or a Democracy Alliance conference. (probably just as well) But analyzing the conservative movement is more than just the signal intellectual project - responding to it has become something of a cottage industry. My wife and I are both full-time activists now, and we joke that progressivism is the only growth industry in the US right now.
Seriously thouhg: how could they possibly have missed my backwater blog posts, like this one:
http://speakoutca.org/archives/2006/06/foundations_iii.php
which is currently the #1 google hit for "progressive response to russell kirk"?!!
Maybe they feel this way because they never hear our candidates above a certain level say anything remotely progressive. We're still All Tax Relief All The Time due to the lousy advice our candidates are getting from the Greenberg Quinlan types. The slow boring of hard boards continues.
May 28, 2008 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great entry and subtle detailed analysis about legit. "conservative" desirtes of families for safe streets, parks, homes etc. on the one hand and real racism on the other.
fyi: I knew Cowan peripherally from Voice and inter-marriage circles. Good man and family.
Appreciate your acknowledging "Time of Illusion."
Peace & Health
May 29, 2008 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Well; short of continuing to send African-American children to rat infested schools to study out of 20 year old textbooks -- a violation of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education for which the federal courts were constitutionally required to fashion a remedy -- what other remedy, in your view, should those courts have adopted?"
Well, I think it's pretty obvious: fund the schools and fix the problem, but I guess someone didn't want to have to pay for that.
May 29, 2008 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've been throwing around a Kevin Phillips quote from "Nixon's Southern Strategy: 'It's all in the Charts', a 1970 NYT article, so I decided to go back and read the article itself. Two quotes relevant to this discussion:
On Kevin Phillips:
Kevin Phillips on the left:
Both the condescension and the condescension myth in the making.
May 29, 2008 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink