The point is, because the focus is getting lost, that the right isnt moving more to the right. It is not becoming more radical or wingnutty or any of that trendy propagandized baloney.
You know, when I was a kid I dont think more than a couple weeks went by that some church person wasnt banging on my door trying to indoctrinate me because I was damned for being a lecherous sinner. It’s been 20 years since I think I seen one of those types. (rare exception a Mormon sticks shit in my storm door, but no harm or foul I just toss it. At least they’re good natured and very nice it seems)
Look, this whole the right is moving more right is a figment of people’s imagination. I cite many examples of how things changes over the past few decades in the post upthread. You guys who hate Christians have to at least agree on the things I observed because you’ve observed them too over the years.
Now if you want to say Christianity is bs in general and (and many are digging their heels in, defensively) let’s push it out of society even more, then just say it, don’t try to giving the false impression that it’s the right wing religious people becoming radically more right leaning. It’s frigging preposterous.
Oh, it is, it is. You’re just not seeing the whole picture, because you remember the door-to-door evangelists, etc., of days gone by – but they didn’t matter, then. A good source here is The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by Wooldridge and Micklethwait; also Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein. Long story short: The radical-wingnutty faction on the right – or, rather, factions, there were and are several (libertarian, warhawk, theocon, paleocon) – was always there, most visibly expressed back in the 1950s by Pubs like Senator Robert Taft who wanted to roll back the New Deal – but they were a marginal minority and the rest of the GOP/right, sensibly accepting the New Deal as a fait accompli and not as the thin end of the Communist wedge, did not take them seriously. But starting with Goldwater, “Movement Conservatism” gradually took over the GOP, culminating with the Reagan Revolution in 1980 – and finally flowering in the Tea Partiers, at whom even Goldwater’s backers in the John Birch Society (the ones convinced Eisenhower was a Communist) would have rolled eyes. Reagan would be counted a RINO today.
And you’re way focused on religion in this discussion. Please keep in mind, always, that the American far-right is a lot more than just the religious right (which, all by itself with no more secular-minded allies and backers, would be hardly noticeable at all).
I was making a sarcastic response to those who claim that Obama’s birth control mandate was a brilliant strategy to show the voters how far right the GOP is, and thus peel mainstream voters away. If that was the strategy, it was evidently a rather dumb strategy, because we now know that the majority of Americans side with the Republicans on this issue; a 21-point majority at that.
Every piece of Democratic junk-mail and spam that I’ve seen in the past six weeks has been harping on this issue, claiming that the Republicans are waging “war on women” and trying to “deny women access to birth control” and so forth. I think that endlessly reminding the voters that the other party agrees with most of them while your own party disagrees with them is not a very good tactic. I may be wrong, but that’s my viewpoint.
I don’t think the Right is moving further to the right. I think they’re not moving at all and the middle and the Left are moving further left. Essentially, Progressives are progressing (moving the whole scale, including the middle) where Conservatives are conserving (digging in and refusing to move forward).
Shit that was considered moderate 50 years ago would be considered downright fascist by today’s standards.
And this is as it has been throughout recorded history. Where’s the big surprise?
I’ll believe that when “socialist” is no longer a dirty word even to most Democrats, as it is now. What you are describing is the flat reverse of real-life recent American political history. Ever heard of Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich? They’re as lefty as it gets around here these days; and leftists in other countries would shake their heads at such pathetic milksops.
There was a time when the American Socialist Party and the Communist Party USA were respectable. I’d say we’ve moved pretty far rightward from that point, if no form of socialism-as-such is even on the table for serious discussion any more in America. As for the 1960s cultural “New Left,” they won their most mainstream-accessible goals (civil rights, women’s rights, sex revolution, ending the Vietnam War very eventually) and gave up on the rest, what’s the last you heard of them?
“Left” in the sense of “live and let live” or in the sense of “we’re all in this together”? Very different tendencies – I’d say we’ve evolved pretty far along the first path since the 1950s; along the second, not so much.
What you just described I dont see a culmination of a right leaning agenda taking hold or even a moderate push to the right. The reading material you mentioned, when grouped together like that, sounds a little Beckian to me - as in connecting dots to form a picture of something when they’re really just random dots. There’s not enough of those dots forming a pattern in my view.
Im not sure what Reagan did that would put him in the Rino camp today except amnesty, and Im fairly certain if he was alive he’d be against doing it again with the broken system we still have, and still (sigh) the same arguments are being debated. What else did he do that would make him a RINO by today’s standards? (The only guy I know who thought Reagan wasnt doing enough was Newt, regarding the Soviets)
The Tea Party is seems fiscally minded responsible people, Ive got nothing against them. They’re likely to give me a job, donate to a charity, or tip a few back at the pub with me without worrying if left my wallet in my jacket (or dive under the table to have sex with my sandals) unlike the “other” movement which shall remain nameless.
Back to the point - I wish democrat politicians would quit with the tactic, it’s not helping anyone solve problems and it’s dishonest.
(so you know, im not blindly partisan about it and not shy about ramming it up the right’s ass when they push similarly unproductive and ridiculous talking points)
Only, they ain’t, that’s just for the signs. The members’ actual priorities are much more social-religious-conservative; we’ve been over this before many times.
It’s much more than a pattern, it’s an actual movement, with organization and leaders and grassroots groups and astroturf groups and financial backers and think-tanks and wholly-owned media outlets and everything short of membership-cards. All this is very well-documented and requires no Beckian or Horowitzian dot-connecting. Where have you been since 1964?!
I just don’t like how the GOP seems to like painting the Founders as 17th Century versions of Jerry Falwell. They all felt that religion was a private matter, but wouldn’t get the Republican Ticket because of this view of religion. Santorum is a Dominionist, who truly believes he’s got to get the world ready for the coming of Christ.
There are aperiodic signals, but the Translator can yield nothing of discernible semantic content, Captain. It is life, but not as we . . . nah, it ain’t life, fuck it. Suggest Starfleet designate sector as high-radiation-waste dump, and let’s warp it to Eroticon Six.
Dwight Eisenhower presided over a massive expansion of Social Security, didn’t want to cut income taxes–in a time when the highest marginal rates topped 90%–until the budget was balanced, and oversaw an enormous government public works program in the form of the Interstate Highway System.
Richard Nixon (whatever his many personal flaws and political flirtations with demagoguery) oversaw the formation of the EPA and OSHA.
Gerald Ford called for income tax increases and supported the Equal Rights Amendment.
A lot of the Republican Party’s rightward movement can be dated to Reagan, though as others have pointed out, even he might have fallen short of modern Tea Party Republicanism’s orthodoxy. His immediate successor, George H.W. Bush, (in)famously raised taxes (after promising not to).
As recently as the 1990’s “individual mandates” were the Republican Big Idea for healthcare reform.
Now, Republican orthodoxy is that taxes should be cut–always, no matter what. That government is–always–the problem, not the solution. We’ve gone beyond pro-life to open opposition to contraception–not even on the grounds that this or that method of contraception terminates a fertilized egg and is therefore actually abortion; just opposition to contraception as such. Social Security and Medicare get described as “socialism”–it’s downright bizarre how much the S-word gets thrown around, given how greatly the actual threat (or “threat” if you favor socialism) of socialism has receded.
I don’t think that American society as a whole has gotten massively more right-wing. I do think that the Republican Party has moved to the right. I guess we will see this November.
And there was actually this other option called “single-payer” which people actually mentioned with a straight face (though not after the first month or so of the whole Clinton-healthcare-reform story).
It’s much more than a pattern, it’s an actual movement, with organization and leaders and grassroots groups and astroturf groups and financial backers and think-tanks and wholly-owned media outlets and everything short of membership-cards. All this is very well-documented and requires no Beckian or Horowitzian dot-connecting. Where have you been since 1964?!