Far Right, Radical Right: Defining Terms

Do you ever get frustrated by the loose way we throw around terms like "far Right," "radical Right," etc? I do. Most of the stuff I read uses phrases like these without explaining what they're supposed to mean. That leaves me in the uncomfortable position of assuming that I know and/or agree, when maybe I don't.

If you had to pick one thing, one variable, that distinguishes the "far" Right from the "radical" Right, what would it be? What one attitude or behavior or ideology would clarify the difference, if any, between the US "far" Right and the US "radical" Right?

What about the one thing that distinguishes the "far" or "radical" Right from the regular garden-variety Right, or from "conservatives"?

What sparked my latest round of OCD was reading Heidi Beirich's review of a book about Willis Carto and the American Far Right (current issue of the Intelligence Report of the Southern Poverty Law Center). She castigates author George Michael for using such terms loosely. Well, he's not the only one. So I'm trying to work out a coherent typology--if only for myself.

While I'm emailing Heidi for clarification and discussion, do you guys have any thoughts? Please, pitch in if the subject interests you at all.

More on the Recent Assassination of AR Dem Party Chair

You know, the one that barely made the crawl on nightly TV news. Well, don't miss this post, on Orcinus. Here's the lead:

"Right-wing violence and mental illness"

"Cujo359, whose work I respect, has posted a challenge to me for characterizing the assassination of the Arkansas Democratic Party chairman as 'starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to "take out" more liberals.' [Yes, this was an FDL [FireDogLake] post, but since FDL isn't the appropriate place to post a lengthy and detailed response, I'm doing it here.]

"Obviously, in a post titled 'Looking For Hate In All The Wrong Places,' this was not a characterization I made lightly. In fact, I'd had a backstage disagreement with Sara over whether this case qualified as a politically eliminationist act--at the time, I didn't think the evidence was in. But, after gathering more info, including my own sources, I decided the case was looking increasingly like a political killing."

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Bookmark Religious Right Watch

From Religious Right Watch:

"The East Anglian Daily Times reports on Dr. Lee Marsden, Lecturer in Politics at the University of East Anglia, whose new book, For God's Sake, 'argues that the religious core values of Middle America have potentially disastrous consequences for both the United States and the planet.'"

He's right, except that the views of the Christianists are not universally embraced by all of Middle America, thank God. That's the good news. The bad news is that they are embraced by not a few of the most powerful men in Washington, including the President and four men on the US Supreme Court.

McCain, who earned my praise for denouncing the Christianists back when, did a complete U-turn this election in order to further his presidential ambitions. If he's installed in the White House, he will owe all to militant, uncompromising feudal Christianists who (seriously) believe that nuclear holocaust is a good thing because it will bring the Second Coming and that environmentalism is a slap in God's face because "He" wants us to exploit the planet. (And that's just for starters. After that? Old Testament-style theocracy, Talibanist views of women and GLBT folk, and of course white male supremacy.)

The combination of "owing all to" and "some of the most powerful men in Washington" is not a promising formula for planetary life.

If you aren't thoroughly familiar with the size, scope, wealth, power, and views of this dangerous extremist phalanx, and don't fully understand its hold on key US power centers, please: Get up to speed. This is the best site yet for that purpose. Check out the righthand column, link by link. Then you'll know what I've been yelling since the mid-80s: No, Virginia, they're not a lunatic fringe. They're the lunatic center who got into power because we were sound asleep.

Rightwing Ideology: The Other Bioterrorism

In their comments on "Why Would Any Genuine American Ever be a Rightwinger?" both AvenueFog and Morning Angel offered interesting observations. AvenueFog suggests that it comes down to perceptions of right and wrong. Morning Angel suggests that the answer lies in my post of June 17, "Should This Man be Our Next President?" I agree with both, but after having closely followed the rise of the Far Right in the US since the mid 80s, I see perceptions of right and wrong as only a small part of the story.

In earlier posts this week, I've offered some working definitions of "conservative" and "Rightwinger," and laid out the twin absurdities in the doctrine of "original intent"--i.e., that what the founders "believed" is knowable and matters. Read these if you haven't, because they will help make the following a little clearer.

Because we've undergone nearly 40 years of relentless on-message propaganda designed to discredit the great Liberal ideals on which the country was founded (fact, not opinion. See American Revolution, French Revolution, Enlightenment, etc.), and because W has directly attacked the Constitution many times and many ways in the last 7+ years, I say the Far Right isn't about moral positions. I say that the Far Right is the enemy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights themselves.

What the Far Right so dislikes is the fact that our Constitution explicitly empowers judges to correct legislative excesses and to interpret the meaning of the Constitution for each era. This Far Right's antipathy to constitutionally mandated judicial review is behind Bush's claim to a "unitary presidency" and behind the special pleading in that favorite conservative epithet, "activist judges" (special pleading means reserving for one's side that which one will not grant to the other. E.g., in the formula "only liberal judges are activist. Rightwing judges are never activist," highminded purity and adherence to the mythical "founders' intent" are characteristics of Rightwing judges alone.)

Why the antipathy? Because in the latter part of the last century, US Supreme Court judges have interpreted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in favor of minorities' claims to equality; women's claims to autonomy and free will; and the priority of the common good over the rights of the individual (as in environmental protection and gun control rulings). Liberals and progressives see these interpretations as the slow but steady march toward universal human rights. Conservatives and Rightwingers see them as full frontal assaults on white male supremacy and on the primacy of material possessions: property ownership.

Gay marriage, for instance, is a question of the constitutional meaning of equality--equal rights, equal protection under the law--a question of morality based on biblical interpretation, and a phenomenon inseparable from gender relations. Though they might not be consciously aware of it, Rightwing foes of gay marriage sense correctly that it destabilizes male supremacy. Let me repeat. It doesn't destabilize egalitarian heterosexual marriage. It does destabilize ideals of male supremacy and therefore those heterosexual marriages that reinforce male supremacy (not all do). How? Because homosexuality inherently demonstrates the fallacy of immutable social roles based on biological sex, it undermines doctrines of male supremacy and female inferiority simply because it exists.

Similarly, questions of the morality of homosexuality exist ONLY within a religious context. Therefore, legislative and judicial findings of the equality of LGBTQ persons to heterosexuals will inherently run afoul of fundamentalist belief. When they do, the Constitution itself guarantees advocates of LGBTQ equality of person, equal protection under the law, and the right to be free of somebody else's religious dogma. Unless Rightwingers can replace 230+ years of legal tradition with nonsense about "original intent" and "judicial activism," there will be legalized gay marriage. It's just a question of time. Ergo, gay marriage (equality for LGBTQ persons, actually) is among its top priority issues.

What I'm saying is that Rightwingers are fundamentally opposed to universal equality. That's not to say that some aren't also sincere religious fundamentalists whose objections are "faith based." It's to say that there's no daylight between fundamentalist religion and secular fundamental belief in white male supremacy. They are of a piece. Show me a form of religious fundamentalism that isn't profoundly sexist and racist, and I'll modify my views. Until then, I rest my case.

This thumbnail sketch of what I see as the nature of the division in America (actually, it's in many ways a global division, too) ought to suggest that the Far Right is not interested in compromise or bipartisanship. It isn't. As arch-winger Grover Norquist famously remarked (it's interesting that he chose a violent sexual metaphor) "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape." (An aside: That we are in a mortal war about sex privilege is underscored when the Far Right attempts to smear its opponents with questions about their masculinity or heterosexuality. If you doubt it, linger awhile on the Free Republic website and pay attention to the language. Or listen to John McCain's "jokes." (Follow the rhetoric, find the target.)

The only things that stand in the way of US Rightwingers intent on imposing their social, political, and economic doctrines are the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That is why I do not believe Rightwing ideology can ever be consistent with the ideals that make America uniquely America. Our nation was born out of and is forever grounded in the great Liberal ideals, making who we are anathema to the Far Right.

Unfortunately for us, Bush 43 has inflicted a series of grave wounds to both (separation of church and state, equality, balance of powers, consent of the governed, privacy, etc.). Harsh and demonizing Rightwing propaganda since the 1970s(and Rightwing media control, of course) has muddied the water for a goodly number of Americans.

We're dealing with the breakdown of an ancient, heavily layered problem formed of a mix of secular and religious socio-cultural ideas better suited to a time when male physical power made all the difference between a village's life or death. When that's no longer the case, anxieties about role and meaning can and do amplify to the point of hysteria. (See The Chalice and the Blade for a more nuanced version of this analysis.)

One thing is clear: One way to deal with anxiety of crisis proportions is through sumbolism and surrogates: domestic terrorism (illegal detentions and spying), permanent predatory wars of domination, "legitimized" torture, and money, sex, idealized violence (extreme fighting), rapacious environmental practices, and WMD as avatars: the economic, social, and foreign relations ideologies of the Far Right. They're the other bioterrorism.

Scary, isn't it?

Get busy. The US Supreme Court is on the line in this election, and as it goes, so goes the nation.

Conservative v. Rightwinger

Maybe it would help to define my terms.

I'm not sure everyone would agree, but my perception is that there's a continuum on the Right, just as there's a continuum on the Left. To wit, I see a huge difference between conservatives and Rightwingers. Because I see a fundamental regard for the Constitution on the part of genuine mainstream American conservatives, I generally respect them. I think of conservatives as Eisenhower, Bush 41, and Billy Graham--even Goldwater up to a point. We disagree, often profoundly, but we play by the rules and are more oriented to the common good than to any ideology. Compromise is possible, and one's religion is not to be imposed on anyone.

I think of Rightwingers, however, as Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, David Duke, Joe McCarthy, John Birch, Dick Cheney, Bush 43, Pat Robertson, and Karl Rove. Each without the slightest doubt openly disregards the Constitution and Bill of Rights and systematically seeks or sought to undermine them. The rules are Christianist-Corporatist Right uber alles, and all is fair in love and war. It's this crowd whose views and values are not consistent with our founding (defining) documents. And if they're not only consistent with, but also actively seek to dismantle the only things that make an American uniquely American, then how should I evaluate them politically?

This is the crux of the issue for me. I'm no more comfortable with Rightwing extremism than I am with Leftwing extremism, and for the same reasons. At some point that continuum makes a circle and joins ends. At that point, the mechanics and ends--justify-means fanaticism of Nazism and Maoism, of the Weather Underground and Timothy McVeigh really are indistinguishable even if the ideology and rhetoric differ.

What the Founding Fathers Believed?

Let's take this discussion about how any genuine (constitutional) American can be a rightwinger one bite at a time, for clarity and sanity's sake.

Responding to my post asking that question, Rightwing Reader (RWR) said this:

"Ok I'll bite. We obviously have very different views of what the founding fathers believed. For instance, they did not advocate for gay marriage, comprehensive welfare, social security, lack of personal responsibility, unions controlling schools, abortion, flag burning, open borders, experimentation with embryos, euthanasia, high taxes and a slew of other things. The reason I am conservative is that I believe in what they believed, staring with the right to LIFE, then liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

OK. Groundrules: We will remain civil and we will provide citations for assertions of fact. These are the rules, because without civility and without a solid and shared set of data, we'll soon end up in a hailstorm of useless accusations that harden the divide.

RWR, let me clear up a couple of things from the get-go. I didn't address "what the founding fathers believed" for good reasons (see following). I discussed the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So, no. We don't disagree about "what the founding fathers believed." We do disagree on appropriate policy for a variety of problems, and I disagree with your presentation of (I suppose you'd say) liberal positions. That said, it's not my intent or mission to change your mind about social policy.

Your comment about "what the founding fathers believed" is based on this assumption: that it can be proved that somewhere, at some time, all the founders expressed unanimous agreement on how to resolve all the issues addressed in the Declaration, Constitution, the Amendments, and the Bill of Rights, and on how the words in all these documents were to be interpreted forevermore. This is the conservative doctrine of "original intent." Debate about "original intent" has been with us from Day 1. It's not a new invention.

The facts are these: (1) The founders did not officially preserve the proceedings leading up to ratification. This is a matter of record. That's mighty odd if they actually universally "believed" their "intent" mattered even greatly, let alone more than anything.

(2) Madison, who is to conservatives what Jefferson is to progressives, and one of the greatest of the brilliant minds of the period, actually "subordinated original intent to other considerations, as when he said that the sense of the Constitution would be found 'in the proceedings of the Convention, the contemporary expositions, and, above all, in the ratifying conventions of the States.'" (Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution. Leonard Levy. McMillan, 1988. Pp. 5-29.)

Note well: For the greatest conservative mind of that era (and possibly since), the drafters themselves were not important. What counted were the RATIFIERS: the conventions of the States themselves. The reason is clear: it is the will of The People, as expressed in the acts of ratification, that makes these documents sacred to Americans.

Madison is also on record repeatedly noting that the meaning of the Constitution would emerge in discussions of The People over time. (Ibid., 21) He wasn't thrilled about that, but he knew that such is the nature of human language, life, and experience. This means that to Madison, The People are the "founding fathers." If you think--or think Madison thought--that The People agree on anything always and forever--possess original intent, we'll, we'll have to disagree.

[Correction: I had inadvertently left in the word "didn't" in this sentence when I originally posted it. It has now been deleted.] As to change, these brilliant men clearly did realize that the future would bring changes in technology, circumstance, science, common attitudes, etc., that would affect how The People would interpret the founding documents. Because they realized that, it seems clear that they also realized that the founding documents would necessarily be interpreted differently over time, in light of new circumstances affecting The People. Surely that's not arguable.

So: We know for a fact that the only things the founders agreed on was to sign the documents they drafted and to present them for ratification. Even then, many had reservations, which we know based on their letters and other writings. This is a matter of record, but for proof, I cite The Federalist Papers and also The Anti-Federalist Papers. There was wide disagreement even about ratification!

What they wrote about what they believed and thought (two different things, mind you) was sometimes unclear and confusing, as was how they lived their lives. Moreover, many of them are inconsistent between their writings and how they lived. Which of those would you say should prevail in an attempt to prove "what the founders believed"? Contradition, confusion, lack of consistency: Not surprising. They were human beings. To seek crystalline clarity and unanimity among them is to be bitterly disappointed.

What is significant is that they set aside their disagreements and reservations in order to sign the consensus draft Declaration, Constitution, the Amendments of their day, and the Bill of Rights and forward them for ratification. Therefore, these ratified consensus documents are what matter. Their personal "beliefs," other writings, and the history leading up to the ratification are interesting but can never provide the ultimate absolute unanimity and clarity that you imply.

The entire subsequent course of US law and legal theory is proof of that. It contains countless references to their disputes.

Some even warned us directly that their personal beliefs are irrelevant.

So, RWR, if you can point to the unanimous "founders' beliefs" document, signed and dated, of course, showing universal agreement on how all the words in all the core documents are to be interpreted, please do. Otherwise, refrain from basing your argument on the myth of what the founders believed. Because it is clear that whatever you or I say on that subject is only our personal interpretation based on what they wrote and didn't write. And my friend, as an American, my interpretation is as valid as yours.

Speaking both practically and philosophically, it doesn't matter what they believed. All that matters is what We The People joined together to ratify for posterity: The Declaration, the Constitution, its Amendments, and the Bill of Rights.

"What the founders believed"? Since there's universal disagreement among the founders, the concept is misleading from the get-go. Ever since the core documents were signed, there's been disagreement among Americans about their interpretation. That, alone, proves that they are living documents whether we like it or not. We continue to argue them because we are free, and because we too disagree on best courses of action for all these weighty matters. As long as we're humans, it can't be otherwise.

I submit that you and I disagree on how to argue them as well as on what the outcomes ought to be.

Why Would Any Genuine American Ever be a Rightwinger?

Yesterday's B-and-F with Rightwing Reader (see comments) reminds me of something I've been meaning to blog about for some time: What makes the average American take a hard-right turn?

All of us Americans grew up breathing the same constitutional air, with the same Bill of Rights, and the same cultural stories (I use the word in its large sense)about what America stands for, didn't we?

We are the Land of the Free. We're innately suspicious of government. We originated because of governmental abuse. We don't cotton to domestic spying, which we associate with Red Square and the KGB. That stuff's for the UN-free. Americans won't tolerate it. Freedom belongs to all Americans. It's our birthright.

All men are created equal. We know "men" means "people." All Americans are created equal. Well, OK, we might not be perfect, but we'll get there eventually because of our long tradition of believing that God created us all in God's image.

We have three branches of government because we don't want a king, we know that legislators make mistakes, and we need judges to balance laws against the intent of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We have 230+ years of legal tradition about what all that means. The idea that judges shouldn't play that role is anathema. It's why we created the judiciary as equal to the executive and the legislative.

We have freedom of religion. Quakers, Catholics, Baptists, and all the rest came here partly to get away from somebody else's idea of what religion ought to be. The last thing we want is an official state religion, because we know where that goes. Besides, no real American would tolerate anybody telling him or her what to think or what to believe.

Now, all this, and much more, is bred in the bone of Americans. So what can possibly cause an American, of all people, to turn his or her back on our founding values?

And more mystifying than that, what make any American think that today's generations--unfamiliar as we are with state oppression, inexperienced as we are in the reality of a state religion, innocent as we generally are (so far) of applied star chambers, domestic detention centers, systematic domestic spying, and genuine authoritarian rule--think for a second that we are wiser than the founders? Our founders experienced all these things, and for that reason, wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that have sustained us so well all these years. Our experience, and our education, are paltry compared with theirs. It's hard to imagine that we could do better at governing than they did.

I'm all ears. What offense in the last forty years was so great that it even conceivably justifies a revolution--think a 180-degree revolution--in the meaning of America? I'd really like to know.

They're All the Same?

"I wouldn't give two cents for all the politicians in Washington. It doesn't matter who we elect. They're all the same."

How many times have you heard that? Maybe you've said it yourself.

Well, here's my question: Is your viewfinder stuck on "Sex and Money"?

Excuse me, but if you think that, I have to ask: Did you OD on stupid pills?

No doubt about it, if you think Democrats and Republicans are "all the same" on disaster recovery, economic policy, renewable energy, global warming, social security, national security, public education policy, foreign policy, national security policy, government's regulatory role, gun control policy, job outsourcing, labor policy, export/import trade policy, environmental policy, civil rights policy, the status of women, interpreting the Constitution and Bill of Rights, immigration policy, tax policy, infrastructure, healthcare . . . .

Just how grave and extreme are our parties' divisions ought to be obvious. Even so, many still don't get that we've been living through a planned demonstration project in the conservative philosophy of government.

I'm not being partisan, catty, propagandistic, or rhetorical. This is fact that anyone can verify independently. Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and numerous other prominent Republican theorists and politicians will tell you so candidly. We're not talking about mere corruption. We're talking about destruction of government's potential through radical bankruptcy.

To get an overall orientation on this, see this piece (and don't be misled by the title or the sidebar). This is about two radically, diametrically opposite visions of America, and why "compromise" isn't in the cards.

I recommend giving this serious thought, particularly if you're inclined to see the election mostly in terms of national security. Important as that is, it's just one of enormously critical policy questions we're facing. The election will decide how we'll respond to our dying middle class, a warming planet, oil addiction and renewable alternatives, health care, retirement security, and foreign policy.

Read this piece. It won't take long, and it might help you frame the election question correctly, through the larger view.

Nailing the Left

This is the only time in this life or the next that I'll agree with Grover Norquist. From Sourcewatch, this about about and from that arch-Right corruptionist, co-architect of the today's predatory GOP:

Norquist is famous for his widely quoted comment that he wants to shrink government 'down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.' Norquist largely rejects relativism and is comfortable assigning the labels of 'good' and 'bad'. The pledge of 'no new taxes' that so many Republican legislators signed was his project. He holds regular meetings for conservative leaders in which strategy is discussed. He once commented, "We [the Right] play for keeps; they [the Left] play for lunch."

So it seems.

Required Reading Before the Election

It wasn't incompetence. It was systematic and it was planned.

What's happened to us and to Iraq in the last 7+ years was also predictable and inevitable given what we elected. This isn't news, but unfortunately, some of us still haven't gotten the memo, hard as that may be to comprehend.

So it bears repeating.

Naomi Klein gave exposed the stinking anatomy of so-called "free market" (Chicago School) economics. Thomas Frank now comes to help us get our minds around what happens when we elect conservatives to rule.

Well, there's a relationship between what they say they believe (shrink government and then drown it in the bathtub) and what they do when they're in a position to govern (Katrina, crumbling infrastructure at home: $85 Billion to war profiteers in Iraq).

Read The Wrecking Crew and The Shock Doctrine before the election, especially if you think John McCain is your friend. He isn't.