Posted on 04/11/2017 10:54:03 PM PDT by BunnySlippers
A historian of conservatism looks back at how he and his peers failed to anticipate the rise of the president.
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Until Nov. 8, 2016, historians of American politics shared a rough consensus about the rise of modern American conservatism. It told a respectable tale. By the end of World War II, the story goes, conservatives had become a scattered and obscure remnant, vanquished by the New Deal and the apparent reality that, as the critic Lionel Trilling wrote in 1950, liberalism was “not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.”
Year Zero was 1955, when William F. Buckley Jr. started National Review, the small-circulation magazine whose aim, Buckley explained, was to “articulate a position on world affairs which a conservative candidate can adhere to without fear of intellectual embarrassment or political surrealism.”
Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society, anti-Semites and supporters of the hyperindividualist Ayn Rand, and his cohort fused the diverse schools of conservative thinking — traditionalist philosophers, militant anti-Communists, libertarian economists — into a coherent ideology, one that eventual
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Uses the word “Obtuse” twice, within two paragraphs, compares the Trump phenomenon to the Klan and Anti-Semitism.
Jerk off and ahistorical...(I invented that word..not really”
coruscating
The author of the OP argues that political historians as well as historians tend to be liberal. That is code for the common liberal allegation that conservatives shun academic studies. In truth, academia shuns conservatives and hires liberals.
He further argues that such historians are prone to “politesse” and says, “It’s no surprise that we are attracted to polite subjects like “colorblind conservatism” or William F. Buckley.”
If one can overlook the OP’s astounding assertion that liberal historians fail to understand conservatives because the historians are prone to formality and polite inquiry, one can easily run into numerous false and self-serving assertions in the article which demonstrate increasing rations of intellectual dishonesty.
Trump proved him wrong, but Perlstein still didn’t learn his lesson, because his article demonstrates he still doesn’t understand the American right. And he never will.
” My first book, “Before the Storm,” was about the rise of Senator Barry Goldwater, the uncompromising National Review favorite whose refusal to exploit the violent backlash against civil rights, and whose bracingly idealistic devotion to the Constitution as he understood it — he called for Social Security to be made “voluntary” — led to his crushing defeat in the 1964 presidential election.”
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Idiot. After JFK’s death there was no way LBJ wouldn’t be elected, it was a “memorial” vote.
If you’re a liberal you’ll never ever “understand” the American right. Everything about liberalism is based on greed and emotion. So common sense like conservatism doesn’t penetrate.
Oh, and he also commandeers the KKK as a confusing element of conservatism!!! Yet the KKK was born and fostered among the Democrats!
I found the article disturbing ... but considered the source.
Perlstein
Handsomely ignorant of his own inherent bigotry
Incredible. Senator Byrd, a former KKK leader, was a Democratic senator revered by his democratic peers! But this warped OP author lovingly paints conservatives with the filth cultivated among the Democrats. Worthless essayist and faux intellectual OP author!
Trump didn’t run as a conservative.
He ran as a populist.
$1 trillion on infrastructure spending.
Main thing are the SCOTUS picks. That’s why we desperately needed Trump to win.
Hope his presidency doesn’t become George W. round 3 with pointless wars.
Pure hatred. Has to invoke the pro-isolation (pro-Hitler) rallies before WWII, the 1920’s KKK, and everything else to justify his hatred of “American” values in “the white suburbs”
Amazing that someone so very Liberal would go so far as to call themselves a :conservative historian”. Rather bold I would say ... and so wrong.
Like most winning candidates, he won the swing votes, the ones that really mattered, on his personality. The blue-collar, rust-belt, northeastern states were his linchpin to victory. And it doesn’t take a political scientist to see that his personality, manner, speech and style was a perfect fit for that region.
Wise strategy. I was unfamiliar with the source but, given the quality of scholarship is so very warped, I am not likely to make that mistake again.
Here is National Reviews’ response.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446647/rick-perlstein-new-york-times-essay-embarrassing-wrong
Well said!
Weekly Standard’s response.
He is widely [among the Left] regarded as someone who understands the Right, having written a number of books.
Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society, anti-Semites
You can use anti semitism or racism or homophobia etc and that line decscribes where the GOP and what was once called conservatism went off the rails and became no different than the left about traditional America....that we are bigots and our history is one of Christian bigotry and racism and sexism and xenophobia and not to be respected but destroyed
I don't think it's what Buckley wanted but it explains Krauthammer and Brooks and Kristol and the Bushes and Paul Ryan and National Review and Standard and Spectator etc.....and open borders
we are racists for wanting illegal little brown Indians kept out or let in only in small amounts
Folks the GOP is the real problem.....just look at them now ..working harder against Trump than they ever did Obama
Good article at the link by Jonah Goldberg. He ends his rebuttal thusly, “I’d demand an apology and a retraction, but that would require the Times to understand a perspective outside their bubble. They’ve already demonstrated that’s too much to ask.”
The quote is from the link you provided: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446647/rick-perlstein-new-york-times-essay-embarrassing-wrong
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