Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> wrote:
>The rise and rise of American conservatism is neither well documented nor
>well understood in Britain
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,925856,00.html
Will Hutton is a particularly interesting progressive liberal strategic political economist.
Is his analysis of the American right correct?
Chris Burford London
Hotton says:
> The conservative movement has deep roots. It made its first gains in the 1970s in reaction to economic problems at home that it wrongly claimed were wholly the fault of liberals, helped by the reaction of white working class Americans to the application of affirmative action: quotas of housing, university places and even jobs for blacks to equalise centuries of discrimination.
The late 60s, actually. The Wallace campaign in '68 was the toscin.
> When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, outlawing the obstacles American blacks had experienced in exercising their civil rights from voting to sitting on juries, he famously joked that he had lost the Democrats the south. He could not have been more prescient; the uneasy coalition between southern conservative Democrats and the more liberal North was sundered - a political opportunity that Ronald Reagan was brilliantly to seize.
Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" -- designed by now-populist Kevin Phillips -- was the ignition point. Nixon played on fears of crome and resentment about jobs, welfare, and social unrest to win the election, Affirmative action, however, was a Nixon initiative to defuse the civil rights movement. The concern about "quotas" came later, after half decade of economic crisis following the 1073 crunch.
> This laid the foundations for the conservatisation of American politics, helped by the growing economic power of the south and the west. The new sun-belt entrepreneurs, building fortunes on defence contracts and Texan oil, naturally believed in the toxicity of federal government and the god-given right of employers to cheap labour with as few rights as possible.
Someone should do a more careful study of Texas oil. In the 1930s, Texas oilmen --specidically Texicans! -- were behind a big push for government regulation to control overproduction in the Texas oil industry.
> Put that together with the south's visceral dislike of welfare, well understood to be transferring money from God-fearing, hard-working whites to black welfare queens, and the need for crime - again understood to be perpetrated by blacks against whites - to be met with ferocious penalties and you had the beginning of the new conservative constituency. Include a dose of Christian fundamentalism, and the building blocks of a new dominant coalition of Republican southerners and middle class, suburban northerners were in place.
This leaves out at least two important elements: anticommunism, manifested in the global crusade against the USSR and third world national liberation movements, and tied in to the loss of the Vietnam war, along with, second, the reaction against the perceived disorder and sexual libertinism of the 60s-70s countercuture.
> What was needed to complete the picture was intellectual coherence and money. America's notoriously lax rules on political financing allowed the conservatives to outspend the Democrats sometimes by as much four or five times.
The Supreme Court case of Bukley v. Vallejo, equatind spending money with speech, and according it First Amendment protections, is crucial here.
> Yet what opened the financial floodgates was intellectual conviction; a new generation of intellectual conservatives took on the apparently effortless liberal dominance, and beat it at its own game - the realm of ideas. The great right-wing thinktanks - the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute - became the intellectual inspiration of the conservative revival.
There's something to this, but the unexplained part of the puzzle is the intellectual collapse of liberalism. Through 60s, the idea was prevelant that the liberals had truth and science on their side,a nd the conservatives were stupid. The conservatives are still stupid -- their newly vaunted ideas are recycled 19th century laissez fair capitalism and Social Darwinism, dressed up with some economic theory, misleading statistics, and sociobiology. But the liberals caved, although they also had a lot of money. Why is an inwritten chapter.
> The capture of universities by the rich and the lack of education for the poor has meant that social mobility in the US has collapsed.
Capture of the universities by the rich? They had them already. The post WWII periood has seen the greatest expansion of higher education opportunities for the poor in human history.
> American capitalism, in thrall to the stock market and quick bucks it offers, has hollowed out its great corporations in the name of the hallowed conservative conception of share-holder value - the sole purpose of a company is to enrich its owners.
As opposed to the socially conscious great trusts of the 19th century, Standard Oil, US Steel, the railroads? Come on.
> Productivity and social mobility are now higher in Old Europe than in the US -
Doug can correct me on this, but I believe US productivity still tops Europe. I don't know about social mobility figures.
jks
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