A key dividing line between the Right and other political positions is its appeal to the people in opposition to political elites. In "The Revolt of the Elites," Christopher Lasch exemplifies thei right-wing populism. Lasch exudes praise for "the people," who seem drawn from a 1950s vignette of a Catholic working-class family. His ideal wife is depicted as packing her husband's lunch pail and then preparing her offspring for their departure to parochial school. Against this charming but archaic conception of "the people," Lasch portrays the elites who are besotted with vice and have no attachments to either nations or communities. The question that is never posed, and one that right-wing populists studiously avoid, is how did this Catholic working-class family permit social degenerates to take power? And why do they waste their hard-earned money on consumerist products produces by those whom they are supposed to despise?
TAC: Paul Gottfried
Thursday July 27, 2006
Paleocon Paul Gottfried questions the premises of right-wing populism:
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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But Conservatives don't like the People either.
The word, at least with a capital P, smacks of the mob, which the founding fathers dreaded. We've always liked the People best when it's tied down like Gulliver, bound by the many various restraits of piety, reverence for family, regional loyalties, local traditions, ancient predilections and taboos. These, plus the great unmentionable: a butt-kicking upper class.
Breathing a word of this aloud is politically impossible. I think this is a true story. A British Naval officer once stood for Parliament and made the strangest election promise I ever heard of: That if his constituents got out of line, he'd have them flogged. He lost.
So we flounder and wallow, in a state of either not knowing or not daring to declare plainly who we are and what we believe.
The War that is fast upon us may help us speak these matters.>
Hmm. The Gottfried passage strikes me as half-interesting, half-idiotic. Why the "charming but archaic" slap, for one thing? He's referring to an image (Catholic hubby, lunchpail, etc) that he has put in Lasch's mouth -- unfair, unfair. But, ignoring that .. What's archaic about the image? I'm often baffled by people who claim (or come close to claiming) that "things were never like that." I grew up in a house and town where the locks were seldom locked, divorce was rare, people knew each other and looked out for each other ... OK, so there was a little David Lynch stuff around too, but only on the far, far edges.
But Gottfried's got a good point when he asks why the People let the elites get away with the crap they get away with. Why indeed? Are the promises and the goodies too bewitching and irresistable? Are the People ever more stupid about how they're being rooked and taken advantage of? Are the elites ever more skillful at manipulation and exploitation? A little of all the above? Beats me.>
I actually give Gottfried the benefit of the doubt here. There is something archaic about that image - not beause it has lost inhernt value or isn't wholesome but because the dominant image of the "people" today is the exurbia chronicled by David Brooks - 15 yr old girls dressing like preppy prositutes, apathetic promiscuity, bedroom communities, souless McMansions and a commute that lasts an hour and ten minutes. If religion enters at all - it is as a prop - or it is a kind of baptized shadow of popular culture - the one that Evangelicals create - your best life today.
The image of the Catholic working class family values of 1950 is as far away from the "people's" ex-urban habits and morals as it is from today's elites.>
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