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The NSA slide that tech experts say Glenn Greenwald misinterpreted. (The Guardian/NSA, US Federal Government.) Glenn Greenwald has posted a response to his critics today, including myself, titled “;On PRISM, Partisanship, and Propaganda”: “In a Nation post yesterday,” he writes, “Rick Perlstein falsely accuses me of not having addressed the questions about the PRISM story.” Actually I didn’t accuse him of not having addressed “the questions,” but instead a single question, which he still does not address: whether, in his claim that corporations have allowed the National Security Agency direct access to their servers, he misunderstands the meaning of...

...So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of...

You don't have to agree with everything in this monumental account of politics in the 1960s and 1970s to find Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" (Scribner, 896 pages, $37.50) interesting and even engrossing. The book is a masterful retelling of the turbulent period between the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and the equally stunning loss by George McGovern to Richard Nixon in 1972. Mr. Perlstein's use of the elections of 1964 and 1972 as ideological goalposts may be arbitrary, but it is easy to see why he selected them. Could two such different countries really be...

Rick Perlstein, an unabashed man of the left, first attracted wide notice seven years ago with the release of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, his engagingly written and fair-minded study of the rise of the American conservative movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Last month brought the much-awaited publication of the second volume of Perlstein’s projected trilogy on American conservatism. Nixonland (Scribner), as should be obvious from the title, focuses on American politics from the mid-1960’s to the early 1970’s, a time and an era dominated by Richard Nixon. The Monitor asked Perlstein...

E Pluribus Nixon Seven years ago, Rick Perlstein, a young and decidedly left-wing historian, accomplished a daring feat: he imagined his way into the hearts and minds of the right-wing idealists who made Goldwaterite conservatism one of the most successful mass movements of the 1960s. The result was Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, a richly detailed narrative of the 1964 election, and a dense and dizzying account of a moment when America was teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown but didn’t know it yet. Now Perlstein has produced a sequel. If...

Superb political reporter and sometime blogger Rick Perlstein recently posted this: Shortly before she died, my grandmother—one of the people, naturally, I loved the most in the world—broke my heart. Celia Perlstein, like most of our grandparents, didn’t get out much in her final years; in fact, for the last few years of her life, I’m not sure she got out of her old folks home at all. I don’t think she really wanted to. She was sure that beyond its threshold lay dragons: far-far-far leftists out to steal her Social Security; turbaned terrorists just itching to fly a jet...

from the July 9, 2007 issue] For as long as I can remember, there's been a generally accepted story about the recent history of Democratic Party fortunes, a neat little morality tale that goes something like this: The New Deal majority fell apart when the party was taken over by forces outside the mainstream of American life. Getting blindsided by Reaganism was the party's just deserts. And if Democrats wanted the country back, they would just have to learn to become mainstream again. For as long as I can remember, liberals have been complaining about awkward, self-conscious attempts to recover...

Liberals Celebrate 'Decline of Conservatism' By Nathan Burchfiel CNSNews.com Staff Writer June 19, 2007 Washington (CNSNews.com) - Liberals who gathered for the fifth annual Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday declared conservatism to be in decline -- even "on the way out, "in the words of some movement leaders. "Despite a decade ... of domination by the far right agenda in Congress and the media and the political arena, they have been unable to bring the American people along," Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said during a panel discussion on conservative politics....

The centrist Democratic Leadership Council meets this week in Columbus, Ohio, with Senator Hillary Clinton the newly named chair of their newly launched yearlong "American Dream Initiative." Her mission: to come up with a new idea agenda for the Democrats. Recently our former national correspondent Rick Perlstein gave a speech to a group of powerful Democrats suggesting an agenda of his own based on his new book The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Against Become America's Dominant Political Party. Here, with some identifying details changed, is what he told them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The name of this...

The Case of the Ohio Recountemphasis added The game is still afoot in Ohio. -snip Meanwhile there have been the emotional hearings, led by ranking House Judiciary Committee member John Conyers, in which Ohio secretary of state and Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair Ken Blackwell was raked over the coals in absentia for answers to 36 questions about specific Election Day irregularities that Conyers posed to him in a now famous December 2 letter. The 36 questions are masticated endlessly in forums on democraticunderground.com —new outrages added each day, thousands of embittered idealists consuming the better part of their time in search...

The Boston Globe has asked five Democrats to explain what's next for the party. As with so many of these symposia, my favorite entry is the one that gives the worst advice. In this case, it's from Rick Perlstein, a Village Voice writer. He believes Democrats should declare war on Wal-Mart: "When heartland Americans are asked what they think is going wrong with America, 'Wal-Mart' is one of the first words out of their mouths." Why? Because there aren't enough of them? Because they wish the aisles were cleaned up a little better? No, because Wal-Mart is a corporate predator...

I decided that rather than giving my own gloss on this piece, I'd just throw upon the forum to comments from freepers who have read it and want to debate its realtive merit. Personally, as someone who has seen these "demonstrations" up close, I have to agree that they are both counterproductive and idiotic. I loathe John Kerry, but I almost feel sorry for him, given the inepitude and stupidity of the contingent that is representing his candidacy at the Republican National Convention, here in NYC. Though his take on the possible actions of the NYPD is grossly inaccurate and...

What all does it mean? The right-wing website Free Republic is infamous for galvanizing harassment campaigns against ideological enemies, but it also has a lighter side: a robust culture of George W. kitsch. "Freepers" display and study the famous photograph of Bush embracing Ashley Faulkner, whose mother perished on 9-11, a woeful, iconic look on his face ("The protective encirclement of her head by President Bush's arm and hand is the essence of fatherly compassion," Freeper luvbach1 writes); the ladies exchange snaps of the president in resolute pose, rendering up racy comments about his sexiness; they reference an image of...

BOSTON—The Democrats are the party of ideological whiplash. At the Boston Social Forum, a left-wing hootenanny before the national convention, you could find enthusiastic John Kerry voters attending a "hemposium" and hawking "Holy Land Olive Oil" (slogan: Support Palestinian Farmers). And at the palatial Wang Theatre downtown, you could find Democrats who don't think corporations should pay taxes. It was there that I sipped cocktails with Patty, a securities industries lobbyist who claims to be a Democrat. I asked her about a plank in the platform: "Under John Kerry and John Edwards, 99 percent of American businesses will pay lower...

Opening Statement Dear FRiends: I once suffered two great frustrations in being a freelance political writer. First, the loneliness: you put an article out there, and you might as well have thrown it down a black hole for all the response you get. Second, the ghettoization: when you do get response, it would be from folks you agree with. Not fun for folks like me who reliish--no, crave and need--political argument. Then came the Internet, the blogs--and: problem solved. I have especially enjoyed having my articles in the Village Voice posted on Free Republic by "dead," and arguing about them...

After participating in desultory debating sessions over his articles posted on FreeRepublic over the last few months, Village Voice writer Rick Perlstein announced his desire to have a one-vs-many, free-for-all concerning his articles and positions. What I'd love to do is set aside an entire day after that to take on all comers: just set up a thread where people have at me, and I type away in defense, all alone, like one of those, kung fu movies. Well, tomorrow (August 3rd) is the day. Many Freepers have expressed reservations about the debate. Some feel he’s trolling for dumb quotes....

-snip- In case you're wondering how the Rick Perlstein battle royale turned out, it didn't. Perlstein left a comment here on Friday night promising to return in the morning and dispense some leftist wisdom. Never happened. Wind Rider e-mailed him and asked when and whether he's willing to resume the debate, and received this response (emphasis mine): "I'm busy making a living. When I get back from the Democratic convention in Boston, I'll respond. Meanwhile join me at FreeRepublic.com on August 3, where I've arranged to take on all comers in a thread, kung-fu style. Looking forward to it. Regards,...

Here are some things that Christopher Nunneley, a conservative activist in Birmingham, Alabama, believes. That some time in June, apparently unnoticed by the world media, George Bush negotiated an end to the civil war in Sudan. That Bill Clinton is "lazy" and Teresa Heinz Kerry is an "African colonialist." That "we don't do torture," and that the School of the Americas manuals showing we do were "just ancient U.S. disinformation designed to make the Soviets think that we didn't know how to do real interrogations." Chris Nunneley also believes something crazy: that George W. Bush is a nice guy. It's...

George Bush is selling out Iraq. Gone are his hard-liners' dreams of setting up a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic republic, a light unto the Middle Eastern nations. The decision makers in the administration now realize these goals are unreachable. So they've set a new goal: to end the occupation by July 1, whether that occupation has accomplished anything valuable and lasting or not. Just declare victory and go home. The tyranny of Saddam Hussein will be over. But a new tyranny will likely take its place: the tyranny of civil war, as rival factions rush into the void. Such is...