Dana Blankenhorn

The ghosts of hate

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 34 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One important point liberals conveniently forget is that, despite controlling the Presidency and Congress, they don't yet control the agenda.

The agenda is controlled, still, by the old Thesis. It's only after a new Thesis is validated, as the Nixon Thesis was validated by Reaganism, the FDR thesis by Truman, or the Lincoln Thesis by Grant, that the ability to set an agenda shifts. 

This is what makes life so hard for the leader of a new Thesis. His followers are rushing ahead of him, the media is making every analysis based on the old Thesis, and believers in that old Thesis are going crazy.

Seriously crazy. 

The death of James J. Kilpatrick last week is a good place to start the discussion. Kilpatrick was a conservative in a liberal age. He was an outright segregationist in the 1950s, but had to retreat from that position, as he retreated from others during his career. Ideological offense was not his metier which is why, by the time Reaganism flowered, he seemed antique. 

How does today differ from, say, 1994? It's important to note that Republicans today don't really have a coherent agenda, save opposition. They don't really have an agenda because everything that should be their agenda has been discredited -- tax cuts, foreign wars, "small" government, government as a business.

How can I prove my point to you? It's right here on this page. Just look at the left side.

Who is Phyllis Schlafly now?

Let's play The 1970 Game!

The myths, values and assumptions that make up an American political thesis are peculiar to their time and based in opposition to what appear on the surface to be inevitable trends.

Those who set their stall in opposition are natural idealists. While there is nothing wrong with ideals in the abstract, absolute adherence to them always leads to trouble down the road. Agendas change, the problems change, ideals become ideology, and things that made perfect sense a generation before now seem to make no sense.

To white suburbanites this is what the 60s were all about. They had left the crowded cities to gain more control over their lives and those of their children. Yet the violence and anarchy of those cities was following them, through the TV, into their very homes, into the minds of their children, and taking control in the form of long hair, rock music, and questioning of their authority.

This is the milieu Phyllis Schlafly came from.In 1964 her ideas seemed daring. Her greatest foes were other Republicans, like Nelson Rockefeller, and she was often disappointed that the Nixon Administration mainly gave her only lip service.  (Schlafly's Wikipedia entry offers a recent picture, but I think this portrait, taken from her 1964 book, is more appropriate. She was once, as they say, a babe.)

She organized, she persevered, and when the Nixon Thesis was validated (renamed Reaganism) she was in the forefront, still pushing society to conform more-and-more closely to her authority. She's still at it, well past her sell-by date, a sad and brittle figure, with an openly gay son.

This is not to dismiss her in any way. She is an important figure in America's political history. But she was never satisfied, and can never be satisfied. She is highly polarizing, and has always been so. As a politician she was a failure because she would not bend from her principles.

So who is Phyllis Schlafly now?