Oakland highlights

[William S. Lear]

On Fri, January 8, 1999 at 09:00:04 (-0800) Chuck Grimes writes:
>..
>See, I would have gone for that class analysis, but there is something
>else going on between Clinton and especially the southern and western
>House and Senate.  I mean what makes white trash, trash and not just
>poor? What makes the idea of funky sex so odious to these genteel
>christians? Why do these same House/Senate members seem so mysteriously
>united on every single piece of thought or deed, that has the
>slightest hint of race--abortion, teen pregnancy, drugs, crime,
>education. For example why do everyone of these guys hate the UN? That
>isn't about class or 'foreign involvements.'
>
>No, this isn't just a class act. There is some deep serious and
>specfically American thing going on down there. Something pecularly
>American is at work, and the only thing I can think of,  that is
>remotely like it, is racism.

Well, don't stop there.  Religion also needs to be brought in here.
The level of fundamental religious belief here is on par with Iran.
Doug Henwood's *The State of the USA Atlas* (Touchstone, 1994) has
some great info on this.

Also very good is the first chapter of Edmund S. Morgan's *The Puritan
Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New
England* (Harper & Row, 1966 [1944]).  I'll have more to say about the
Puritans in the Butler seminar, so stay tuned.

Bill