Vol. 3 No. 12 (April 2005)
Uncommon
Denominator
The Newsletter of the
Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"The ultimate test of man's
conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future
generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
-- Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day
CONTENTS
Talking
Points: Southern comfort
Wit and Wisdom: The trials of fifth grade
Eye on the Right: Conservative judicial activism
Check It Out Your ecological footprint
Quoted! Tony Perkins on skinning cats
Featured Article: Thomas Frank on liberals and class
Happenings: Monthly round-up
Endorsements: Jim Hightower
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor
TALKING POINTS
At a certain point in the 1990s, Americans may have looked around and noticed
that almost the entirety of their top political leadership consisted of
Southerners: The President (Bill Clinton of Arkansas), the Vice President (Al
Gore of Tennessee), the Senate Majority Leader (Trent Lott of Mississippi), the
Speaker of the House (Newt Gingrich of Georgia), the House Majority Leader
(Dick Armey of Texas), the House Minority Leader (Dick Gephardt of Missouri),
and the House Majority Whip (Tom DeLay of Texas) --
all hailed from former slave states. In 2005, we can add to that list the
President (George W. Bush of
This roster of Southern power has to symbolize one of the most remarkable
reversals in American political history. What makes the resurgence of
How can we explain this phenomenon, this turn of events, this
new political reality? What has enabled the South to rise phoenix-like from the
ashes of the Confederacy to now dominate American political life?
Any answer to those questions is enormously complex, but it must involve both
the raw politics of the late 20th century and the intangible cultural mythology
that has surrounded the South ever since the early 19th century.
Politically, the watershed moment for the South was the 1972 election, in which
the Republican "Southern Strategy" bore fruit - fruit of a strange
and bitter sort for Northern liberals. This strategy, which precipitated a
fundamental political realignment in the country, brought a generation (and
more) of Southern whites into the Republican fold by fomenting and exploiting
latent public opposition to the Civil Rights movement. Since then, the South
has hardened into a fairly predictable voting bloc, sending an assortment of
conservative Democrats but mainly Republicans to state capitols and to
Helping to drive this realignment has been a steady influx of population into
the Southern states. This process began in the 1980s and hasn't slowed down.
Indeed, the U.S. Census Bureau this month released projections that 88 percent
of the country's growth rate between 2000 and 2030 will occur in the South and
West, with particularly big gains in
Yet the gravitational political pull of the South would not have reached
critical mass were it not for the long cultural history involved, and more
importantly, the usability of that history in shaping public perceptions.
To speak of a collective Southern mentalité invites
charges of broad-brushing, but under the pressures of its dark past, of
crushing defeat and tortuous renewal, the South has developed a greater sense
of common history and common purpose than any other section of the country,
with the possible exception of its long-standing nemesis,
Take, first of all, the South's pronounced sense of grievance, of resentment at
external interference, of humiliation and self-acquittal. Stretching from
Edward Pollard's "The Lost Cause" in 1866, through William Jennings
Bryan's criticism of outsiders in the Scopes trial of 1925, through the attacks
on civil rights workers in the 1960s, all the way down to the Confederate flag
controversy, this prickly Southern defensiveness has a doomed and pathetic
quality to it. Yet at the same time, it appeals to the preference for the
underdog that runs deep in the American nervous system. Part of the reason that
Al Gore (to whom the taint of
This underdog image helps to explain the South's populist appeal, an appeal
that draws on the contrast between the rural or agrarian sectors of American
culture and the urban "elite." Even if the actual economic policies
of Southern conservatives favor the wealthy, a drawl, a shaky command of the
language, and a preference for the simpler pleasures signal a
distaste for elite values. This has shaped a political affinity between
South and West, because many people from rural areas in the West, tired of not
being heard, will gravitate toward someone they perceive as more like
themselves, as rough-hewn, as free from affectation. The John Adams-Daniel
Moynihan line of Northeastern refinement doesn't play so well anymore, mainly
because it comes across as arrogant and classist -
regardless, again, of the actual policies. (It is significant, in this connection, that the decline of
In turn, the Southern brand of populism draws on ideas of masculinity that
emphasize military or physical prowess (whether in the form of West Point
cadets or Texas cowboys); a vaunted code of honor, gentility, and noblesse
oblige (most fully embodied in Robert E. Lee and Rhett Butler); and the
superiority of traditional gender roles to modern feminism (witness the pedestaled avatars of ethereal or sacrificial Southern
womanhood). A barely concealed subtext of attacks on Northeastern liberals is
that they are not tough enough or manly enough (think of John Kerry's desperate
attempts to be photographed duck-hunting), or not sufficiently protective of
their womenfolk (think of Michael Dukakis's anemic response in 1988 to a
question about his wife being assaulted).
Then, of course, common Southern values, beliefs, and attitudes regarding
religion and government align with a deep strain of conservatism in American
culture more broadly. The Second Great Awakening of the 1820s and 1830s spread
churches across what we now call the "Bible Belt," and it is on this
geographic and cultural foundation that modern political evangelicalism -- with
the help, again, of the media -- has reared its formidable edifice. At the same
time, the American antipathy toward centralized government and arbitrary
authority has found dramatic expression in the South's blend of states'-rights
and laissez-faire ideologies. The fact that Southern politicians have proved
relentless in grabbing and holding onto federal power, and are favorably
disposed toward government moralism, is rather beside
the point, because what we're talking about is image rather than reality.
Which brings us, finally, to the image problem of Southern politicians when it
comes to race - or more accurately, when it comes to the long aftermath of
slavery in their region and the backlash against civil rights. Needless to say,
their image problem is so bad in this respect precisely because the reality has
been so bad for so long. Yet conservative politicians are doing everything they
can to play down this reality, pretending that their economic policies are good
for the African American community, and even going so far as funding African
American "front" organizations. (On this phenomenon of
"black-washing," see Joshua
Holland's article in The Gadflyer).
The idea, evidently, is not to make serious inroads into the black vote, but to
address the general reputation for intolerance and racial prejudice that has
hurt conservatives, particularly Southern conservatives, with the white vote.
At the same time, they don't want to become so racially enlightened as to
alienate their core constituency of white southern males in pick-up trucks. For
a vivid illustration of the dilemma, just visit the official website of Haley Barbour,
former chairman of the Republican National Committee and current governor of
The general point of all this is that the political fortunes of the South today
are not just a matter of demography and tactics -- although those are important
-- but of how the cultural values and cultural mythology of the South have
entered into the political scene and been deliberately utilized. Conservatives
have proven adept at making the most of the South's appeal (from barbecue and
blues to grievance and religiosity), while mitigating the South's sins and
failings (especially racism and ignorance).
One of the most penetrating, if not empirically rigorous, perspectives is that
of W. J. Cash, who in his controversial 1941 classic The Mind of the South
offered this summary of the region's virtues: "Proud, brave, honorable by
its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal, swift to act, often too
swift, but signally effective, sometimes terrible in its action - such was the
South at its best." Then he tabulated the region's vices: "Violence,
intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for
analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an
exaggerated individualism and a too narrow concept of social responsibility,
attachment to fictions and false values, above all too great attachment to
racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of these
values, sentimentality and a lack of realism." He expressed his hope that
in time "its virtues will tower over and conquer its faults," but
whether that's the case remains an open question. If the current slate of
hard-right policies is any indication, the vices are alive and well.
More recently, in a study titled Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping
American Values, Politics, and Culture, Peter Applebome
has put his finger on the peculiarly compelling force of the South in the
American national imagination: "The South has been a lightning rod for our
fondest hopes and worst fears -- a shadow theater for national guilt -- a place
to stow the bloody rags we didn't want to see; a scapegoat for our worst
failings; a model of an imagined, perfect past; a hypothesis for a nation
redeemed or a nation damned."
Progressives, as always, need to know what they're up against, and they need to
know how to communicate with those voters on the other side of the cultural
divide. The South has never represented the nation's progressive edge -- quite
the opposite -- but the case still has to be made that progressive policies on
everything from education to the environment to social security will provide
more tangible benefits to regular Southerners than will conservative policies,
and that the desire to distribute these benefits widely reflects a robust set
of moral values: compassion, fairness, equality, opportunity. In particular,
progressives from the blue states need to listen attentively and nonjudgmentally to how successful Southern progressives
speak to their regional compatriots, in order to understand how progressive
values are understood and expressed by those native to southern culture.
This may be a dark hour for progressives, but the cause is far from lost.
WIT AND WISDOM
Fifth Grade
Science Paper Doesn't Stand Up To Peer Review
"Decatur, IL - A
three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski's
fellow classmates at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed
Tuesday that his 327-word essay 'Otters' did not meet the requirements for peer
approval.
"Nogroski presented his results before the
entire fifth-grade science community Monday, in partial fulfillment of his
seventh-period research project. According to the review panel, which convened
in the lunchroom Tuesday, 'Otters' was fundamentally flawed by Nogroski's failure to identify a significant research
gap."
--
from The Onion. Read more.
EYE ON THE RIGHT
When was the last time -- outside of a political science seminar -- that you
heard the phrase "conservative judicial activism"? In connection with
the
With all the talk now, in the wake of the Terry Schiavo
case, about "out-of-control" judges, and "reining in" the
judiciary, and the "nuclear option" of revising Senate filibuster rules,
it is worth taking a closer look at the idea that the nation's courts are
stocked with renegades. One of the more muscular tentacles of right-wing
Conventional Wisdom is the notion of "activist liberal judges," a
phrase that (by design) evokes images of Perrier-sipping ideologues running
roughshod over the will of Congress and therefore over the will of the American
people. Like the myth of a "liberal media," it has been used to great
effect in turning public attitudes not only against the policies that
conservatives oppose, but against the institutions and individuals that do not
hew to the conservative line.
What we've seen in recent years, however, is a sharp rise in conservative
judicial activism, with federal jurists appointed by Republican Presidents
exerting power from the bench much more aggressively. In addition, the
appointment of activist conservative judges is likely to increase in coming
years because the conservative movement has created a system for grooming young
lawyers and jurists and training them in conservative legal ideology. This
system, involving such groups as the Federalist Society, represents a veritable
pipeline leading from right-wing think tanks to the nation's courts, not to
mention state legislatures and Congress. The next generation of conservative
law students, in a way that their liberal and moderate counterparts can only
envy, enjoys the support of an incredibly well-funded institutional
infrastructure that is paving the way to political power - through contacts,
clerkships, publishing opportunities, and what might be called ideological
mentoring.
These facts need to become part of the conversation that Americans have about
the judiciary. What is at stake are not just
individual cases and decisions, but the ability of the government to respond to
social, economic, and environmental challenges. Since federal judges are
appointed for life, the ones that take office today could serve for as long as
30 or 35 years, and their decisions will be felt for generations. That explains
why the current battle in Congress over judicial appointments has become so
fierce, and why conservatives are taking off the gloves now, while they control
both the executive and legislative branches, in order to get every one of their
appointments through. It also explains why moderates and progressives need to
stand firm in the face of the juggernaut. The stakes are simply too high.
So what is "judicial activism"? Essentially, it refers to the
willingness of judges to overturn laws -- and to their actually doing so. Then
it gets more complicated.
In its classically "liberal" form, judicial activism has implied an
approach to the Constitution that emphasizes the ambiguity of language,
recognizes the flexibility of meanings and circumstances, and tries to respond
to the spirit of the document. In certain cases it has resulted in the
establishment of legal principles, such as the right to privacy, which are seen
to "inhere" in the Constitution, despite the fact that the words
themselves do not appear there. What conservative commentators have done, with
the
But stop right there. Conservatives have their own brand of judicial activism,
no less ideological and no less influential. It is distinct in its methodology
(tending toward a narrow interpretation of text) and in its values (tending to
give priority to property rights over civil rights, for example). Yet when it
comes to the fundamental action of activist jurisprudence -- the overturning of
laws -- conservative and liberal judges are equally powerful. We should evaluate
their decisions, therefore, not just on abstract principles of jurisprudence,
but on a real-world assessment of who wins and who loses, of which interests
are served and which oxen gored.
Consider: According to
For instance, if the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation had been
thrown out, the decision would grounded itself on the
civil liberty of free speech, and might therefore be coded as
"liberal." Yet the rationale would be based on a
"conservative" interpretation of the first amendment, namely that
spending money is a form of free speech. So the better way to understand such a
decision would be to look at its practical results in the political arena. In
this hypothetical case, overturning McCain-Feingold would disproportionately
benefit conservatives by keeping open the pipeline of corporate money to conservative
office-holders.
These caveats and complexities, however, should not obscure the central point.
A judicial activism based on conservative principles and serving conservative
interests is making itself felt in a wide range of
policy areas, from affirmative action to environmental regulation to electoral
procedure. The canard that liberal judges rule the roost is as misleading as
the myth of liberal media bias. And it will only become more so as the Senate
attempts to ram through President Bush's judicial nominees.
CHECK IT OUT
If you've ever wondered, while filling up at the gas station, or trolling the
frozen foods aisle, about your own personal impact on global resource usage,
you might be interested in calculating your individual "ecological
footprint." This is a concept that, as described by the environmental
organization Redefining Progress, "measures the amount of renewable and
non-renewable ecologically productive land area required to support the
resource demands and absorb the wastes of a given population or specific
activities."
Redefining Progress continues: "From a sustainability perspective, when
humanity's Footprint exceeds the amount of renewable biocapacity,
a draw-down in natural capital is required and this is considered unsustainable.
Global Footprint accounts over the last forty years indicate a twenty-five year
growth trend beyond the amount of renewable biocapacity.
In short, humanity's Ecological Footprint appears to have breached ecological
limits and is thus unsustainable."
To assist people in understanding their own place in humanity's impact on the
global environment, Redefining Progress has created an "ecological
footprint quiz," consisting of 15 questions about your lifestyle habits,
which "estimates how much productive land and water you need to support
what you use and what you discard." The results may be sobering. Check it out. (You might also want to
visit another version of the quiz at http://www.bestfootforward.com/footprintlife.htm).
QUOTED!
"There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to
take a black robe off the bench." -- Tony Perkins, president of the
conservative Family Research Council, according to an audiotape of a March 17
session that was made available to the Los Angeles Times. Prominent among the
cat-skinning alternatives that the FRC discussed with Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was the option of defunding
federal courts whose rulings they do not agree with.
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from Thomas Frank's
"What's the Matter with Liberals?" which appeared in the May 12
edition of the New York Review of Books.
"For more than thirty-five years, American politics has
followed a populist pattern as predictable as a Punch and Judy show and as
conducive to enlightened statesmanship as the cycles of a noisy washing
machine. The antagonists of this familiar melodrama are instantly recognizable:
the average American, humble, long-suffering, working hard, and paying his
taxes; and the liberal elite, the know-it-alls of
"Conservatives generally regard class as an unacceptable
topic when the subject is economics-trade, deregulation, shifting the tax
burden, expressing worshipful awe for the microchip, etc. But define politics
as culture, and class instantly becomes for them the very blood and bone of
public discourse. Indeed, from George Wallace to George W. Bush, a class-based
backlash against the perceived arrogance of liberalism has been one of their
most powerful weapons. Workerist in its rhetoric but
royalist in its economic effects, this backlash is in no way embarrassed by its
contradictions. It understands itself as an uprising of the little people even
when its leaders, in control of all three branches of government, cut taxes on
stock dividends and turn the screws on the bankrupt. It mobilizes angry voters
by the millions, despite the patent unwinnability of
many of its crusades. And from the busing riots of the Seventies to the culture
wars of our own time, the backlash has been ignored, downplayed, or
misunderstood by liberals.
Click here to read the whole
article.
HAPPENINGS
CI Co-Founder Katherine Forrest participated in a panel discussion April 13 at
ENDORSEMENTS
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motion. The folks at the Commonweal Institute do the heavy mental lifting so
agitators like me can arm ourselves on the front lines
of the ideological battles taking place every day in
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2005 The Commonweal Institute
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