First of all, thank you for everyone who has stuck with me through a hiatus of about two months. We are in the middle of a home renovation project, which I heartily recommend to anyone who is looking for a character-builiding experience similar to, oh, lets say a thousand mile march through the desert with no shoes.
Anyway, I am re-reading The Radical Right, a collection of essays on the extreme right in American politics. I first read this book in college in the 1970s. It was originally written in the 1950s and updated in the 1960. It addressed such extreme right wing activity as McCartyism and the John Birch Society. The remarkable thing is how apt some of the comments are regarding the current administration and its supporters. Is it too much to compare Tom DeLay to Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society? I don't think so. As I work my way through the book, I will post selected exerpts. But I urge you all to read it.
This first exerpt is from Daniel Bell's 1962 essay on the rise of and prospects for the radical right.
"Few countries in the world have been able to maintain a social system that allows political power to pass peacefuly from one social group to another without the threat of hostilities or even civil war. In the mid-twentieth century we see ... historical centers of civilization ...torn apart by ideological groups that will not accept a consensual system of politics. The politics of civility ... has been the achievement of only a small group of countries.... Today, the ideology of the right wing in America threatens the politics of American civility. Its commitment and its methds threaten to disrupt the "fragile consensus" that underlies the American political system." [page 2]
Posted by The Goatherder
at 11:41 AM EDT
