White populist Pat Buchanan, who is employed by the flagrant lefties over at MSNBC,
on white America:
America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.
Adam
responds:
I'd love to just leave this post with snark, but I have to say one last
thing. Black Americans have shed blood in every American war since the
Revolution. This country, even the very Capitol building in which
today's legislators now demand to see the birth certificate of the
first black president, was built on the sweat and sinew of slaves.
Before we were people in the eyes of the law, before we had the right
to vote, before we had a black president, we were here, helping make
this country as it is today. We are as American as it gets. And
frankly, the time of people who think otherwise is passing. If that's
the country Buchanan wants to hold onto, well, he's right, he is losing
it.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Here's a question: At what point in American history can we point to when so-called 'traditionalists' did not get the sense that they were losing the country they grew up in? I know it's not a terribly profound statement, but really, is there a moment, a stretch of years even, in which people who considered themselves 'traditional' didn't feel somehow out of place with the moment in which they lived? Isn't that the whole point of being traditional?
Aren't there any number of platitudes to dispell people of the idea that you can, as they say, go home again?
That seems like a great point, BB. People are always nostalgic, and people who consider themselves to be socially conservative always think that their country is changing for the worse. Is it any surprise that someone like Pat Buchanan sympathizes with these people?
Pat Buchanan is one of "these people". When Barack Obama was elected by 53+% of this country that clinched the deal.
He's not though. He's too rich (and Catholic) to be a populist. He's pandering and inciting, much like Rush. Whether that makes him more despicable than if he actually believed what he spews is the same thing people were discussing here about Rush past coupla days.
Populism is almost always pandering. The whole point of being a populist is telling people who don't know any better that you're one of them. *cough*John Edwards*cough*
Especially ironic since the people with that attitude spent a lot of our history worried that they were losing the country to Pat Buchanan's ancestors.
I think uncle Pat, Lou Dobbs and their ilk need to be locked in a room with headphones listening to this song on continuous loop until they get it, especially the verse in bold:
Bruce Springsteen:
American Land
What is this land America so many travel there
I'm going now while I'm still young my darling meet me there
Wish me luck my lovely I'll send for you when I can
And we'll make our home in the American land
Over there all the woman wear silk and satin to their knees
And children dear, the sweets, I hear, are growing on the trees
Gold comes rushing out the rivers straight into your hands
When you make your home in the American Land
There's diamonds in the sidewalk the's gutters lined in song
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man
Who will make his home in the American Land
I docked at Ellis Island in a city of light and spires
She met me in the valley of red-hot steel and fire
We made the steel that built the cities with our sweat and two hands
And we made our home in the American Land
There's diamonds in the sidewalk the's gutters lined in song
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man
Who will make his home in the American Land
The McNicholas, the Posalski's, the Smiths, Zerillis, too
The Blacks, the Irish, Italians, the Germans and the Jews
Come across the water a thousand miles from home
With nothin in their bellies but the fire down below
They died building the railroads worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago they're still dyin now
The hands that built the country were always trying to keep down
There's diamonds in the sidewalk the gutters lined in song
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long
There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man
Who will make his home in the American Land
Who will make his home in the American Land
Who will make his home in the American Land
messed up the bolding meant to highlight this:
They died building the railroads worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago they're still dyin now
The hands that built the country were always trying to keep down
Oh, "Uncle" Pat, you embarrassing bastard. Get off the fucking stage already. If only for the sake of Gene Robinson, who has to play Point, Counter (Crazy) Point to your idiocy once a week.
The ads over there loaded before the text, and that was enough to give me a taste of the paranoia: a solar generator, enough seeds for a full garden, and a book about Oprah as god.
Of course Buchanan will insist that he's merely tapping into the psyches of other, unnamed white Americans, and of course he's not speaking for himself. And then Matthews will give him a stern talking-to and they'll all have a good chuckle at the end of the segment and everyone will give Pat the "oh, you crazy old goofball!" wag of the finger and that'll be that.
MSNBC: Yet another reason I'm glad I canceled our cable TV subscription last week.
Meanwhile, I hope dinosaurs like Buchanan keep it up because all of this just adds more time in purgatory for the GOP.
I find Buchanan's article really ironic, in a historical sense. About 160 years ago, there were tons of white nativist Protestants whining that they were losing their country to the unwashed, Irish papist masses. I don't know too much about Buchanan's background, but isn't he Irish Catholic? Does he not see the parallel? He'll go down in history as an idiot Know-Nothing, just like those people a century and a half ago did.
It isn't Pat Buchanan's job to be self-aware.
Yes, but the sad truth is there are people who will never become self aware no matter their own personal history. My best friend is a second generation Italian American on both sides. She is surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins whose parents came to this country with essentially very little but were able to pool enough money to buy a tiny grocery store. That grocery store grew to be quite a successful enterprise which allowed them to buy property and make investments. They live in well to do neighborhoods and are staunch Republicans. They are so loathsome of the election of Obama and those that support him. They are especially angry with all people of color. To them they are usurpers. All they seem to care about is that they got theirs.
He is very much in the Know-Nothing tradition. His own ethnic heritage is Scotch Irish, who are decidedly NOT Irish Catholic, but the people encouraged by the Crown to move to Belfast and environs through land-grants and preferred social and legal status. They later moved to North America and settled throughout the southern Appalachia. His mother was German and Catholic, which is where he got his faith; his first name came from a family friend, as I recall. The know-nothings were a huge political force whose efforts were truncated by the outbreak of the Civil War, which split the movement.
Well, White America better look out, 'cause even if they get America "back", they might just have to hand it over to Native America. It was once their country, you know, so don't they have a claim to get it back?
All snark aside, Pat's just putting the truth out there: some white people are really afraid of a future where their traditions, values, language, etc. aren't the standard and where they, or someone like them, don't control all the levers of power.
They fear it, but (factually unfounded) protests about how the new wave of immigrants refuse to assimilate aside, people move here and become Americans. They come here and change, the country doesn't change to become more Chinese or more Cameroonian except in the sense of better restaurants.
I'm not sure when the white working class (the folks he's actually talking about) have ever had control of the levers of power in the US. Not anytime recently, that's for damned sure.
The country is changing, and much of the change is for the worse. The last decade has given me half a dozen shocks at the "I'm living in a dystopian SF novel" level. I suspect the same is true for Buchannan and many of his kind of people, even if the specific shocks weren't the same. The country is moving in bad directions on many levels, and I suspect a hell of a lot of people sense that, even if they might not agree with me about the causes or solutions.
That's why I said "someone like them". While they may not have controlled the levers of power, they identified in important ways with those who did. They were white, or they were Christian or what have you. Those who were in control made sure that their working class supporters were more aware of the similarities to them (the power holders) than the differences, primarily by highlighting differences with other "out" groups, like blacks, (new) immigrants, etc.
These same people are now realizing that the superiority that was once theirs by default, merely by virtue of being white or Christian or whatever, is slipping away. They will now have to compete on a playing field that is no longer tilted toward them. To many of us, this is a welcome correction. To them, it is an unfair changing of the rules mid-game.
I wholeheartedly disagree that "the country is moving in a bad direction"- I am more hopeful than ever that we're heading towards something better. This chaos we're in the middle of is just the natural product of change. It too will pass.
It seems to me that Pat's problem, and that of many of his supporters, is that they don't want grow up.
Nobody likes to acknowledge mistakes they have made, times when they have failed or instances where their actions have hurt others, but it's the price of adulthood, in a person or a nation.
I made this recommendation a few months ago here, but I think it's appropriate to repeat it on this thread: Joan Didion's Where I Was From is a tremendous examination of the ideology of California that she grew up with in the Central Valley -- a California that was made by her family and those like her, that rightfully belonged to them, and that needed to be defended against interlopers. Didion traces what that ideology meant to her as a young, native Californian, and how she grew to recognize that its view of the state was an illusion, and the ideology a sort of trap.
This book really made an impact on me as an ex-pat Californian, but it's so well-written that I think it will mean something to folks who didn't grow up in the Golden State, too. And I say that as someone who didn't like any of the Didion I had to read in high school.
I would add Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" to the reading list. Similar concept and tremendously moving.
Patrick J BuchKKanan is one of the main reasons why I no longer watch MSNBC, sorry Rachel & Keith. I know it's their own network and MSNBC signs their paychecks, but everytime I see Pat' racist behind on MSNBC's screen, and no one taking a stand against him (Tweety invites him on specifically so he can spout his racist drivel) I'm very happy ignoring MSNBC all together. How can you rant and rave about Bill O or Hannity, or Beck or FoxNews in general (Keith & Rachel) and never seem to mention this snake in their own mix? It's ridiculous and hyocritical. So MSNBC, ain't on in my house.
Other than Rachel's last interview with pat over Sotomayor, Keith and Rachel don't counter any of his "drivel".
Ask yourself this, how many times has Keith O had Bill O or Hannity or any other RW idiot as his "Worse Person In The World"? And then ask yourself how many times has he included Pat Buchannan? The answer is never.
So who challenges Buchanan? Other than Rachel's last interview, please tell me who challenges it. Pat just gets to spout off his bigoted remarks and NO ONE on MSNBC challenges him. When Eugene Robinson is on with Pat how often does he "challenge" some of the most obviously bigotted staetment by Buchanan.
Seriously, maybe I missed it, but when has MSNBC ever "challenged" Pat's assertions? Answer... they don't. What they do is take him off the air for a while, to let things "cool down" but then BAM!!! He's back. Where was the challenge?
Oh, and BTW, I could care less what "choir" they are preaching too. Letting Buchanan just spout his nonsense with a "oh...Pat" smile, and a "you rascally dog you..." shrugs doesn't cut it.
Jesus, Pat, stop talking about the 60s. You're talking about 'Progressives' and what they were doing at a time when I wasn't even going to be born for 20 years. If I as a progressive have to be responsible for that, then you, Pat, have to be responsible for slavery.
Yeah I read that part too and wondered if he had any clue just how out of touch he sounds. My parents weren't even old enough to be politically active in the 60s.
It's hard to escape The Matrix of White superiority, especially when you don't want to.
Bingo.
Of all the ways and means by which to waste one's precious down time, watching, listening or recollecting anything said by the transparently officious and logically destitute Pat Buchanon, i surely not one of them. He's like a constant rerun of the 300 Club.
When you have been a fed a lie your entire life, you will do and say anything to convince yourself and others that it is true. It takes a great deal of difficult introspection to discern whether you do and believe things because they are right and true. Or whether your actions and beliefs are centered around self-preservation. This problem is not exclusive to white America, but the facade of the America that was created by white society is cracking. It is sad they don't see the beauty of all of the layers and shades created by America that is not one thing to all people.
"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here,"
Aluminum foil hat conspiracy meme, check
says founding father Stewart Rhodes, an ex-Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.
"Red Dawn" fantasy of your beer swilling self as Patrick Swazye, check
"We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution, we'll fight with you." Selfless patriot volunteer, as opposed to treasonous rightist criminal, check
Hmmm... Didn't the "American people just have an election to decide what they wanted, and decided AGAINST Republikaaner bullshit?
Prediction: Brother Rhodes is headed for cable stardom.
Probably right, as the next level of escalation in the game will be to continue to hype the lie of the non legitimacy of the "Black President" Isn't there some law regarding calling for the extra legal overthrow of the government or something to that effect? Oh Yeah It's called SEDITION. As the Republikaaner right gets more desperate they will necessarily become more violent. I'm not really laughing at this,....at all
So using this logic the millions of liberals who had "Not my President" are guilty of sedition and should be thrown in prison ASAP amiright?
I just love that all the Dems who spent years complaining at the top of their lungs about Bush and expousing how dissent was the highest form of patriotism are now shouting sedition.
Roll on you beautiful intellectually vacant hypocrits.
Saying that the president does not represent your views is not unpatriotic. Calling for the assassination of the president, for a military coup, or for armed revolution fall into a different category, ones lefties seem not to have espoused during the past administration, so why on earth are you pretending that "I don't agree with Mr. X" is identical to "I call for the armed overthrow of the government we just elected."
This just confirms that the unifying theme of our current malcontents is their refusal to admit that we held elections less than a year ago. In which they could vote to put in exactly the person they thought would do best at a host of jobs, from president down to state rep and perhaps some local office like sheriff. The fact that their preferred candidate lost, or wasn't even running, does not invalidate the elections.
I spent years working for Bush (pere et fils) and based on what I've read about them (some of which is in their own words) I think the "Oath Keepers" are at best unpatriotic and at worst, a potentially dangerous organization. But, then, I felt pretty much the same way about the Black Panther Party.
Anna,
From what I can tell from your posts, you lean toward the left politically and are an Obama supporter. Can you reconcile that for me with your history of working for the Bushes?
Is the nomenclature of Bush (pere et fils) yours or did you steal it from someone else? Cause its pretty awesome, so major kudos if you did.
If memory serves, Maureen Dowd has used "pere et fils", but I don't know if she was the first. It's been kicking around for years. And it's not awesome, it's just French.
Dave @5:48, I could and will, but you'll have to buy my book, if I EVER finish it. The working title: "Inside Big."
JD @5:48, Maureen Dowd is an old friend, but the nomenclature comes from taking french in school, 4rth-11th grades. Still can't do much more than read a menu, but my daughter is fluent. Oh, and loving the Dumonts (pere et fils.)
Anna,
Again, from what I have gleaned from your posts here over time, you seem to have been done right by conservatives and Republicans at more than one point in your career (I think you mentioned working in PR for an oil company also, where -- I would assume -- you were hired by a conservative, since there aren't too many lefties at oil companies). And yet, here you are on the other team. Would a Republican official reading your story be wrong to decide that it was evidence in support of the proposition that minority outreach simply wasn't worth it for the party?
If your the same JD who posts at The American Scene you likely won;t last long here, Coates doesn't put up with disingenuous arguments and blatant trolling. Of course being banned will just reinforce your views of us close minded hypocrites, so you porbbaly will consider it a badge of honor.
So before you go I'm gonna call out your typical BS right wing false equivalency:
Saying you oppose the president's policy, didn't vote for him and then working to elect someone else is not the same thing as calling for an armed coup. And if you can;t see the difference then I don't know what else to say.
I do find it interesting that the first time you show up here is in response to a post calling out Pat Buchanan for blatant racism. Which far right loon site linked here?
Not the same person (I have seen at least 3 JDs posting at various political blogs) and I have posted here a lot of times before, but thanks for being a giant tool.
Still no response to either my post or Deborah's pointing out that people disagreeing with the president and trying to defeat him in a election is different from people calling for a military coup I see.
But I'm the tool for pointing out the absurdity of your false equivalency and calling us hypocrites. Whatever gets you through the night chief.
America was once THEIR country.
Do you expect anything less from a man who said that America was built by WHITE FOLKS ONLY?
The first to die in the AMERICAN REVOLUTION WAS A BLACK MAN.
Black folks have fought and died for this country in EVERY SINGLE MILITARY CONFLICT, and pretty much until 1965, they were doing it for a country, that, on its books, in its laws, said THEY WERE SECOND, IF NOT THIRD CLASS CITIZENS.
NO, we're not going to the back of this bus.
NO, we're not going to let you shit on us.
NO, we're not going to shin and grin for you.
WRONG DECADE, MOFO.
Rikyrah love.
In a recent post elsewhere I wrote,
The new movement Buchanan mentions in the piece you linked to may be an early example of this.
I'm having a hard time linking your post to the topic...could you please tell me what you mean by this?
Try reading the Buchanan piece Ta-Nehisi linked to above and then reading my comment again.
I did, and now i see it...but i stil don't think they're that rational to begin with...i may be wrong...
My guess is that Pat has people like me in mind when he wrote his piece. At the very least, I suspect that I'm closer to those that Pat is trying to speak for than most of the rest of the posters here. And I'd say he misunderstands the folks whom he's trying to depict. Taking Pat's final paragraphs, I would re-express them as follows.
We don't mind the purging of Christian faith (or Islam) from public classrooms when the academic curriculum is being taught, though we do mind the banning of expressions of faith in situations where students are otherwise free to express their personality (e.g. in school clubs, plays, speeches, etc). The schoolhouse is not just an academic facility, it is also a community center. We don't mind the mocking of faith in Hollywood, but we miss the Hollywood-produced counterpoints to that mockery (the religious epics of the 50s). We actively support the new low-budget non-Hollywood Christian film industry. For many of us, myself included, these are the only kinds of movies we have actually bought cinema tickets to see in the last few years (for other stuff, we wait for the DVD).
We worry alot about job losses. We don't resent third-world labor that can undercut us on price nearly so much as we resent taxation and regulation from afar (Washington mainly, but also Albany) that many suspect inhibits us from competing effectively in markets where our proximity to the customers could outweigh foreign labor cost advantages. We also know that many of our jobs are due to foreigners buying our products, and we appreciate that (and would like a foreign policy that encourages exports). From our point of view, working in an export-oriented industry is a step up in the pecking order of comparative workplaces.
We don't resent social spending (we all know folks that have been helped by it), but we cannot comprehend policies that make a portfolio of government stipends of various kinds a practical alternative to work. Especially among the able-bodied unmarried young of both sexes, we don't understand why enlistment doesn't seem like a natural alternative for those who cannot find steady work, or why it isn't more broadly promoted for its social benefits. Most of us would support a draft, perhaps with some sort of civil-service or Peace Corps option, because we think it would build a stronger and more unified society (and guide many troubled youth through the most dangerous years of figuring out what to do with their lives).
We are very suspicious of Wall Street, which we do not equate with capitalism or free markets. Not only are we suspicious of bailing out Wall Street, and their huge bonuses, we even suspect that their ordinary paychecks are somehow ill-gotten gains. (I don't personally believe this, but many, perhaps most, of my friends that fit what I think Buchanan is trying to represent cannot comprehend how the financial sector of our economy "earns" anything).
We do have a sense that America of the past was somehow more broadly in tune with our values, but that sense does not have a racial dimension. Most of us are aware of the basic demographics, that the enslaved ancestors of black Americans arrived in this country before 1850, while our immigrant roots usually go back no further than the 1880s (we are not the coastal elite, who cling to some vanity that they have one ancestor who was already in America in 1776, nor are we even typically of British descent). Yes, we're mostly white, but we don't attach any significance to that. We're much more likely to think of ourselves in ethnic and denominational terms when expressing our identity.
Don't know if this helps, but to the extent that many commenters here seem hostile not only to Buchanan but also to the bitter white gun-clingers, I thought I'd paint a different portrait of us than Pat paints. Not necessarily one you'll like, just different (and I think more accurate).
There isn't much in here to object too, I disagree with some of your views, but they are legitimate disagreements as opposed to objectionable ones if that makes sense?
For example you say: We don't resent social spending (we all know folks that have been helped by it), but we cannot comprehend policies that make a portfolio of government stipends of various kinds a practical alternative to work I say 1988 just called and it wants it's stereotypes about welfare queens back.
The problem is I don't see anyone on the Conservative leadership side espousing things the way you are. Instead you have Palin and Huckabee trying to out demagogue each other.
Hi Eric!
Thanks for the nonobjection. WRT portfolios of government stipends, it's not 1988 calling, it's people we know today. If you don't know anyone with long-term welfare dependency, then good for your community, they've got something going right. But it still happens.
Welfare queens (your term, not mine) they're not, in that they're not living the high life, nor even an easy though modest life, in any sense. But they're still in a spiral where their main focus of forward planning is figuring out how to manage their participation in various programs, rather than breaking out of the spiral altogether.
They are also a fraction of a percentage of the population.
That is all I am saying, I'm much more worried about the working poor who don't have health care and so on.
It is a matter of priorities, do I wish there were no people manipulating the system? Sure, but given all the much bigger problems we have to worry about I'm not gonna lose sleep over it, this is one of those classic cases where it likely costs more to make sure we catch every cheater than the cheaters cost us.
The entire welfare budget (and the majority of people on it are not abusing the system) is a rounding error in the total federal budget. Haliburton alone probably wastes more of our money than all the Welfare frauds combined, let alone the rest of the military industrial complex. It is a matter of where the biggest problems to fix are
PS on conservatives and leadership, it is a long-standing complaint among us that because we think politics has cooties, only the already infected among us ever run for office.
Seriously, though, conservatives had much better leaders when public office paid so poorly that you couldn't be a career politician. Many of us would run for office after retirement, for public service, but we cannot elbow the young whippersnappers out of the way who want to do it for a living.
Hi Eric!
Simultaneous postings there, I guess. Anyway, I'm not talking about welfare cheats, or fraud. I'm talking about a system of incentives that catches people in a net that destroys their life even though they are responding logically, and legally, to the choices they face.
How many, or few, they are is in this sense irrelevant. Policy can be better regardless of the numbers, but it is against the nature of bureaucracies to steer people toward independence.
In response to your post, don't diss Halliburton, or at least not their Brown & Root subsidiary. They are a godsend when we deploy downrange. My quality of life goes up 10-fold when B&R shows up, and in one deployment where I was responsible for camp contracting I can confirm that no matter how much they might have wasted, they cost a puny fraction of what we would have paid to do the work ourselves.
The irony of welfare is that it was institutionalized in its most objectionable form by Nixon, who ended much of the proactive segments of the LBJ War on Poverty and played both political ends of just sending out welfare checks against the middle. I have always hated the welfare system - from "the left" - because it didn't focus on work and education in exchange for government assistance. I think this was deliberate - especially on Nixon's part - because a more comprehensive program of assistance, training and jobs would have cost more and perpetuating a class of people dependent on welfare was a political winner for the GOP, even though they had a hand deep in it (Daniel Moynihan, a "centrist" Dem who worked for Nixon and was early on a darling of the fledgling neoconservatives, was the theorist of "guaranteed income.")
Halliburton's KBR a "Godsend" ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Leigh_Jones
I don't see how this is necessarily at odds with the America Pat Buchanan has in mind. Aside from the fear-mongering. Most white populists I know are decent people, not unlike other people. But that does not divorce them from Pat Buchanan's America.
What I take issue with is the sense that the racial dimension can be divorced with the 50s vision of America that many white populists hold on to. Yes, it was possible to support your family with a single job then but minorities of all sorts struggled and underlying all that was simmering discontent and class tensions. You're privileged to not have to attach any significance to the racial dimension of your identity. Good for you. Be nice if that was the case for everyone but that world's not this one.
Most of all, I take issue with the entitlement (I am hard-working and here longer mentality) that is necessary to feel progress is necessarily a zero-sum game. White populists have been screwed over for as long as America has existed but the only characteristic that holds true across it all is a sense of being besieged (or possibly besieged) by the other. This has simply never been the case, not the blacks, not the Jews, not the Lithuanians, not the Irish. I understand the bitterness of seeing industrial towns go to waste, that continue to go to waste as America turns into a country that is not "a maker of things," when the commodities that are worthwhile are intangible. It's how I would be if I came from that milieu. Bitter. Even so, I'm not suggesting that the populists feel entitled to everything, just to go back to the way things were, modest dreams and so forth without ever having to actively engage the foreign. Most of those folk don't understand that they're being racist. Like you said, they've never had call to comprehend a racial dimension, but that doesn't stop them from running away from communities with immigrants. They don't hate those people, at least not in an active sense in my experience, but they distrust what they stand for. And now the non-white people have a critical mass of power that there is no way to not deal with it. It's a scary world.
To reference John Carpenter from The Thing, "nobody trusts anybody, and we're all very tired." This is how I see the world of the white populist at this moment in time.
ps: I'm interested by this emerging low-budget non-Hollywood movie genre you reference. Namedrop a few. I've got Netflix.
"Be nice if that was the case for everyone but that world's not this one." Agreed. Let's make progress, together. I was just reacting to folks' racial-angle interpretation here of the sense that white populists are losing "their" country. We don't see that possession (whether it was ever "ours" or not is another matter), or that loss, in racial terms. A more precise way to express it is that we see the evolution (whether for better or worse) of the country away from that country that motivated our ancestors to migrate here. The interpretation that we mean "white people are losing the country" isn't accurate. We don't mean that. At least not among those I know.
Also, I think the use of "bitter" as an ajective is an exaggeration. Melancholy is more like it.
For new Christian cinema, maybe "Fireproof" is a good place to start. I still carry my ticket stub in my wallet, apropos of nothing much, just as a reminder I guess.
I’m so interested in your post, and I’d like to ask some questions about it.
“we do mind the banning of expressions of faith in situations where students are otherwise free to express their personality (e.g. in school clubs, plays, speeches, etc).”
Is this true? (I live in Europe.) Schoolkids still express faith through such means as wearing crosses, yarmulkes and hijabs, no? As you know, these are banned in France, for example.
“the mocking of faith in Hollywood”
What exactly does that mean? Is it mocking to express faith in a different way than you do? I don’t see many movies (as I follow two self-imposed rules: avoiding movies where the hero has a bigger bust than I and where there are lots of explosions). My favourite religious movie is “Dogma”, as it expresses so much love for God and humanity (amid the swearing) – would you call that mocking?
“Most of us would support … some sort of civil-service or Peace Corps option, because we think it would build a stronger and more unified society (and guide many troubled youth through the most dangerous years of figuring out what to do with their lives).”
This is what the President has said in several fora, and you know Michelle Bachman’s response. What other conservatives are touting this idea, and where?
“We do have a sense that America of the past was somehow more broadly in tune with our values, but that sense does not have a racial dimension.”
I am switching to comment here. Thinking that things were better in the past is a common delusion of aging, but “that sense” certainly does have a racial dimension (and a gender one). The Buchananites are like pre-1865 Southern whites, who, particularly if they were poor, always had a “mark of superiority” that could not be removed: a white skin. This safely kept them above the mudsill of society. When I was growing up in the South in the 1960s, people with white skins (and penises) automatically had advantages over people who didn’t. As long as nobody challenged the basis of these privileges, white men didn’t have to consider their nature or cease to enjoy them. Becoming conscious of the unjust privilege given to me as a white Southern woman was painful, and a wider playing field is scary, particularly if you fear you will lose the game. But fear is a bad basis for decision making.
I think this sense also lacks a historical perspective: the country’s history shows that each wave of immigrants viewed the next as a threat to the nature and values of the country, and each new generation of oppressed arrivals viewed the people just above them as the biggest threat.
Hi MSB!
Trying to answer:
(1) We're not at the point of dress restrictions, but we do often restrict, e.g., bible study as a club activity if it is affiliated with the school, conducted on school premises, etc. Clubs like that are on the debated edge of permissibility: some school districts, such as ours, permit student-led bible study after hours on school premises, but many others do not. An example of behavior that is over the line pretty much anywhere in the country is any non-trivial statement of faith givien in a valedictory address at a public school. Class valedictorians have to have their valedictory speeches screened by school officials to make sure God isn't thanked too profusely, and so on. There is a case (Erica Corder) that may be heard by our Supreme Court of a valedictorian who deviated from her approved speech text to make a testimonial statement of faith, and was punished by the school district under threat of denying her diploma. I don't expect her to win (or even be heard by the court).
(2) There are many schools of thought here: one camp sees hostility to Christianity in the explicit portrayal of Christian institutions and characters in movie scripts (especially when the Christianity of a villain seems cinematically gratuitous, not contributing to the plot), another sees exclusion or minimization of Christian influence in historically set movies where Christian faith was an important part of the motivation of real historical characters, a third focuses on movie and television themes that seem to promote everything from adultery to polygamy in a happy-go-lucky "why not" spirit. There is no one answer to what it means. To your question, I never saw "Dogma".
(3) The idea of a civil service requirement in conjunction with a draft is rather more like a job (and, like the old Navy recruiting ad said, an adventure) than what I've heard from the Obama administration. My children already have hours-of-volunteering requirements in middle school and high school. Our church lays on another similar requirement prior to confirmation. My daughter's college has such a requirement for freshman year. This kind of thing is nothing new to us, other than that the administration will tie some sort of tax credit or college work-study program to it. What my friends and I often talk about as an adjunct to a draft is programs to put people into ambulances as EMTs, into hospitals as orderlies, or out into the woods in the manner of the old Civilian Conservation Corps.
As for your comment, I think my larger point is that Buchananites actually don't exist, neither as he describes them nor as you do. Maybe they did in the south in the 60s where you grew up, I couldn't respond to that (too young, too northern).
What I interpret Pat saying really, in part, is this: it was o.k. when there were a few black people here and there, we could ignore them. But now that there are so many brown people(teh latinos) wait a minute, that shit's really scary now! There were so few of teh browns in the past, we could just ignore them too. But we can't really ignore them all like we use to.
We don't mind the purging of Christian faith (or Islam) from public classrooms when the academic curriculum is being taught
Well, I kind of do mind when what is substituted is "you can do whatever comes into your head next (including victimizing your weaker classmates) so long as you are careful to recycle your sodapop can."
We worry alot about job losses....
We are very suspicious of Wall Street, which we do not equate with capitalism or free markets. Not only are we suspicious of bailing out Wall Street, and their huge bonuses, we even suspect that their ordinary paychecks are somehow ill-gotten gains.
Me too, even though I am not affected.
My sense, as a member of the "coastal elite" (in this case, the west coast) is that the people in this country, as a whole, are not being given a fair deal.
Big trouble for everyone. News flash: this country is more than you and your six friends. We sink or swim together.
"This country was made for the white man not the black"-John Wilkes Booth
I guess that's the kind of company Buchanan likes to keep. If there are any teachers teaching a speech class, when you want a good example of demagoguery just show Pat's speech at the '92 Republican convention.
Another parallel between Booth and Buchanan is that Booth was rich as well; and both men have as much affinity with poor whites as I do with life on other planets.
The thing about Buchanan, more than most populist demagogues who trade in this stuff, is just how much authentic working glass "grievance" he touches on in the course of turning it into a race tirade. I haven't measured the crazy vs. the grains of truth in that particular column, but in fact he hits at a lot of stuff that bothers most of us - like the bank bailouts, the loss of industries and such - and exploits it to the hilt. Liberals should be careful not to simply dismiss a Buchanan just because he's obviously a resentful white ethnic, because he's got some cards in his deck that resonate beyond racism pure and simple and, in fact, have hit minorities even harder than his "traditional" Americans (like industrial decline.) This is what has always made Buchanan an object of fascination to me - while I listen to rightwingers like Peggy Noonan or George Will and know they're just tools of the GOP elite. Buchanan is a bit of a rogue from the conservative establishment, and not because he's more openly racist. Glenn Beck is an amped up version of Buchanan's craziest side, but there's also more than a bit of old-school conservatism coming from Pat - in the Kevin Phillips mold - that's actually on to some things that are, in fact, wrong with the country and rooted in bread-and-butter working class issues that liberals need to be more vocal about and not simply cede.
That's "working class" not "glass"...
When robber-baron Jay Gould famously told a reporter, "I can hire half of the working class to kill the other half," he might well have been imagining a rap like Pat Buchanan's. Rich people have held themselves out of the fray for generations in this country by transforming class conflict (which would be directed at them) into racial division (which workers direct at one another).
Also, the thing that's most bizarre about this particular tirade of Pat's is that he comes within a quarter inch of advocating revolution and justifying it by referencing the "revolutionary" movements of the '60s whose grievances were "understandable." I've often thought that in some weird way the current iteration of the activist Right has taken on the mantle of total alienation that screwed up the '60s left and played into the hands of Nixon and, ultimately, Reagan. The Teabaggers kind of reminded me of some of those Answer demos where every and any "left" grievance was represented in some form or fashion and the result was total incoherence. I guess for liberal Democrats this is the "good news" in this eruption of white resentment - it looks pretty crazy if you're not a true believer.
yeah a lot of the time it seems like the teabaggers and so on are bummed that they missed out on the fun nt he 60s and now want there turn to be cool.
Of course a not too subtle distinction is that in the 60s as misguided as their methods may have been people were protesting an unjust war and things like illegal bombings of Cambodia. Today's Conservatives are protesting that the government wants to give them health care...
Even weirder, if you've followed the loop-de-loop of right-wing beefs is when they protest that this is a conspiracy to cut Medicare. Until about 15 minutes ago "conservatives" were telling us that it was absolutely essential to cut Medicare. Of course, we're not dealing with conservatives, we're dealing with some combination of crazy people and totally disingenuous fronts for special interests.
Oh, dear God forgive me for saying I hate a perfect stranger, but DAMN do I HATE that man! I mean I viscerally despise Pat Buchanan.
Gay white male here, Irish/Italian-American with some German & English.
/end rant
Here a certain suburb of Los Angeles, decades ago in the bad old days, schools were apparently rather segregated (so the old timers tell me), and the good (white) schools were pretty good. Today, the well-known demographic change has happened and everybody who can send their kid to a private school, does. Yes, something has been lost. I'm one of the fortunate ones who is able to send my kids to an expensive private school. Interestly, most parents there are quite liberal. [Please don't ban me, TNC, I'm just reporting what I see].
@MikeJ,
Well, the question I would have is, what were the integrated schools like before "the fortunate ones" took all their kids out? Did desegregation ruin the schools or did the (voluntary) resegregation that followed do the damage? What do you think?
Black yank, amen to that. White flight does the most damage to the cities and the school systems. White people leave and take their tax dollars and their confidence and leave the inner cities abandoned. The basic tenet of working together holds true and we are seeing the damage of what fear and segregation has done to the whole of America. But we continue to discount what we see and cling to Uncle Pat's segregationist viewpoints.
White people can leave, but their tax dollars stay. At least that's the case here in NJ. Money isn't the X-factor.
@MikeJ,
Just want to add that the question at the end of my post wasn't rhetorical. I really would like to know what you think.
Yeah, what's been lost is trillions of dollars over the last 30+ years in the public purse due to the Jarvis/Gann "tax revolt" that decimated local, county, and state government in California.
Schools don't suck in California because of a demographic shift. They suck because reactionaries and wealthy interests decided they were tired of paying taxes 30 years ago, so they got Prop 13 passed, hamstringing government, making it nearly impossible to pass state budgets in Sacramento, and giving corporations essentially a permanent pass on property taxes if they hang around long enough.
First and foremost, the people Pat is speaking of have been screwed to the ground by the bait and switch of conservative economic policies and priorities since Reagan. From a military spending jones the likes of which the world has never seen for both useless boondoggles such as the Star Wars program to military adventurism that has landed us in two unbelievably costly wars. We are the world's military force, and one essential reason other nations can afford things like good health care is because they are not burdened thus economically.
In line with that, our Latin American policy during the end of the Cold War, most especially the Reagan years, and trade policies that followed, established an endless Latin American diaspora that led to the incredible emigration of peoples from Mexico and Central America. Until we recognize our impact on those nations, talking about an immigration policy is asinine.
We have via tax, trade, regulatory, and wage policies ceded our wealth to the upper 5 % of America's citizenry, leaving everyone else in massive personal debt--credit card, health care, home, college costs--even those who work for a living and earn what one would think is a lower middle class income.
So of course, working people from all backgrounds are disgruntled. Our nation is not doing an adequate job educating our children; it costs more than one earns to make a living; and whomever is in power appears to privilege the economic elite at the hands of future taxpayers. Never mind some people are really doing worse than others; they have no right to complain--they do poorly in school, they lack an education; they are a different color; they don't go to church; they want to strip us of our Constitutional liberties; they want to spread a homosexual agenda; they don't speak English. So on and so on. In the end, it is easy to project your fears on some lifestyle elite--Hollywood, or urban poor, or people whose skin color is different--than the policies whose representatives speak your language, look like you, spout overly simplified values you have been brought up to believe in.
Tax rates stay the same--protest tax hikes. The health insurance industry is screwing you, remember that government bureacracy is what you've grown up to be afraid of. In a world in which religious belief in a personal, moral God demands more of one's faith, fear science as a threat, focus in on abortion, while the issue of war is not questionned, because war is always against those who believe dirferently or are of a different color. God Bless America (and devil take the hindmost for everyone else).
Malcolm X said it best--bamboozled.
When you think about it, this is as if Americans are sending welfare checks to Europeans. It should be portrayed that way during election campaigns.
If we're talking about the US as the geographical area it now encompasses, it was also Spanish-speaking from the very beginning (before it was English-speaking in fact), not to mention the strong, active Native American resistance - strong enough to be a real and present threat to the state - well into the 19th century. What I mean is that it's not just a black/white thing, and I'd lay down money that this grassroots fear and anxiety Buchanan is drawing on springs as much from Latinos and other ethnic groups extending into areas of the country that had been white strongholds as from the election of President Obama. I have deep respect for the history of black Americans, and obviously we wouldn't be half the country we are without their contributions, but the picture is more complicated now (in fact always has been), it has more shades and more voices. If we don't move beyond seeing everything in terms of black and white we're just as stuck in the past as Buchanan and his blind followers.
Um, did any of you actually READ Pat Buchanan's article? It is difficult to take issue with his specific points, the main one of which is how intolerant of dissent we have become as a culture now that the past establishment is now the minority dissenters. Where we once rationalized the burning of neighborhoods by people with legitimate beefs, we now cannot tolerate a military man taking an oath to resist an order to round up his fellow citizens. That is all Pat is saying.