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This reminds me to mention I dug up a few bits and pieces of Thomas Frank on the web today. Frank and Moyers inspired the ad hominem post.
So even if Frank doesn't seem to put racism in where I think it belongs, there is enough other stuff to consider. I'll probably buy What's the Matter with Kansas sometime soon. A side note on The Conquest of the Cool (on the 60s). After reading an excerpt of Conquest, it was obvious that Frank wasn't there---didn't live it. I still can't figure out why living an era is so important to understanding, particularly that one, but it is. In the case of Conquest which looks at men's fashion and the rise of the `alternate life style' fashion what he missed was all the stuff that went into that kind of living before it became a marketing phenomenon
I also posted a speech by Bill Moyers that is trapped in the LBO post-limit bot. I hope it gets through. It's worth reading. I suspect that too many people just bypass links in a post and don't bother. I edited out some of the usual Moyers homespun examples to shorten it. In case it doesn't get through here is the link on Moyer's speech in St. Louis last week:
http://freepress.net/news/8120
It's about getting hounded out of PBS by Tomlinson CEO of CPB and Trent Lott.
The ad hominem stuff directly relates to thoughts on Strauss that I am trying to sort out piece meal. I found the John Locke reference (Of Reason) and it's a good reminder of the early Enlightenment view of reason, its limits and its abuses. Unfortunately Locke holds back when it comes to God, so that part will have to be worked over to set up Strauss and the Right against themselves (value v fact, faith v reason, etc). I might post some of Locke later.
Part of the motivation for putting up these posts is to encourage people to think about how the Right operates and how to destroy them.
CG