Liberals Have No WMD and Were Not Involved in 9/11

A while ago, in a post by Von about perceived "attacks" on Christians' rights to celebrate Christmas in the public sphere, longtime reader Roxanne asked

Can anyone point to the source of this new persecution complex? Are there entities feeding it? How do they benefit from feeding it?

Along with other folks on that thread, I tried to answer the question from what I've observed:

I've speculated on this in the past and think, from experiencing it in my family, it stems from one source, for three reasons. The source is the fundamentalist Christian leadership---from the national figures down to your local ministers.

The first reason is actually close to what they claim (there's a grain of truth in most closely held convictions): political correctness has altered the landscape, and they (white, Christian, middle-to-upper class) are no longer the unquestioned top of the food chain in the US(they're still the top, but they're now openly questioned). The second reason is this helps them (the leaders) rally their congregations, puts them in a fighting mood.

The third reason pertains particularly to fundamentalists, whose arguments crumble when confronted with the logic they're more frequently encountering now that they're being openly questioned (e.g., why is gay sex an abomination when eating shell fish is apparently not any longer), and so they retreat into this "victim" pose as a defense.

As I laid (lay?) in bed last night continuing to think about Frist's upcoming appearance with fundamentalist heavyweights calling the filibustering of judicial nominees an act "against people of faith" (yes, I get stuck on things), it occurred to me that reason 2 is much more insidious than I had thought at first and that it's not just the fundamentalist Christian leadership doing it. From the Christian leadership, to the talk show hacks (think mostly O'Reilly here), to now our national government, rightwing extremists have found it very useful to declare they are "under attack."

Thinking about this led me to recall that Goering quote that was popping up everywhere when Iraq was still hot:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

And then, in my sleepy stupor, it occurred to me: they're waging a war. I mean we talk about the "culture wars" all the time, but I hadn't thought about just how much that metaphor might ring true. Telling the faithful among the religious right they are "under attack" is as calculated and cynical a move as the kind Goering describes. So before all this goes down the same path we went with Iraq, I'd like to declare up front for the religious right (and I'm willing to submit to UN inspectors or any other sort of investigation to prove it): Liberals do not possess weapons of mass destruction, and we had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. So don't let yourselves be worked up into a frenzy and dragged along into the sorts of fights that you would have the better sense to avoid if left to your own devices. Liberals are not attacking your faith. Liberals believe all Americans should be free to worship (or not) as they set fit, so long as it doesn't impinge on anyone else's freedom to do the same. Don't let yourselves be used.

Comments

[DaveC]

Ahem,
First the "Pope is a Nazi" thread, now "Frist is Goering".

Oh dear me.

Are you sure the liberals aren't attacking?

LOOK OUT!!! DUCK!!!

That was close. Another liberal came THAT CLOSE.

[postit]

DaveC

Frist isn't being compared to Goering, that accolade belongs to leaders of the religious right, Dobson, Robertson et al, Frist is merely another opportunist willing to grab the tiger by the tail.

[CharleyCarp]

But Edward, we have the most potent WMD ever devised: rationality. Even though it almost never destroys faith altogether, it often destroys blind faith, especially blind faith of the kind sought by fundamentalist leaders. (Although I think the coming nuclear war in the Senate is worth the fighting, from my side, I think that ultimately the other side of it is not going to win here. No matter the wacky personal opinions Justices Owens and Brown have expressed, and the damage they'll cause at the margins to the rights of specific individual litigants, neither they nor any other nominees at issue are ever going to vote to roll back rationality).

As for our connection to 911, there was an initial attempt to pin it on us from the fringe. The greatest service the President has ever rendered, in my opinion, was quickly and successfully channelling this emotion towards 'the other.' I remain convinced that had Gore been in office, not only would he have been impeached, but the crazy people out on the fringe (I repeat, so that none of the regulars here will think that I am even thinking of them) would still be pushing this narrative.

[CharleyCarp]

And yes, I'll say it directly: people who think that God allowed NYC to be attacked because of the extent of sin there (and elsewhere in the US) are crazy. This is an attack on such people, and if they feel that their world view is threatened, and/or their ability to pass this view to their children without contradiction from someone who doesn't agree with them, well I guess I'm just not that sorry . . .

[John Thullen]

So, I'm reading this post, Edward, and this quote by Goering keeps pinballing around in my head, and I'm thinking I shouldn't go there on Obsidian Wings, and then I get to .... the Goering quote.

Before anyone objects, let's give credit to Goering. Despite his evident lack of charm, he had thought things out and knew precisely what he was doing and why. Thus, I believe (rather religiously, if you don't mind) elements of the Dobson folks Edward is talking about know precisely what they are doing and why ...

Yes, it is a war. Edward reminds me of my father-in-law. A crewman on 32 missions over Europe in World War II, he was standing somewhere in the middle of the fuselage when some shrapnel opened up the metal in the floor like a flower, and a white-hot piece of ack-ack went two inches from his face and out the top of the plane. He thought to himself: "Those b------- are really trying to kill ME!"

I love shellfish. Those who seek to discriminate, demonize, and defund me in the public square will find themselves in a guerrilla war, and I will use W.M.D. in that fight. I will not impinge on anyone's faith, but if my love for mussels, clams and oysters causes me to lose my job. lose my home, and prevents me from marrying someone with a similar love, impingement will be the least of Dobson's worries. Further, do not deliberately infect the bays where my food source lives with the pollution that causes hepatitus, and don't prevent the government from researching cures for hepatitus, or I will drain the ocean.

Those of you who don't care for shellfish, but have a live and let live point-of-view and enjoy your flounder, your trout, your northern pike, and especially those of you who like your crawdaddies, don't be lulled into thinking Goering isn't talking about you, too. Shellfish-lovers are just the initial type of liberal menace these folks are attempting to eradicate from the constitutional scene.

Then there are taxes, the hated lobster on the list and the ultimate goal.

[DaveC]

The WTC wasn't attacked because it is Sodom and Gommorah revisited. More crazy people think that Mossad did it than think that it was some sort of divine punishment.

But look, the attack on shellfish is more likely to come from the left than the right. I mean, look, New York has banned smoking in bars. Sodom, indeed!
But it's only to protect the children.

My fear is that next they, the ones that act in our best interests, will proscribe the sale and consumption of Slim Jims before noon. After all, Slim Jims have no place on the new nutritional polyhedron.

I'm just saying, they'll take my morning Slime Jim from me when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

[DaveC]

Sorry, Slim Jim, not Slime Jim.

Preview is your friend.

[Edward]

First the "Pope is a Nazi" thread, now "Frist is Goering".

Been talked down from that ledge, DaveC?

John...brutally accurate parody. ;-(

[wmr]

It has always been easier to arouse fear than to allay it. Hate is simpler than love; distrust, than trust.

These are all short-term strategies which natural selection has saddled us with. It is part of human nature--original sin, if you will--and we must struggle against it.

Being civilized is a moral choice.

[DaveC]

Been talked down from that ledge, DaveC?

Edward_, darn it, you ARE attacking, and with your hallowed position here at ObWi you're like some teacher's pet smugly sitting in the front row.

Just wait till the schoolmarm is out of the room.

Spitball? I didn't see any spitball.

[Edward]

Edward_, darn it, you ARE attacking

I don't see how. Certainly not in the way you're suggesting I am. I did not compare Goering to Frist. I used something Goering noted to explain what Frist is doing...very big difference.

[Edward]

Just wait till the schoolmarm is out of the room.

But I AM the schoolmarm.

Besides, I reject your characterization of what I'm doing here. Your caricature reminds me of that infamous Truman quip: I never did give anybody hell. I just told them the truth and they thought it was hell.

[DaveC]

Too late now.

Meet me behind the Walmart at 2:00 and we'll have at it.

Mano a mano.

And don't bring any of your friends with you.

[Jesurgislac]

Spot on, Edward, for all three reasons.

When a privileged group of people (not just people who have always been privileged, but people who belong to a group who have always been privileged and who perceive their situation not as privilege but as right) see their privileges being questioned - being identified as privilege, not as right - their response can get very vicious. We see this in all sorts of situations, because the privileged group are still privileged - they still have access to all the power and immunity that their privilege gives. They have no reason to temper their response: they are striking out at a group of people with less privilege, and expect to do so with impunity.

The offense to which they are responding is not yet any loss of privilege, but the fact that their privilege is no longer regarded as a right.

[John Thullen]

Edward: My parodies, like the Bible, have only one absolute, literal interpretation. (I love the phrase "literal interpretation").

When I say, "keep your hands off my scallops", I'm telling Dobson, et al. that there is solidarity between
me and Edward and if war is what he (Dobson) wants, then let it be war. :)!

Dave C: Slime Jims are oyster-based, so I'd keep it to yourself, if I were you. :)!!

[ral]

Here is an uplifting essay on one of the side benifits of rationality: science, specifically the implications of SN1987A.

It has a great picture, too.

[hilzoy]

I think there's something larger lurking behind this. For some reason, lots of people seem to have some huge sense of things they love being threatened. Marriage, values, ordinary people like themselves, what have you. I think it's an essential part of the stories some (note: some) conservatives tell themselves about what they're doing that they are an embattled minority standing up for what's obviously right against an indifferent or, worse, hostile majority, aided by corrupt people in power.

We liberals, in this story, are people who for some reason hate what's good and right so much that we are willing to join its more overt attackers, like Osama bin Laden, and work to undermine it. (Thus the frequent accusations of treason; thus also, I think, the fascination with Ward Churchill, who I really think some conservatives think is saying out loud what, say, Edward and I think in our heart of hearts, but are too cunning to say openly. He's confirmation of something they think they already know about us.) We hate America; we are so dazzled by relativism and political correctness that we blithely announce that America is no better than the USSR under Stalin; and all the while, America is under siege and we are being worse than useless.

Likewise, ordinary people's ordinary marriages are in trouble, and we liberals, blind as usual to what's at stake, sit around saying 'oh, well, NAMBLA has a legitimate point of view', and tearing down the barriers that separate us from utter license (man on dog, man on shellfish, whatever.)

I think we will have a hard time talking to these people unless we get a very clear sense of what, exactly, gives this sense of impending catastrophe and constant threat its plausibility.

[Edward]

Meet me behind the Walmart at 2:00 and we'll have at it.

Mano a mano.

Gladly. But does it have to be WalMart? I mean, even in a fight to the death, can't we maintain some respect for aesthetics...how about behind Bloomingdales?

[DaveC]

Ok Edward_,

Looks like your friends came around with you. I have to go do some errands, maybe later.

We hate America

Glad I got that in writing ;^)

[CharleyCarp]

"The WTC wasn't attacked because it is Sodom and Gommorah revisited. More crazy people think that Mossad did it than think that it was some sort of divine punishment."

No disagreement here. The operative issue, though, is not the relative numbers of people holding one belief or another. It is the proximity of people in either category to (a) those arguing that Christianity is under attack in America, and, more importantly, (b) those contending for influence within American conservatism.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

" I used something Goering noted to explain what Frist is doing...very big difference."

To explain what you think Frist is doing. Also a very big difference and much closer to an attack. If I were to use a Stalin quote about the need to reduce the influence of religion on the people ruled by the state to explain what you what (I thought) you were doing that would also be an attack.

The problem is that you are looking for a recent cause (in the gay marriage debates or something) for a feeling of being attacked that culminated in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. Since then, the some of the religious right decided that if judges were going to be allowed to make stuff up in order to force through their political agendas, it should be their judges that make stuff up instead of yours. Others decided to try to outline a theory or set of theories of jurisprudence that would restrict the ability of judges to make stuff up. This has nothing to do with 9-11.

[hilzoy]

Sebastian: I was just reading the book about Barry Goldwater that all sorts of people have been talking about (maybe only in the left blogs), and one of the interesting things to me was to see exactly the same sense of being under siege in the late 50s and early 60s. I had somehow not realized that my erstwhile neighbor, Robert Welch, thought that Eisenhower -- Eisenhower?? was a traitor, along with lots of other people, and won a large following for saying so.

[Jesurgislac]

Sebastian: for a feeling of being attacked that culminated in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. Since then, the some of the religious right decided that if judges were going to be allowed to make stuff up in order to force through their political agendas

*raised eyebrow*

I believe it was demonstrated in an earlier thread that a person's Constitutional right to privacy was established before Roe vs. Wade, and that having established the Constitutional right to privacy, Roe vs. Wade merely confirmed that women do have a right to privately consult a physician, without interference from State or Federal government.

[ken]

Edward, your innocence is almost cute.

Up until your recent enlightenment were you seriously unaware of the cultural war that conservatives have been waging against American values for decades now?

My epiphany came when Justice Scalia accused his fellow Supreme Court Justices of taking sides in the cultural war A light went on. If Supreme Court Justice was claiming a cultural war was happening, and even keeping score, then who was I to argue the point?

It was then that I fully realized that this 'cultural war' was not just some metaphor to rally voters but a full blown 'war' against our American culture and values. Accepting that they, conservatives, see themselves at war with the rest of us sheds a lot of light upon some of their otherwise inexplicable activities.

We just never took them seriously before and now we have to play catch up.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"I believe it was demonstrated in an earlier thread that a person's Constitutional right to privacy was established before Roe vs. Wade, and that having established the Constitutional right to privacy, Roe vs. Wade merely confirmed that women do have a right to privately consult a physician, without interference from State or Federal government."

Roe v. Wade demonstrated that the alleged links to the cultural tradition of the US which 'justified' going far beyond the text and judicial history of the Constitution were not in fact important. If Griswold had not been disguised by allegedly being rooted in the sanctity of the institution of marriage, that case would probably have been the flash point. The previous cases were all very suspicious stretches. Roe snapped it.

[Edward]

If I were to use a Stalin quote about the need to reduce the influence of religion on the people ruled by the state to explain what you what (I thought) you were doing that would also be an attack.

It would totally depend on how you framed it. I feel I was careful in framing the use of the quote here. At this point, it's been discussed so frequently in the blogosphere, it's become shorthand, IMO.

The problem is that you are looking for a recent cause (in the gay marriage debates or something) for a feeling of being attacked that culminated in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.

I think that argument cuts both ways, though. I've been hearing fundamentalists overtly complain (and in strikingly similar rhetoric) about being "under attack" for the past decade. Maybe they've only just relatively recently settled on a vocabulary, but it strikes me as orchestrated. It's only recently this meme that it all stems from Roe v. Wade has been verbalized. Before then it was prayer in schools, "under God" in the pledge, Christmas decorations in the town square, etc. etc. etc.

If it really does boil down to Roe v. Wade, then why are the red herrings?

[Jesurgislac]

The previous cases were all very suspicious stretches. Roe snapped it.

Because women - in your view - don't have a right to privacy?

[CharleyCarp]

No, Jes, Sebastian is right on the money here about Roe. It was the last in a line beginning with Brown, going through the school prayer, state senates, Miranda, Loving, and others, where the Warren court (and its successor, in the early years) fearlessly invalidated majoritarian positions. Roe is identified as the capstone only because it marks the end of the trend -- and I guess because so many people who agree with the result go around saying it was completely unjustified on the law.

I guess the other thing that makes Roe rankle so much is Casey. Even when you change the composition of the Court very substantially, you don't get rid of the Warren Court's decisions. In fact, you make them immortal: it seems to me that it is better reasoned and supported Casey, not Roe that defines the current state of the law in this field. No matter how hard one wants to argue that Roe is invalid because it doesn't identify the constitutional source for the 3 trimester scheme, the existence of Casey means that no court cares about the argument.

[blah]

This is just another example of the liberal tendency to to use shellfish as a scapegoat.

Why do you hate shellfish?

[CharleyCarp]

When I say right on the money, I mean wrt the effect on conservatives, not wrt its validity.

My point re: Casey, though, I think illustrates why the fundamentalists will never win. Schiavo is an even better example. I'd wager that none of the judges under dispute would have voted differently had they been on the 11th Circuit. For all that Sebastian says that conservatives have decided they may as well have judges who just make it up in their favor, this isn't really their position, either explicitly or in the application. Judge Pryor wasn't willing to make up a constitutional right for the Schindlers, and neither will anyone else that will get to the appellate level in this administration. The Pledge case only went the way it did on a procedural argument, but a win -- which would have been based on the notion that "under God" is a completely meaningless phrase -- wouldn't have been any better.

Put another way: the best that can happen is a court that goes the way rational conservatives -- the Sebastians -- like. The result that the radicals want will never be attained. The extent to which the radicals end up turning on the Sebastians is open for speculation. I think so long as there are liberals to hate, the Sebastians are safe.

[Anarch]

This is, uh, longer than I'd intended. Sorry.

hilzoy: we are so dazzled by relativism and political correctness that we blithely announce that America is no better than the USSR under Stalin...

First, there are people on the left who compare modern America to the USSR under Stalin, or Germany under Hitler. Those people need to be shot.

Second, conservative claims to the contrary, it's not that we've been dazzled relativism and political correctness. [At least, it hasn't been true for years, if ever.] The same problem is endemic, mutatis mutandis, on the right, or in the center, or on whatever four-sided triangular point the libertarians are currently occupying. It's that bloody "American exceptionalism" that insists on portraying everything -- and I mean everything -- as Larger Than Life, More Real Than Real, and comparable to everything in history. Our sorrows are deeper, our joys more profound, our travails more harsh and our righteousness more pure than any other people's in history, all bloody evidence to the contrary, and any real-life event can and will be pillaged in this cause. Hence Bush=Hitler, the Christians are being persecuted like in Rome, 9/11 killed more people than any other attack in history, US foreign policy is no better than Soviet dominion, blah di f***ity blah. There's a core of truth in all of these things, but it's a core so blown out of all proportion as to render the speaker incompetent and the nation retarded.

Not that I'm bitter about having to deal with this my whole. F***ing. Life. or anything.

and one of the interesting things to me was to see exactly the same sense of being under siege in the late 50s and early 60s.

That's the sense I got from my grandparents. Although in their case, being missionaries in Communist China, they had a reason.* I think the real font of this sense of siege was what we popularly call The 60s -- the dramatic social upheaval which upended the previous social order -- and the reactionary neo-traditionalist movement it spawned. Crudely, it's the people who got scared by the hippies who started this movement and I think Jes is spot on that part of what makes them feel besieged is the fact that their position of, let's be blunt, hegemony in American politics is no longer considered a right or even natural state. See more below.

* Interestingly, I think they had much less of feeling of oppression when they came back to the US because they knew what real oppression was like. My grandmother, for example, was never concerned that her religion was under assault, only that there were a lot of people who had yet to be saved. Her example is one of the reasons I have such a hard time describing the particular edge on modern fundamentalist Christianity that I find so pernicious, because the usual descriptors -- fundamentalist, evangelical, etc. -- all applied to my grandmother and yet her particular religion was not in any way threatening to me or mine.

Jes: The offense to which they are responding is not yet any loss of privilege, but the fact that their privilege is no longer regarded as a right.

That's part of it, yes, but only part. I think the real origin here is a combination of two gut-crushing blows to the psyche of a large swathe of people (and a third for one large demographic), if you'll pardon the mixing of my metaphors. The first is as you've described: the privileges once enjoyed by the white Christian (and specifically white Protestant) majority have eroded and been reduced to the point where, although they are still a privileged majority, they are far enough away from where they once were to feel unfairly reduced.

The second is a little more complicated and a little more central to the American experience over the past 60-odd years. The US has fundamentally been an insular polity; it's part of our essential nature.** We're a big enough nation that we can get away with this -- like Rome or, more pointedly, like China -- and so we tend to view all experiences through a peculiarly American-tinted lens. This parochialism was particularly profound during the 50s, I think, when for a while our American Exceptionalism (see above) was actually the truth: we really were richer, bigger, more powerful and arguably even more righteous -- I can try to formulate a more precise version of this if people care, but for now let's just leave it as something of a rhetorical flourish -- than any other nation on the planet.

Then came the 60s. And the wheels fell off.

What was subsequently revealed was that that Golden Age was something of a sham. Yes, we were great, but we had serious, serious problems. Race relations, the stifling religious conformity, immigration problems, a whole slew of new issues (e.g. nuclear annihilation) that we'd never had to deal with... this cracked our world-view as never before. The end result was a modern world that looks so different from the old, safe world where we never had to deal with problems like race, sex, economic woes or the darker side of our supposed moral purity. It's been one long, slow slide downhill from Utopia and I think that the religious neo-traditionalists were really just reactionaries against this inevitable perceived degradation. To be cruelly cynical about it, their illusions were shattered and instead of opening themselves up to the real world, they decided to cower within the shards of their broken dreams and recreate their memories of old.

[That applies only to the older generation, incidentally, I'd guess those who were born in the 30s. The younger generations, having been raised in this neo-tradition, have an entirely different mindset.]

There's third, rather ugly, strain that's tied into this and I have to phrase the following very delicately; please bear with me. I think, he says with great trepidation, a central core of this trend is the sense of victimization in the South, particularly as a legacy of the civil rights movement. In some cases that manifests (or rather, continues to manifest) as outright racism but my understanding is that that's few(er) and furth(er?) between.*** Rather, the way this seems to have been adopted into part of the Southern psyche is this: there's a sense that the civil rights movement a) would have happened of its own accord (i.e. we're not racist!) but b) it was something that was unfairly forced upon them by those damnyankees. Since it's no longer acceptable to feel that way, however, it seems to me that those feelings of oppression -- of having someone else's morality crammed down one's throat by the force of the government -- have sublimated into different arenas, namely religion and politics.

The upshot is that along with perfectly legitimate forms of Southern pride -- f'rex, noting that the best barbeque is found in the South, which it damn well is -- there's a particularly unpleasant form of Southern parochialism that crops up every four years in election season. Presidential hopefuls have to keep one eye fixed far firmer on the South than any other geographic block because they're much pricklier and much more ornery about "being respected".**** That residual anger has, I think, taken root in many religious traditions down south and I think it's now manifesting itself as a resistance against Federal interference in other traditions or "peculiar institutions". Every court decision striking down school prayer, then, is perceived as more than merely a separation of church and state; it's a salvo in the ongoing war for "being respected" and an echoed reminder of the last time the Federal government tried to tell them how to live their lives.

[That feeling, btw, has now been exported all over the country so it's no longer uniquely Southern... but I'd be very interested indeed to chart the geographic course of the modern revival movement from about 1955 to the present day.]

There's a lot more to this of course -- the way that religious leaders have been fanning the flames of perceived oppression, America's long history of religious revivals and hatred of governmental meddling, the unholy alliance between the Religious Right and various corporate endeavours, etc. -- but that'll have to wait for another time.

** This is, I think, part of what makes American foreign policy in South America so damn complicated: it's insular expansionism. Try to wrap your head around that one for a while.

*** Although, not necessarily. I've talked to a couple of black Southerners from small towns who tell me that racism is alive and well, just manifesting differently. Those were some serious disturbing conversations, let me tell you.

**** Try telling a Southerner to stop thinking like a Southerner and start thinking like an American. Go on. I dare ya.

[Anarch]

Here is an uplifting essay on one of the side benifits of rationality: science, specifically the implications of SN1987A.

Great link, ral. Thanks.

[chuchundra]

There's something else here and I'm surprised that I've rarely heard it mentioned.

The fundamental irony of modern politics in the United States is that the easiest and surest path to political power is to be a victim. If you want a better seat at the table and louder voice in the conversation, it's a much easier task if you can successfully claim that your particular interest group is abused, downtrodden and discriminated against.

The Christian Right, no fools they, understand this dynamic all too well and they play the game. Never mind that followers of Jesus make up over 4/5ths of our country and claiming that the few percent of us who don't believe in a great sky father are horribly oppressing the eighty odd percent of the nation that does is ludicrious, they're playing the game and they're playing it well.

[blah]

"Try telling a Southerner to stop thinking like a Southerner and start thinking like an American. Go on. I dare ya."

Try telling a _________ to stop thinking like a _________ and start thinking like an American. Go on. I dare ya.

[crionna]

noting that the best barbeque is found in the South, which it damn well is

Ok, NOW I'm ticked. Unless you're claiming that KS/MO are in the South due to MO's joining the Confederacy, the best BBQ is most certainly not found among the mustard using Carolinians or the beef (beef fer gosh-sakes) spare ribs eating Texans.

[Andrew Reeves]

I wonder if the bubbling sense of anger that we see in fundamentalist Xianity will ease off once the last generation for which Xianity was the default assumption dies out. After all I think that what drives a good part of the rage seen right now is that there are a lot of people in whose living memory Christianity and (most of) it's sexual baggage were the default assumption.

Oh, and Anarch, all I have to say about your entry is: Best. Comment. Ever.

[Anarch]

blah: Try telling a _________ to stop thinking like a _________ and start thinking like an American. Go on. I dare ya.

Done it at least three times as a matter of experiment. [With my friends, natch; I'm not stupid.] Got away with it for West Coasters/Californians, Midwesterners (Wisconsinians to be precise) and New Yorkers.* Didn't even come close to trying it with my Southern friends.

If your experiences are different, though, please feel free to expound; this is all at the level of anecdotal data.

* To be precise, I asserted that the parochialism of the given region was foolishly and inexplicably preventing them from supporting the national good on a particular issue. [See above re not stupid.] For the most part, those with whom I raised this point recognized the validity of the construction and frequently the validity of the argument. As I said, I didn't even dare broach it with my Southern friends; that "being respected" quote I used in my lengthy post was accompanied in context by a glare of such furious Southern pride (by a hippie liberal Southern lesbian, believe it or not) that for me to even entertain that construction was a matter of utmost folly. The best I've ever managed was to get one of my Southern friends to acknowledge that the South has been heavily over-represented in Presidential campaigns relative to the other major geographic blocks (Midwest, West Coast, Northeast/East Coast) since the '50s, and that took nearly all my reserves of tact and diplomacy.

[Prior to that it was the Midwest, and specifically Ohio, that was the kingmaker.]

crionna: Ok, NOW I'm ticked. Unless you're claiming that KS/MO are in the South due to MO's joining the Confederacy, the best BBQ is most certainly not found among the mustard using Carolinians or the beef (beef fer gosh-sakes) spare ribs eating Texans.

I do generally consider MO to be in the south for the purposes of BBQ. [KC slides in on a technicality; KS I generally ignore.] That said, the best BBQ I've ever had was in North Carolina. The brisket, which I rarely ever eat, was to die for and the rest was amazing too. I'm a huge fan of Texan pork ribs, when they bother to extract their heads from their asses and cook the meat God intended for BBQ (see? we're more alike than different!), but I haven't ever had ribs of the same ethereal quality as the other stuff I had at that NC BBQ shack. There are some mighty fine BBQ restaurants around town, though, so I guess I'll have to make do.

[In fact... I think I know what's for dinner tonight!]

This will doubtless all change when I finally get the money and time to make the Pilgrimage of BBQ -- yes, it still needs a snappy title but I've got plenty of time -- and hit every major BBQ center in these great United States.

[NeoDude]

The social conservatives will not get the judges they really want. However, the wealthy right-wing elite who use these theocrats, will and have been getting the judges they want.

[dmbeaster]

Very interesting post and thread with too much to comment on.

Re "Culture War" -- yes, the term is not being used metaphorically by the radical right; liberals should stop acting like they have been sneak attacked a la Pearl Harbor, and take them at their literal word. Expect the normal deprivations that flow from an all-out struggle unjustly initiated by an opponent, and expect to have to fight back with equal vigor in order to survive.
_______________

As for the alleged conservative reaction to Roe v. Wade and its predecessors, can the argument at least start from factual premises instead of imaginary ones?

These decisions were equally the creation of Republicans in the tradition of a now-dead conservatism -- the protection of the individual from an overreaching government.

Warren was a Republican, and all of his "liberal" opinions derived from a conservative whose life experience was as a district attorney and a Republican governor.

Blackman, who wrote Roe v. Wade, was a Repulican appointed by Nixon.

The Constitutional "right to privacy" was not something invented from thin and alleged non-Constitutional air. It is solidly grounded in an age-old Constitutional debate about the fundamental rights of citizens that the government may not impinge.

The fact that it is not specifically enumerated? That is why the Ninth Amendment was added -- to make it explicitly clear that the people retain other fundamental rights to life, liberty and property even if not explicitly enumerated. The Sebastian argument to the contrary just ignores the history of the drafting of the Bill of Rights and the drafting of the Constitution. The founders were worried that the drafting of a list of rights would be an implied negative against other rights, and therefore made it clear that this argument (no right if not explicitly enumerated) had no validity.

The Supreme Court decided that privacy was a fundamental although not specifically enumerated right implicit in the constitutional guarantees of life, liberty and property (from the 14th amendment). If you want to disagree, then please start from the correct point, and stop making up bogus arguents about how the constitution allegedly makes no provision for such rights, when it clearly does.

The debate is properly over what are fundamental rights -- not whether or not the constitutional law contemplates such additional rights. Whether or not privacy is such a fundamental right is the argument, which seems settled except for the current thinking that falsely argues that the right has no constitutional basis. Instead, the only proper counter-argument would be that the protection of the citizens' rights to life, liberty and property do not include privacy as a component right. I would like to see current conservatives defend that proposition, which would be the proper constitutional counter-argument; i.e, that privacy rights exist solely to the extent that the legislature opts to protect such rights, and if not, then the legislature may enact any provision that invades privacy.

Maybe the reason why privacy rights had to be developed recently was that the government invasion of privacy is a recent trend.

Equally false is the notion that Roe v. Wade is not founded in consitutional law because of its reference to the trimester approach. This ignores the countless consitutional decisions that have developed a large body of common law to flesh out the bare bones of constitutional provisions. For example, free speech rights includes a host of "time, place and manner" provisions that are not based in any constitutional language. They are instead adaptations of the general law to specific circumstances -- the trimester approach in Roe v. Wade is no different and also no more suspect.

[NeoDude]

And one more thing.

The South got off easy, after the Civil War. Germany had to purge the NAZIs after they loss. It was the only way they were going to grow. It was a total war, so it was essential that this happen. And if we had a total war with Iraq, I suspect it would have happened to the Ba'athist.

The South should have purged it's "Confederate" culture. The Confederate flag should have been treated like the NAZI flag. It sounds cruel, but the Southern hatred that Confederate culture encourages, was allowed to grow and fester.

[DaveC]

The South got off easy, after the Civil War.

That's total nonsense. The Civil War was so, so totally, Total War. US Grant was known as "Unconditonal Surrender" Grant. I also seem to remember something about Sherman.

Sheesh.

[NeoDude]

How many Confederate leaders were sent to the gallows for their crimes?

Treason against the United States and the holocaust called slavery?

[NeoDude]

Imagine if the US treated the NAZIs like the North treated the South.

The NAZI flag would be traeted as a "rebel" symbol. Jim Crow being enforced by a German KKK.

Jews being promised stuff, only to have it stripped away to calm NAZI culture.

[xanax]

Anarch: "the Pilgrimage of BBQ -- yes, it still needs a snappy title"

The "Brother Can Ya Spare A Rib" tour?

[Phillip J. Birmingham]

the best BBQ is most certainly not found among the mustard using Carolinians or the beef (beef fer gosh-sakes) spare ribs eating Texans.

Certainly not!

Everybody knows the best BBQ is found in the area around Memphis!

[Edward]

Oh, and Anarch, all I have to say about your entry is: Best. Comment. Ever.

Must agree...a spectacular comment.

[bob mcmanus]

Everybody, right or left, blaming or giving credit to us poor hippies for everything good and bad in today's America could stand a a little study of the period, oh, 1875-1925.

Emma Goldman, free love, contraception;Billy Sunday, KKK in Indiana,prohibition,Jim Crow;urbanization and industrialization, unionization, trusts, cartels; almost universal use of opium in patent medicine,anti-catholic legislation nation-wide,consumer credit,dime novels sensationalist newspapers....filthy impressionism crossing the ocean to infect our painters.

Could our present conservatives do any worse than prohibition and Jim Crow? (Any Republicans who would like say Jim Crow had nothing to do with "conservatism", well, it wasn't a really left-wing policy.) In 1875 the US Navy approached 50% black; by 1900 it was near zero. They won as gov't policy.

Anarch, good comments with maybe a short or shallow perspective. Shallowist is say this is about judicial activism or civil rights. Jeez. I don't know if it is cyclical or if it is a constant conflict in the American psyche or geography; or if it is even uniquely American. I do know it ain't all that rational on either side.

[ral]

Well put, dmbeaster (and Anarch too). This argument prodded me into some reading. I strongly recommend Justice Brandeis' dissent in Olmstead v. United States

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone-the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect, that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Insisting that there's no right to privacy in the Constitution is just incorrect. The "right to be let alone" is not an invention of activist judges. It is a fundamental principle that, like many of the idealistic words of the founding documents, has taken a long time to come to fruition.

I want to share one more quote from that dissent, not exactly on topic, but with huge relevance today and connected to many other threads I have read:

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

[Edward]

To explain what you think Frist is doing. Also a very big difference and much closer to an attack.

All right...let's hash this out. You're right. I believe that Frist is very consciously and very cyncially aligning himself with Dobson and Perkins' claim that the Democrats fillibustering to stop judicial nominees are doing so as an act "against people of faith."

Do you suggest he's not?

[blah]

Anarch: "If your experiences are different..." - No experience to speak of, I just such a statement as implying that the targets way of thinking is unAmerican, which in general seems like a bad idea.

dmbeaster: It could be argued that "fundamental rights" are more in the vein of ideological foundations that have to be contextualized in order to be solidified via laws. From this view, it could argued that the Bill of Rights creates rights that are absolute (ie. "Congress shall make no law" means "Congress shall make NO law), and that the 9th Amendment recognizes that citizens have other rights, but those rights are subject to reasonable restrictions. However, I do realize that this is not the commonly accepted perspective and isn't particularly pragmatic. If I were to ever argue that the Constitution doesn't include a right to privacy, it would only be in the sense that "privacy" is a concept too vague and subjective to be enshrined in law, where as say the 4th Amendment established a right to privacy regarding unreasonable searches or Griswold established a right to marital privacy.

NeoDude: I'm hesitant to say that "The South got off easy" given the period of Reconstruction.

[DaveC]

The fundamental irony of modern politics in the United States is that the easiest and surest path to political power is to be a victim.

Damn straight.

The Christian Right, no fools they, understand this dynamic all too well and they play the game.

Agreed, although I would have ended the sentence with the word "too".

I've got to disagree with part of Anarch's post:
the privileges once enjoyed by the white Christian (and specifically white Protestant) majority have eroded and been reduced to the point where, although they are still a privileged majority, they are far enough away from where they once were to feel unfairly reduced.

You see, back in the good old days,a large number of this "privileged majority" lived in circumstances like this.

Here is the thumbnail gallery. I highly recommend reading the book, as well.

Well, it looks like I played the victim card, too. But my kinfolk weren't Southerners. They were hillbillies.

(That distinction may be lost on some of y'all.)

This comment looks too grim and serious, but I wouldn't want to be juvenile and say something like:

hilzoy and Ward Churchill sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G

You see, I'm above that sort of thing.

[Edward]

Well, it looks like I played the victim card, too. But my kinfolk weren't Southerners. They were hillbillies.

Uh.oh.

So were mine, and I totally get the need to make that distinction. Hillbillies...good. Southerners...twisted.

In a good, Flannery O'Connor way, of course.

[bob mcmanus]

You know , just study the religious, social, and constitutional justifications for the Jim Crow legislation of the late 19th century. They had plenty.
Or study Plessy vs Ferguson, or the long civil rights debates.

4th amendment,9th amendment,Griswald,Lochner,originalism,strict construction,realism,whatever. You want outcomes, I want outcomes, I am about thru arguing or even listening.

[blah]

bob mcmanus:"Any Republicans who would like say Jim Crow had nothing to do with "conservatism", well, it wasn't a really left-wing policy." It may involve the idea that American history regarding slavery and civil rights undermines the liberal/left/Democrat vs. conservative/right/Republican dichotomy.

[Edward]

filthy impressionism crossing the ocean to infect our painters.

heh.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Anarch's comment strikes me as controversial only so far as few are willing to openly say it. But a lot of people (inc. me) believe they see the bare outlines of a battle between sectional conceptions of America in recent political circs. I think this is what's in back of a fair bit of the anger against the DLC and TNR - those two organizations seem strangely committed to winning the South.

If you're a Dem, accept that the South is not coming back. Note happily that many of our leaders (LBJ, MLK, Clinton, Gore, Edwards, (and soon) Ford, etc.) come from the South, and then forget 'em. Let's shore up our votes in the North and fight for the West and Mid-West. Hell, play on the sectionalism - instead of "Real America" let's argue about whether the Mid- and South- West would rather end up looking like the South or the North, whether it's worse to have been against the Vietnam war or against one Union under God.

Sad situation, but there it is. Wishing the lines weren't drawn 40 years ago, and then redrawn again 20 years ago, isn't going to get it done.

[CharleyCarp]

I'm sorry Anarch, but I think ral's contributions on this very thread edge yours for best comment. And I think the quantity of CSA paraphenalia at the Jesse James museum in Liberty MO (just north of KC) disposes of the question: whatever it was in 1865, KC is southern now. (Kind of like the Butternut sections of OH and IN).

dm: I agree with you on Roe, but it's an article of faith among many conservatives that Roe was not only wrongly decided, but decided in bad faith. They cannot be moved off this position.

Finally, bob, of course it's part of a recurring pattern, a spiral rather than a cycle. Measured against the past, most things don't look so bad: I mean what can the Admin do that would have us worse off than the millions of years our ancestros lived on the African savannah, eating carrion? (Can't you just see the ads??). The question, of course, is how we're doing as opposed to how we could or should be doing. How's the construction of Winthrop's city on a hill going. And WRT the topic at hand, do we really need to relearn the lessons of Roger Williams? Apparently we do.

[NeoDude]

I don't think the Confederate elite that agitated for war and the defense of slavery met them same end that the NAZI elite had.

[CharleyCarp]

Southerners & Hillbillies:

Seems to me that H culture has pretty much thrown in its lot with S culture. Only after 1955.

[Edward]

Seems to me that H culture has pretty much thrown in its lot with S culture.

yeah...ask the Southerners if they're welcome though.

[John Thullen]

This thread is making me hungry, said the Walrus as he downed another mollusk.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"Maybe they've only just relatively recently settled on a vocabulary, but it strikes me as orchestrated. It's only recently this meme that it all stems from Roe v. Wade has been verbalized."

This just suggests to me that you haven't been attentive to the issue very long. Roe has been one of the central complaints of the Christian Right for my entire lifetime.

"If it really does boil down to Roe v. Wade, then why are the red herrings?"

Why in the world is this an either/or thing when you analyze it? To the Christian Right Roe is merely the best example of judges trying to circumvent the will of the people by making up crap about the Constitution, not the only example. Why couldn't people be mad about Roe AND annoyed with the school prayer decisions AND frustrated with the fight about "under God" AND pissed when some members of the Supreme Court pretend that the Constitution outlaws the death penalty. Why would one of those be a red herring? Couldn't they all be evidence that the Court is out of control? Roe is just one of the worst symptoms of the underlying problem. It was the symptom that made a lot of people start to pay attention. It was like the 102 degree fever that makes you realize that you had some weird aches and have been ignoring an annoying intestinal cramping for months and suddenly you realize "Hey, I'm really sick here, what the hell is going on?"

[bob mcmanus]

"idea that American history regarding slavery and civil rights undermines the blahblablah"

Nah. You want to say that Richard Russell and Strom Thurmond and Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi are/were all Democrats and the same, feel free, nobody takes that seriously anymore. You want to say Edward Brooke and Jacob Javits were Republicans just like today's Republicans, everybody will laugh at that also. The accidents of geography & history confuse very few.

You want to say conservatism has nothing to do with traditions and local values and social structures and incremental change and is really libertarianism and has been all along since the Egyptians or maybe we get to redefine "conservative" in the late 20th century so that people won't recognize that almost every argument in form and function opposing gay marriage including the "activist judges" arguments looks almost identical to the arguments justifying Jim Crow and opposing integration and in an amazing coincidence are coming from many of the same people in geographical and political orientation....

Then I guess "conservative" can mean whatever you want it mean. I have my own nomenclature.

[SomeCallMeTim]

I'm reluctant to take jurisprudence advice from people who believe in neither the right to trial, the right to counsel (Padilla), or an independent judiciary (DeLay, etc.).

[DaveC]

Looking back to the original inspiration for the post, I almost forgot...

I'd like to give a shout out to all my Jews out there,
Happy Passover !

Although, I have to point out that it has been weeks since Easter. When will y'all get with the program?

Reminder to self to wish 'em a Happy Yom Kippur when that comes around :-)

[bob mcmanus]

"It was the symptom that made a lot of people start to pay attention."

It was an easy target and low lying fruit, even better than Miranda to mobilize with. For I guess I have about 15 more years of "activist judges" deciding Brown and Loving and not overturning the civil rights laws. 15 years before Roe of a level of hate and actual killing while having to grant the Southerners, and the Goldwaters and Bushes the generosity that their opposition to Fair Housing etc was based on patriotism and principle and theories of constitutional interpretation and federalism and never really being allowed to call anybody racist. I got exhausted with all that abstract distraction somewhere around 1970.

And have had 35 more years of it.

[Don Quijote]

ABC7 Chicago - Rep. Hyde reflects on 30 years of office

The veteran republican is also admitting for the first time that the impeachment of Clinton may have been in part political revenge against the democrats for the impeachment proceedings against GOP President Richard Nixon 25 years earlier. *

"Was this pay back?" asked Andy Shaw.

"I can't say it wasn't. But I also thought that the Republican Party should stand for something, and if we walked away from this, no matter how difficult, we could be accused of shirking our duty," said Hyde.

[eb]

Anarch's comment is a good one, except for the part where he advocates executing Billmon.

[NeoDude]

Anarch is male?!

[bob mcmanus]

As we move toward Frist's "constitutional option" in the coming weeks, it is very important to remember history.

That "they...

(Southerners? nobody we know, or related to anyone currently around in any way)"

managed to use constitutional tricks and gobbledygook to keep slavery around for the first 100 years...

and then managed to keep blacks out of restaurants and voting booths....that "poll tax" thingy was really tricky, jurisprudence-wise ... for another 100 years using high-minded constitutional babble...

and now they ( a different "they", utterly different, not never to be confused with the above) having somehow lost control of the courts in the 50s and 60s (darn Ike!), are trying to set up whatever complicated system they use to keep courts conservative for generation after generation. I suspect it has something to do with federal courts interpreting election law and defining what "proper interpretation" means so that only "their" kind of judges can be confirmed, but the first 200 years of American History should tell something about what they have in mind.

[Anarch]

No experience to speak of, I just such a statement as implying that the targets way of thinking is unAmerican, which in general seems like a bad idea.

Ah, then I was unclear: it's not a question of unAmericanness -- a charge that I'm seriously loathe to throw around, having been on the receiving end of it far too often -- but rather of regional v. national priorities. My experience, grossly overgeneralized, has been that Southerners tend to privilege the regional pride of being from the South above the national interest, or at least higher than other geographic regions.* The classic example here is refusing to vote for a candidate who doesn't "respect the South", where the scope of things betokening disrespect gets defined so broadly as to mean something else altogether. You simply don't get that attitude in the other parts of the country; Midwesterners don't freak out about people dissing the "flyover states" -- stupid phrase, btw, and shame on those who use it -- and the Coasters are so used to it that they tend to just shrug it off.

All of that is my experience, however, and should not be taken as binding on anyone or anything.

* Which is not inherently a bad thing -- that's the premise of a confederation, for example -- but it doesn't really work in our modern federal system.

[Nanette]

Regarding Christians and their victim complex, I believe one major component is their scriptural readings.

From what I remember, there are passages that say that in the 'end times' Christians would be persecuted for their beliefs, and weathering that persecution brings something or other benefit. I can't remember it all.

But think... American Christians are probably one of the least persecuted anywhere. No one is telling them to close their churches. No one is shooting them or threatening to shoot them if they don't give up their beliefs. No one is segregating them in Christian ghettos. No one is doing anything, really, besides telling them that they can't take over the country and run it according to just their beliefs.

But because these are, according to them, the 'end times', then they *must* be being persectuted. And since reality is not complying, they just make stuff up.

[DaveC]

Points worth considering:

Many black folks prefer to live in the south, even if Freaknik is no longer celebrated quite the way it used to be.

Many of the bad racial incidents in 20th century occured in the north, such as the Chicago race riots. I even hear tell of some bad things that have happened in Los Angeles. (no link, use your imagination.)

The Republican Party was started in Wisconsin. (So, Anarch, drive up to Ripon and shake your fist up there.)

Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, who by the way abolished slavery, was born in Kentucky.(not the South, I'd call it the Ohio River Valley. People confuse me when they talk about Hoosiers being southerners and all that.)

Condeleeza Rice, the first black woman president if I have my way, was born and raised in Alabama.

[wmr]

It takes two to tango, but only one to start a fight.

[Anarch]

A potpourri of responses...

NeoDude: The South got off easy, after the Civil War.

The Southern government did, I agree. The Southerners as a whole maybe did, maybe didn't; there was, as DaveC pointed out, a horrific toll taken on a large number of Southerners. The problem, IMO -- and to be fair, this isn't exactly an original thought -- was that Reconstruction was first botched, then abandoned in the deal of 1876 (which also marks the death of the Party Of Lincoln in my book).

Actually, the real problem, IMO, was that the racism in the South ran deeper than anyone had expected, as did wounded Southern pride*, and no-one was prepared for the enormity of the undertaking. Changing a culture, changing a societal noosphere, by sheer force of will -- and force of arms when necessary -- is a generational task and not one that can be done by throwing a bunch of do-gooders into the mix for a couple of years and hoping for the best. The deal of 1876 essentially froze the South's "healing" for 80 years or so, in fact allowing a recidivist reinterpretation of the past to drag the process back even further, which has seriously screwed with the whole matter.

[Aside: I'm talking about the South's racism here only because of the electoral block theory I'm espousing. There were equally virulent strains of racism elsewhere, many of which are alive and well today, but I'm afraid I don't have the background to speak to the more general issue.]

* See also Germany post-WWI. Losing the war doesn't necessarily mean giving up the fight.

bob mcmanus: Everybody, right or left, blaming or giving credit to us poor hippies for everything good and bad in today's America could stand a a little study of the period, oh, 1875-1925.

Part of American Exceptionalism is a lack of historical context. That said, there was indeed an era of religious revivalism concomitant with the rise of the flappers and the Jazz Age and all the rest of that. The Scopes Monkey trial was in 1925; Father Coughlin was broadcasting in the 1930s*; the same sense of beleaguerment and oppression was there.

As far as reactions? The modern Prohibition is probably the ill-named and ill-fought War On Drugs. It's not a Constitutional matter, true, but that only goes to show that we're not completely oblivious to reality the second time around; as far as crime, government expenditures and the like, I think it's manifestly clear that the War On Drugs is a far worse proposition than Prohibition on almost any metric you care to name, the one major exception being curtailing of civil liberties.

Jim Crow is gone, true. As I mentioned previously, that particular strain of racism has more or less been excised, although other mutated strains still exist. [See my remarks about small-town South above; and, for reference, there are plenty of Northern towns, particularly in the Midwest, where that applies too.**] That said, the movement against homosexuality is in many ways the spiritual successor to Jim Crow. It's not nearly as pernicious or as far-reaching but it contains many of the same features, many of the same players (mutatis mutandis, natch) and, hell, many of the same arguments -- see, e.g., the repeated invocations of Loving v. Virginia -- updated for the modern era. It has the additional advantage of drawing much larger religious support, which adds to the disaster-in-the-making.

In re your other remark: the hippies get the blame because, sorry, they are in many ways to blame. [For better and for worse.] More accurately, they're the first countercultural movement of consequence after the ascension of the United States to dominant world power, with all that that entails. Although it's not so much hippies per se as the fact that "hippies" is a useful shorthand for the longer, more boring, phrase "people who challenged the existing conformity and social orthodoxy in the wake of the US' post-WWII Golden Age"; take that how you will.

* Fun fact: my grandmother was actually engaged to the (spiritual) predecessor of Father Coughlin in the 1920s until he dumped her... for her younger sister.

** I was somewhat shocked to hear a bartender here in Madison -- gooshy liberal Madison, for Pete's sake -- refer to Jews as "Heebs". He was from upstate, though, so draw what conclusions you will.

Anarch, good comments with maybe a short or shallow perspective.

Huh? I was trying to explain the origins of the modern religious paradigm; necessarily, the perspective was "short" (i.e. ballpark 60 years). I mentioned that one could place this in a larger historical context but I didn't do so because a) the comment was already over-long, and b) to place it in the larger context runs the risk of "historical inevitability" arguments (viz. your remark about the cyclical nature, with which I largely agree) and thus losing the ability to identify the unique features that this current manifestation possesses. Beyond that, I couldn't actually parse the problems that you had with my post; if you could rephrase them, I'll see if I can formulate a more cogent response.

DaveC: You see, back in the good old days,a large number of this "privileged majority" lived in circumstances like this.

Shall we compare the plight of the white folk back in "the good old days" to that of other ethnicities? Do we really want to go that route?

To put it another way: when constructing such a comparison, especially of privilege, one must compare contemporary status and not absolute (or anachronistically relative) status.

[FWIW, my great-grandfather was a travelling preacher in south Texas and, from what I understand, the family lived in circumstances similar to those you've pictured. They had a bit more money, true, but it had to be spent on the needs of the church and of the calling. In fact, I don't think my grandmother or her family paid income tax until she was about 45 (in the late 1950s).]

blah: It may involve the idea that American history regarding slavery and civil rights undermines the liberal/left/Democrat vs. conservative/right/Republican dichotomy.

That's a very new dichotomy; indeed, I think that the creation of this dichotomy is the tail end of a radical transformation of American politics that has its roots in the 1940s with the beginnings of the civil rights movement (sorry bob!) but didn't really commence until Nixon's Southern Strategy in the late '60s. I don't recall there being a time when the parties reorganized in such a complete fashion along such marked ideological lines except maybe in the 1830s-60s with the abolitionists; either way, we're entering a completely new political era and whichever party best adjusts to the landscape will dominate this strange new world.

[For reference, I'm betting that the transformation will complete when the centrist Republicans, e.g. Chafee and Snowe, leave the Republican party to join either the Democrats or, less likely, a new centrist party. That will only happen once the current Republican party becomes a liability, however, which in turns means that it will only happen once the infusion of cash and free PR attendant to Republican candidates is not enough to mitigate the potential damage; and that, in turn, will depend on whether the centrists win the coming fight with the radical conservatives.]

SCMT: If you're a Dem, accept that the South is not coming back.

I don't think that's true, but I don't think it can be cajoled back in the way that the DNC seems to think it can. Part of the reason that South has become such an electoral block is precisely because both parties have been pandering to them; worse, they've been pandering under the guise of "respect", which I find utterly offensive on any of a number of levels. The way to win the South back is, IMO, as simple as it is hard: look'em in the eye, tell them that you're going to work hard to help build a better future, then tell them to get over themselves. Respect, directness and honesty; these are the things that are sorely needed. How to implement them effectively I haven't the faintest idea.

CharleyCarp: I'm sorry Anarch, but I think ral's contributions on this very thread edge yours for best comment.

But... but... he was quoting other people! How can I possibly compete against Justice Brandeis? It isn't faaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiirrrr!!!

You're dead on about south OH and IN, though. Fun fact of the day: the state with the highest proportion of Klan membership in the 1920s, I think it was, was Ohio. Go figure.

And now, for fun...

NeoDude: Anarch is male?!

I'd've said my prolixity was a dead giveaway, but then I remembered who else posts at this site.

eb: Anarch's comment is a good one, except for the part where he advocates executing Billmon.

Feh. A little revolution is good for the soul. I'd offer to grant him clemency but any good pinko-Commie-Bolshevik-gooshy-treasonous-liberal worth his box turtle knows that that just leads to counter-revolutionaries and, worse, dancing.

Phillip J. Birmingham: Everybody knows the best BBQ is found in the area around Memphis!

I think a little experimental evidence is in order. Send me the plane ticket and I'll accept your challenge!

[Anarch]

DaveC: Many of the bad racial incidents in 20th century occured in the north, such as the Chicago race riots. I even hear tell of some bad things that have happened in Los Angeles. (no link, use your imagination.)

Yes indeed. We xposted, but I mentioned this above (and the problem runs much deeper than you've intimated); I didn't address it because of the electoral block theory, not because it wasn't there. American race relations are seriously f***ed up, all the more so to a kid who grew up in one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet -- Hong Kong -- and so quite literally doesn't understand this whole fascination with "race" BS.

[I mean, seriously; who cares? What's the big deal? Why invent new categories when you can simply hate people because they're dicks?]

(So, Anarch, drive up to Ripon and shake your fist up there.)

One of my students is from Ripon, actually. Can I just shake my fist at her?

Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, who by the way abolished slavery, was born in Kentucky.(not the South, I'd call it the Ohio River Valley. People confuse me when they talk about Hoosiers being southerners and all that.)

There was a radical shifting of the American political landscape in the late 1800s and early 20th century. Unlike the political transformation of which I spoke above, there was a huge geopolitical shift in which states counted as Southern, which states counted as "Midwestern" -- a category that I don't think really existed until the 1870s, although I could well be wrong -- and so forth. Worse, the lines are blurry and often cut states or regions apart depending on the issues at hand. Southern Indiana, Illinois and Ohio really aren't Midwestern per se; Florida isn't really in The South; Missouri isn't really southern, but now kind of is; Lousiana is its own little enclave; Texas is, well, Texas; and so forth.

As for Republicans and slavery, see my remarks re the deal of 1876. IMO, the modern GOP was born in the back rooms of D.C. that day.

[DaveC]

Anarch, I'm impressed by how quickly and thoroughly you responded to my comments about Lincoln, Hoosiers, etc! You sure type fast!

[DaveC]

Why invent new categories when you can simply hate people because they're dicks?

Aren't you being a little hard on us dicks?

I just had to say that.

[ral]

Anarch, "good composers borrow, great composers steal."

[I hope I'm contributing something, but most of what I have posted is nowhere near up to the quality of many others, yourself included.]

[NeoDude]

NAZI anti-semitism was not the same as French or British anti-semitism.

Confederate racism was not the same as Northern racism.

They are all examples of horrible types of hate. Yet, some saw the racism as essential parts of "culture" while others were not as "passionate" about it being part of the "culture"

Southern culture means different things to different people.

FDR & LBJ are known to have very racist attitudes, yet NAZIs and Dixiecrats were much different conserning their racist attitudes.

[Tacitus]

I'm surprised this is a subject of debate on this site, of all places: pretty clearly the American South did get off rather easily after the Civil War. There was military Reconstruction, which lasted barely a decade, followed by a general reestablishment of the old order in the region, with the old elites reemerging, and the old oppressed resuming their status as such. There's a reason the Federal government had to de facto re-invade the region a century later; and I don't think it's irrational to conceive of much of the Klan, et al., violence through the 1960s as a sort of guerrilla movement. While I love the South, and conservatism, you can count me in the camp of the hoary old hard leftist Eric Foner on this one: the principle flaw of Reconstruction was that it was too short and didn't begin to go far enough. That a mere generation after the war, we had ex-Confederate generals leading American forces in Cuba, and segregated crowds at the dedication of monuments to Lincoln, says it all.

[DaveC]

Now I know I am taking extreme liberties with context and ellipsis, but bob said something like "I have about 15 more years of ... never really being allowed to call anybody racist."

All I've got to say about that is that some people are REALLY trying to make up for those 15 years before 1970.

As for me, I'm more into driving up past Elroy, Wisconsin, and spooking the Amish fellers by burning rubber and what not. Although it's a little more fun in eastern Iowa where they have the dirt and gravel roads. You can blow by 'em and holler "Eat my dust!" and really mean it.

(By the way I hope any of you Amish blog-readers don't take offense to any of this. It's just a joke. Y'all did the right thing in Ohio last November. Thanks a bunch!)

[Phil]

You're dead on about south OH and IN, though. Fun fact of the day: the state with the highest proportion of Klan membership in the 1920s, I think it was, was Ohio. Go figure.

Indeed. Waaaaaaay back in the 8th grade (Let's see . . I've been out of high school 18 years, so this is going on 22 years ago. Ugh.) each student in my social studies class had to do a report on our town, beautiful Perry Township. You don't get much more Northern than Perry in Ohio, since it's on the shore of Lake Erie. Maybe Sandusky or the islands. Anyway, in the course of learning about exciting Perry history, one of the most amazing things I discovered was that we had a Klan meeting hall for quite some time. Yikes.

NB: The earliest relative I know of on my mother's side of the family was one Solomon Williams, a farmer in Upshur County, VA, one of the counties which seceded from Virginia; Solomon fought in the West Virginia Light Artillery for the Union. He also spent several months as a Confederate POW.

[ral]

Anarch, one more, I somehow feel sure you've heard this one...

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word, he told me the secret of success in mathematics.
Plagiarize!

[dmbeaster]

To the Christian Right Roe is merely the best example of judges trying to circumvent the will of the people by making up crap about the Constitution, not the only example.

Well, recently for the Christian Right "making up crap" includes Marbury v. Madison and other basic principles of our judicial system. So, frankly, I give little weight to this "feeling." Also, the "will of the people" currently supports the rights enumerated in these decisions --- it is only the radical right fringe that pretends otherwise.

If the Christian Right wants to change the fabric of our nation to make it religious based (which the Constitution and founding fathers made clear it was not), then they should:

1. Advocate a constitutional amendment to permit religion in schools and government functions, rather than whining about how judges allegeldy "imposed" this on them. The imposition was by Jefferson, Madison, etc. and was deliberate.

2. Advocate a constitutional amendment banning all abortion, or banning all privacy rights in general so that they can also freely regulate sexual acts and mores.

In other words, follow the constitutional process to create the fundamental changes they seek, instead of falsely pretending that the current laws and arrangements are contrary to the Constitution. Of course, that would require them to be honest and acknowledge that they seek a radical change in the basic traditions of our country.

[felixrayman]

If I were to use a Stalin quote about the need to reduce the influence of religion on the people ruled by the state to explain what you what (I thought) you were doing that would also be an attack.

Careful. If you were to use a Stalin quote, I might assume you were a Republican lawyer/author making (barely) veiled threats to federal judges, because that is the only situation in which I have, lately, seen Stalin quoted approvingly.

So tell me, what is the correct reaction when right wing extremists start quoting Stalin as an example to be followed?

[CaseyL]

felixrayman - The 'correct' reaction is to dismiss said RW extremist as nonrepresentative, accuse you of quoting him out of context, and note that some liberal somewhere probably said something worse.

Or maybe it's a variant of the "Only Nixon could go to China" idea: Only Republicans are allowed to approvingly quote Communist dictators.

Sebastian, you said:

"If Griswold had not been disguised by allegedly being rooted in the sanctity of the institution of marriage... "

- which is a dishonest summation of what I said about Griswold, and an even more dishonest summation of the case itself - particularly since I posted the privacy citations that were the foundation of the Court's reasoning behind the Griswold decision.

The decision very clearly stated that the right to privacy had already been established in SCOTUS decisions. Those decisions were cited. There were a lot of them, and they went as far back as Boyd v. US in 1886, for crying out loud!

Nor was Griswold the first time the Court included 'the marital relationship' in a holding of a right to privacy. To quote, again, directly from the Griswold decision: 'This Court recognized in Meyer v. Nebraska, supra, that the right "to marry, establish a home and bring up children" was an essential part of the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. 262 U.S., at 399.'

The Court noted that the right to privacy, as established in those earlier decisions, had already been applied to such subjects as home-schooling, medical care, political and social associations, and family relationships. From these already-established precedents, the Court reasoned that extended the right to privacy in matters of reproduction - in this case, birth control - was both logical and appropriate.

As I said in that long-ago post, having established a right to personal/marital/sexual privacy via a long, long list of decisions over many, many decades... the Court could not have decided Roe any way but the way it did.

Sebastian, I really and truly do respect your writing. I therefore find it very difficult to understand why you - an attorney, no less, who ought to know how to do legal research - consistently take refuge in disinformation on this issue. The precedents are there; they're easy to find; and the SCOTUS didn't 'make up' a privacy right.

You hate legal abortion; I get that; you're entitled to your opinion. But stop trying to dress up your loathing for the decision in dishonest attacks on the SCOTUS.

And stop trying to justify the current RW assault on the courts with dishonest attacks on the SCOTUS.

[crionna]

hit every major BBQ center in these great United States.

Well, if you make it to SF, unless someone else has a recommendation, you're only worthwhile stop IMNSHO will be my place for pork babybacks, beef brisket and Boston butt (pulled pork sandwiches, with coleslaw on the sandwich of course).

[ral]

crionna, there used to be a good place on Stanyan in SF (long gone, alas), Hog Heaven.

[bob mcmanus]

"By the way I hope any of you Amish blog-readers don't take offense to any of this."

Two of my grandparents grandparents were Amish, lived near Amish communities, and attended massive family reunions (100s attending in rented fairgrounds)in my early youth of whom many were Amish.

But I am not offended, as long as you preferred "Kingpin" to "Witness."

[NeoDude]

I fell in love with the Amish in Berlin, Ohio.

They were distant and stoic...but they were beautiful.

[CharleyCarp]

Much as I like Brandeis, and I do, that supernova link was even better.

Southern, Hillbilly, Butternut -- I think there are a couple of factors we really have to keep in mind. First, there've been major migrations within the country since 1900, putting Southerners in non-Southern places, and vice versa. Second, there's been much cultural migration -- I doubt there would have been anything like the number of confederate flags now on display in greater Cincinnati even 50 years ago. (To what extent are the Allman Brothers responsible? Or Merle Haggard? Or Canadian Shania Twain? This is a very complicated subject.) Taken together, these points make the South much more of a mental place than a physical place.

Laid over that, there's the Scots-Irish culture -- I really don't think polite people can use 'Hillbilly' who've also spread both geographically and culturally. The 20th century really led to major material improvements for this group -- in the aggregate -- and increase in cultural power. This is a culture that, in my view, is less objectively racist, but more objectively anti-Yankee. The anger over losing privileges over people of color, in my conception of this culture, is more about having had the result imposed by elitists from the NE Coast than about gains actually made by blacks. Thus the KKK isn't really what this culture is now about (that's more Old South). A culture where saying 'he thinks he's smarter than me' is taken as a damn good reason not to vote for someone. I think much of the energy behind the current fundamentalist movement comes from this culture, more than from the Old South, but they overlap so substantially in so many places.

Lest anyone think I am saying that I think ethnicity is destiny, let me suggest googling two Scots-Irish first cousins of my grandmother: New Dealer David Cushman Coyle, and social work scholar Grace Longwell Coyle. But, of course class is every bit as important, and in a whole lot of contexts more important, than geographic region or ethnicity. Both for the present and the past. You can say how the South fared in Reconstruction and after, but really different classes of people fared very differently.

[Anarch]

Much as I like Brandeis, and I do, that supernova link was even better.

Oh right; I thought that was in another other thread. Me, I am never forget the day I am given first original paper to write: it was on Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Parametrization of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifolds. Bozhe moi!

[CharleyCarp]

Having thought about it a little more, I'd say that Roe wouldn't have been such a big deal standing alone, but coupled with Woodstock, Jane Fonda going to Hanoi, affirmative action/reverse discrimination, derision at Archie Bunker, and de-industrialization, it's just too much.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"As I said in that long-ago post, having established a right to personal/marital/sexual privacy via a long, long list of decisions over many, many decades... the Court could not have decided Roe any way but the way it did."

I'm afraid that is completely ridiculous. Even Katherine doesn't agree with you on that one--and heaven knows we don't exactly share the same view of Constitutional jurisprudence. Even if you accept a Constitutional right to privacy in certain limited areas, there was no reason to (and the judges were absolutely not logically forced by prior precedent) expand it to include a 'right' to abortion. The problem is that you act as if the 'right to privacy' was not in fact a fairly small number of very limited rights which were well rooted in miscellaneous traditions before Griswold. And even in Griswold they tried to tie it to deep-rooted traditions. The "right to privacy" as some sort of general organizing principle of Constitutional analysis absolutely did not exist in the way you describe.

The modern Prohibition is probably the ill-named and ill-fought War On Drugs. It's not a Constitutional matter, true, but that only goes to show that we're not completely oblivious to reality the second time around; as far as crime, government expenditures and the like, I think it's manifestly clear that the War On Drugs is a far worse proposition than Prohibition on almost any metric you care to name, the one major exception being curtailing of civil liberties.

This is actually an instructive snippet of Constitutional history. In 1920 it was clear that in order to have a national ban on alcohol required a Constitutional amendment. Less than 40 years later no one thought the federal government should have any problem banning drug use nationwide. This is a huge change in attitude which is rarely noted.

[Anarch]

Less than 40 years later no one thought the federal government should have any problem banning drug use nationwide.

Try less than 20: the Marijuana Tax Act was passed in 1937. [It wasn't technically a ban but it was definitely a functional one, and I don't think anyone was under any illusions about its nature.] It goes back even further if you consider the banning of marijuana in the various states (I think the first was in the late 20s).

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I wasn't aware of the federal marijuana tax act. I don't think you can count earlier state bans--state bans are much more clearly possible.

[rilkefan]

Another amazing diary at Kos.

[rilkefan]

Re pot, a most trenchant post by Mark Kleiman.

[Frank]

Great thread!