> Hi,
>
> Capon Rising was meant to be a funny response (and obvious pun) to the claim by Chick0 that I was Chicken Little. What is relevant from the 1980s is that accurately predicting the rise (punintended) of a large right-wing social and political movement is hardly a case of hysterical warning. Nor is it accurate to think that if the Democract had won, there would be no talk of a right-wing movement. It is not going away. It did not go away after the televangelism scandals of the late 1980s. It did not go away after the over-reaching of the the Contract with America. The demographics revealed by polling make it clear it has a mass base.
>
> None of this means that a counter force on the left should not take advanage of Bush's fading popularity. But delusion about the political right not having strength, or implying the federal judiciary is a meaningless entity, is a case of the sandy-nosed Ostrich calling the Chicken little.
I don't have time today to go more in depth than I did in my last email.
Chip is an expert on the right wing and as most experts he relies on the existence of the problem in order to get money to research and manage reponses to that problem.
We can cite all kinds of evidence that contradicts Chip's worldview and he isn't going to listen. We've had several discussions that went over the evidence that the religious right has lost the culture wars. Their own spokespeople and leaders admits as much. The numbers show a stagnant movement and one where more foot soldiers want to get out of politics.
I don't think that the right wing movement is going to go away any sooner than the liberals and left. I'm hopeful that one of these decades that the conservatives and liberals both die out, but that will take a shitload of organizing and consciousness-shifting.
Sure, the right wing has grown since the 1960s. I don't need Chip Berlet to tell me that. The evidence is all around us. But at the same time it is a terrible mistake to assume that this can't be reversed quickly. It's also not a permanent condition, as the movement is starting to break up for various reasons.
Chuck