Information About the Right

This is Commonweal Institute's collection of articles, reports and resources for studying the right-wing ideological movement.

We hope that you can take the time to become informed on these issues, and inform others.

We also have a Progressive Infrastructure Information page with articles, reports and resources focusing on development of Progressive infrastructure organizations and a Progressive Philosophy and Values page, with articles, reports and resources focusing on Progressive philosophy and values.

Contents:

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Read this story on Huffinton Post here.

Thanks to the recent obvious failures of conservative policies when played out on the national scale, progressives now have an opportunity to win over many to their cause and redefine the political spectrum for generations to come. However, their potential will not be realized unless they move quickly. David Brooks' new piece, "The Republican Collapse," signals some of the tactics the conservative movement will use in defending itself and undermining the progressive advantage.

Brooks harkens back to the 18th Century philosopher, Edmund Burke in redefining and defending conservatism:

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Articles and reports focusing on the right-wing attack on the judicial system:

Hijacking Justice: The Federalist Society, a Right-wing network of lawyers, judges and supporters,
is undoing civil rights and other gains made through the courts,
George E. Curry & Trevor W. Coleman, Emerge, October 1999

Federalist Society Becomes a Force in Washington, Conservative Group's Members Take Key Roles in Bush White House and Help Shape Policy and Judicial Appointments ,
Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, April 18, 2001

A Hostile Takeover, How the Federalist Society is capturing the federal courts,
Martin Garbus, The American Prospect, March 1, 2003

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Like some kind of strange avatar of controversy, the pop singer Madonna from time to time bursts back into the national conversation, through carefully transgressive acts that can seem at once silly and yet revealing of our cultural preoccupations.  This month has witnessed a double-header.  Most visibly, her fast-tracked adoption of an infant from Malawi has generated lots of hyperventilating headlines about the unfair prerogatives and unseemly habits of celebrity.  Less visibly, but more importantly, she has once again offended religious sensibilities in a provocative stage performance – and this time lost.

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Ever since the Republican Party, in the 1960s, embraced the "Southern strategy" of appealing to middle-class and working-class whites opposed to the Civil Rights Movement, modern conservatives have had something of a race problem. That problem is Anglo Christian bigotry. Certainly, high-profile conservative leaders have made of point of eschewing racial language and denouncing overt prejudice. Political prudence explains this, to a degree, but so does, in many cases, a genuinely enlightened egalitarianism. The conservative "race problem," however, continues to reveal itself in two primary areas. First, there’s the fact that conservative economic policies have been hard on the lower income brackets and therefore disproportionately hard on African Americans. Moreover, the hard-right proposals on immigration reform in the House of Representatives promise to be equally hard on Latinos. Second, there’s the occasional embarrassing comment or episode which serves as a reminder of the dark association between conservative politics and racial intolerance.

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This paper uses Lewis Powell's 1971 "manifesto" as a framework for examining how the Right has gained power over the last 30 years relative to Progressives and Democrats.  Particular focus is on think tanks, universities, judicial system, and media and marketing.

Read the white paper here (PDF)

On September 2, as he spoke to reporters about the devastation along the Gulf Coast wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, President Bush deflected criticism of the administration's response to the crisis, and then said: "Now we're going [to the region] to offer comfort to the people." This may or may not have been an offhand comment, or a sincere one, but it hinted at a characteristic impulse of American conservatism: the impulse to sentimentalize in response to pressing civic problems, to practice a politics of the heart rather than of the head. That's not only or always true of conservatives, of course, but there's an interesting history to right-wing sentimentalism that deserves special consideration. 

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