This is also overblown. It is very far from true that the Right closes its ranks. Indeed, it is arguably more split than the Left, in many cases. This is not that big of a Right/Left divide, but arguably the Republicans in the US Congress or more split than the Democrats. But some of those divisions among the Republicans are very sharp and much broader based, e.g. the conflict between libertarians and social conservatives that is deep among the Republicans and unremitting.
Some other splits include between those who might be identified with "post modernism" (no, I am not going to try to define it) and those who reject it. It has been noted recently (by me) on pen-l that Deirdre (formerly Donald) McCloskey is both a Chicago-School libertarian who nearly destroyed the fem-econ list in a flame war a few years ago over whether feminism is compatible with free market capitalism, and also identified to some extent with "post modernism, " especially through his/her authorship of the highly influential _The Rhetoric of Economics_.
And there is the split between the Chicago School libertarians like Milton Friedman who buy garden variety Marshallian equilibrium analysis and the Austrian libertarians who think that such equilibrium analysis is a crock and a bunch of useless baloney. And among the Austrians there is unremitting warfare between the Hayekians and the harder core Misesians, with one of the latter "Bronx cheering" one of the former at a Mises Institute conference two years ago. They are constantly telling each other how they have to join ranks to fight off the nasty leftists, in between their bouts of mutual Bronx cheering. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Alex LoCascio <alexlocascio at juno.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, February 24, 1999 8:16 PM Subject: Re: Butler, Nussbaum, Paglia
>
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>On Thu, 24 Feb 1999 12:02:08 -0800 Sam Pawlett <epawlett at uniserve.com>
>writes:
>
>>But a lot of people who attack Butler and like minded theorists do so
>>because it is bad philosophy not because they are reactionaries.
>
>Butler's gig is in the sphere of cultural (and I suppose literary)
>criticism. Knocking her for not being a rigorous philosopher is like
>charging Marx with being a shoddy Physicist. Apples and Oranges, see?
>
>>The truth should never be sacrificed in the name of politics.
>
>No, but in the current reactionary political environment, I think people
>of the Left should close ranks to a certain extent. I'm not nostalgic
>for Stalinism or the Popular Front, but it's high time to cut the
>internecine warfare and start fighting back. It doesn't help matters
>when professed "left business observers" quote approvingly from
>reactionary sources like the NAS. I'm sure the Right laughs its
>collective ass of at all the petty, incestuous fighting on the Left.
>While the Milton Friedmans and Jerry Falwells put aside their differences
>in order to seize power, we're rehashing Sokal/Social Text ad nauseum.
>
>>Guilt by association is a (poor) propaganda technique.
>
>Yeah, but there's a difference between sharing certain beliefs with
>certain personalities on the Right and actually quoting approvingly from
>right-wing sources in order to attack fellow leftists. Jay Gould once
>said that he could hire one half of the working class to kill the other
>half. These days, one half of the intellectual Left attacks the other
>half.
>
>Contra Paul Weyrich, I don't think the 'culture wars' are over, and I
>must say I disagree with the Baffler folks that the culture wars are
>entirely a sham fight. True, blowhards like Aronowitz and Ross like to
>overrate their own importance in the grand scheme of things, but that
>doesn't mean the threat of William Bennett forcing Universities to adopt
>the curriculum at St. Johns isn't real.
>
>What's next, Leftists supporting the attacks on Rigoberta Menchu?
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