OK. One of my many shameful vices is a love of horror movies. So, the other day I picked up a double DVD of Spanish horror films (the Spanish make great horror movies. "Don't answer that ad in the paper for an apartment, Maria and Miguel! It's a HELL HOUSE!!!!!"). One of them was a film called La Culpa, which is 50% horror movie and 50% antiabortion agitprop. Qua horror movie it works really well.
So I got to thinking about one of Wojtek's favorite subjects, the supposed correlation between political conservatism and fear. I know this is not 100% original, since none other than Stephen King has mentioned it, but the horror genre is inherently xenophobic and usually hypermoralistic, and I wonder if there is a connection between this and the conservative politics of many horror writers. HP Lovecraft is of course the archetype here, but, although King is seemingly a middle-of-the-road liberal and George Romero apears to have Vidalesque views on things, Dean Koontz and Dan Simmons are reactionary to the point of near-insanity (though they are distinguished by the fact that Simmons is a really incredible writer, one of the best around, while Koontz is a hack).
What were Edgar Allen Poe's politics? Did he have any?