skews13
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- Mar 18, 2017
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The founding premise of the modern conservative movement tracks back a generation before Stormer’s book to a Republican thought leader named Russell Kirk.
Kirk argued that the middle class was becoming a threat to America; without clearly defined classes and power structures — essentially without the morbidly rich in complete control of everything — he worried that society would devolve into chaos.
The opening chapter of his book was about Edmund Burke, the Irish conservative who wrote, in 1790, that hairdressers and candlemakers should not be allowed to run for political office or even to vote:
“The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot be a matter of honor to any person — to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature...”
Throughout the 1950s, Kirk and his warnings of the dangers of an activist middle-class developed a small following; the most prominent of his proponents were William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. Most Republicans, though, considered him a crackpot.
But when the birth-control pill was legalized in 1961 and the Vietnam War heated up a few years later, those marginalized groups Kirk had warned his wealthy white male followers about began to rise up in protest.
www.alternet.org
Kirk argued that the middle class was becoming a threat to America; without clearly defined classes and power structures — essentially without the morbidly rich in complete control of everything — he worried that society would devolve into chaos.
The opening chapter of his book was about Edmund Burke, the Irish conservative who wrote, in 1790, that hairdressers and candlemakers should not be allowed to run for political office or even to vote:
“The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot be a matter of honor to any person — to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature...”
Throughout the 1950s, Kirk and his warnings of the dangers of an activist middle-class developed a small following; the most prominent of his proponents were William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. Most Republicans, though, considered him a crackpot.
But when the birth-control pill was legalized in 1961 and the Vietnam War heated up a few years later, those marginalized groups Kirk had warned his wealthy white male followers about began to rise up in protest.
Behind the 60-year Republican plot to destroy American democracy
In a Daily Take here on Hartmann Report, I mentioned Russell Kirk and the origins of today’s hard right GOP. A few people replied with, “Who’s that?” and similar questions; others were incredulous that Republicans actually believed the middle class created by FDR’s New Deal was a bad thing. So...
www.alternet.org
