Our Divided Political Heart (43 page)
Read Our Divided Political Heart Online
Authors: E. J. Dionne Jr.
13
“brutal and hurried lives”:
John Crow Ransom et al.,
I’ll Take my Stand: The South and Agrarian Tradition
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), xlii.
13
“the poverty of the contemporary spirit”:
Ibid., xliii.
13
“family, work, neighborhood”:
Ronald Reagan, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” 25 January 1984,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=40205#axzz1biIUuld7
.
13
“a thousand points of light”:
George H. W. Bush, “Inaugural Address of George H. W. Bush,” 20 January 1989,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/bush.asp
.
13
“rally the armies of compassion”:
George W. Bush, “Message to the Congress Transmitting the Blueprint for the Program to Rally the Armies of Compassion,” 30 January 2011.
13
“family, work, neighborhood”:
Ronald Reagan to the Republican National Convention, August 15, 1988, as transcribed in “The Republicans in New Orleans; Reagan’s Address: Hailing Fruits of the Party’s Dream of 1980,”
New York Times
, August 16, 1988.
13
“chronic loneliness”:
Barack Obama, “Politics of Conscience,” Hartford, CT, 23 June 2007,
http://www.ucc.org/news/significant-speeches/a-politics-of-conscience.html?print=t
.
14
“rugged individualism”:
Herbert Hoover, “Rugged Individualism,” 22 October 1928,
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst203/documents/HOOVER.html
.
14
“there is a profound ambivalence”:
Robert Neelly Bellah, Richard Madsen, and William M. Sullivan,
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 144.
15
James Kloppenberg:
James T. Kloppenberg,
Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
15
Daniel Rodgers:
Daniel T. Rodgers,
Age of Fracture
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011).
16
“that fraternity is a need because”:
Wilson Carey McWilliams,
The Idea of Fraternity in America
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 624.
16
“communitarian liberal”:
Joseph Sobran, “Faith Healing—
Why Americans Hate Politics
by E. J. Dionne,”
National Review
, July 29, 1991.
17
The Quest for Community
:
Robert Nisbet,
The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom
(Richmond, CA: ICS Press, 2009).
17
“force and terror”:
Ibid., 73.
17
“Freedom cannot be maintained in a monolithic society”:
Robert A. Nisbet,
Tradition and Revolt: Historical and Sociological Essays
(New York: Vintage, 1970), 136, 141.
18
“little platoons”:
Edmund Burke,
Reflections on the French Revolution
, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1909–14),
http://www.bartleby.com/24/3/4.html
.
18
“The United States shall guarantee to every State”:
The Constitution of the United States of America, Article IV, Section 4,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/art4.asp
.
19
“The terrain of history has disaggregated”:
Rodgers,
Age of Fracture
, 229.
19
“Every group its own historian”:
Peter Novick, quoted in Rodgers,
Age of Fracture
, 229.
20
“forming tribes”:
Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing,
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 6.
20
“A friend asked the other evening”:
Ibid., 301.
21
“a shift from left to right”:
Alan Wolfe, “The Big Shrink,”
New Republic
, 10 March 2011,
http://www.tnr.com/book/review/age-fracture-daniel-rodgers
.
23
“March without the people”:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in Michael Kazin,
The Populist Persuasion: An American History
(New York: Basic Books, 1995), 7.
24
“high finance”:
Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in John Milton Cooper,
Woodrow Wilson: A Biography
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 165.
24
“the time when the combined”:
Woodrow Wilson, quoted in Cooper,
Woodrow Wilson
, 167.
25
“America’s problem is not that it does”:
Richard McGregor, “Why Can’t America Be More Like, Well, America?”
Financial Times
, 30 September 2011.
29
“The government is promoting bad behavior!”:
Rick Santelli at the Chicago Board of Trade, 19 February 2009,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k
.
29
“they moved from the individual”:
Ibid.
30
“We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party”:
Ibid.
30
“Some people say I’m extreme”:
John M. Broder, “Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith,”
New York Times
, 20 October 2010.
30
“little more than a hundred people”:
Kate Zernike,
Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America
(New York: Times Books, 2010).
31
“Republican, white, male, married and older than 45”:
Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Poll Finds Tea Partiers Wealthier and More Educated,”
New York Times
, 14 April 2010.
31
“a community committed to standing”:
Tea Party Patriots of San Benito County, “About Us,”
http://www.teapartypatriots.org/GroupNew/770aa503-a165-48dd-ba9d-f16c47093711/Tea_Party_Patriots_of_San_Benito_County
.
32
“a user-driven group of like-minded”:
Tea Party Nation, “A Home for Conservatives!!!”
http://www.teapartynation.com/?view=rss
.
32
“compulsory participation in social security”:
Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab,
The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1977
, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
32
“You attempt to be Professorial”:
Paul, “Obama the Arrogant Elitist Marxist—An Open Letter to Obama from a Regular Citizen of the United States,” Conservative Tea Party California Style, 19 September 2010,
http://www.con servativeteapartycaliforniastyle.com/2010/09/obama-arrogant-elitist-marxist-open.html
.
32
“I can find you a lot more Harvard accents”:
Robert Welch, quoted in Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, eds.,
The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing Extremism in America 1790–1970
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973), 257–58.
32
“conspiracy conceived”:
Ibid.
33
“In recent years, do you think”:
Survey discussed in E. J. Dionne, “Populism of Privilege,”
Washington Post
, 10 April 2010.
33
A survey in the summer of 2011:
“Polling the Tea Party,”
New York Times
, 14 April 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/14/us/politics/20100414-tea-party-poll-graphic.html#tab=5
.
33
“something really odd happened”:
Tom Tancredo, opening speech to National Tea Party Convention, Nashville, Tennessee, February 4, 2010.
34
“Some say simplistically”:
Randy Golden, “Causes of the Civil War,” About North Georgia,
http://ngeorgia.com/history/why.html
.
34
“doesn’t amount to diddly”:
Haley Barbour, quoted in Michael D. Shear, “Discussing Civil Rights Era, a Governor Is Criticized,”
New York Times
, December 20, 2010.
34
“becomes the continuation”:
C. Vann Woodward, quoted in Drew Gilpin Faust, “Telling War Stories,”
New Republic
, 30 June 2011, 19–25.
34
“The powers of the centralized”:
Ibid.
35
“significant segments of the American”:
Ibid.
35
“insisted that the nation’s”:
Robert Sutton, quoted in Faust, “Telling War Stories.”
35
“A century and a half after the civil war”:
Eric Foner, “The American Civil War Still Being Fought,”
Guardian
, 20 December 2010.
35
the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy “rests upon”:
Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861,” in Frank Moore, ed.,
The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, Etc
. (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862), 1:44–46; also
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1861stephens.asp
.
35
“Beyond the circumscribed world”:
Elbert Ventura, “Making History,”
Democracy
20 (Spring 2011).
36
“Like the experience of foreign travel”:
James W. Ceaser, “The Visionary Generation,”
Wall Street Journal
, 14 May 2011.
37
“belonged to the community”:
Rush Limbaugh, “The Story of Thanksgiving,”
The Rush Limbaugh Show
, 24 November 2010.
37
“They were collectivists!”:
Rush Limbaugh, “The Real Story of Thanksgiving,”
The Rush Limbaugh Show
, 21 November 2007.
37
“Long before Karl Marx”:
Ibid.
37
Limbaugh’s persistence in promoting this view:
Kate Zernike, “The Pilgrims Were . . . Socialists?”
New York Times
, 20 November 2010; Rush Limbaugh, “We’re Politicizing Thanksgiving?”
The Rush Limbaugh Show
, 24 November 2010.
37
For this, she was rebuked by Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh, “We’re Politicizing Thanksgiving?”
The Rush Limbaugh Show
, 24 November 2010.
38
“The political universe is, of course, very different”:
Sean Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War Roots,”
New Yorker
, 18 October 2010.
38
“transplanted Canadian who served as a Mormon missionary”:
Ibid.
38
“much of that time as a special agent”:
Ibid.
38
“Hoover informed inquirers”:
Ibid.
38
“His time in office was contentious”:
Bracken Lee, quoted in Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers.”
39
“a lengthy primer published in 1958”:
Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers.”
39
“he enlivened a survey”:
Ibid.
39
“decried the Ivy League Establishment”:
W. Cleon Skousen, quoted in Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers.”
39
“a treatise that assembles selective quotations”:
Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers.”
39
“would have astounded James Madison”:
Ibid.
39
“the motto that came out of the Constitutional Convention”:
Ibid.
39
“essential to understanding why our Founders built this Republic”:
Glenn Beck, quoted in Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers.”
40
“put the book in the first spot”:
Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers.”
40
“The underlying problem”:
William F. Buckley, “The Question of Robert Welch,”
National Review
, 13 February 1962, 84.
40
“paranoid and unpatriotic drivel”:
William F. Buckley, “On the Right: The Birch Society,”
National Review
, 19 October 1965, 917.
41
“He insists viewers read books by dead men”:
Amity Shlaes, “The University Guild vs. Glenn Beck,” RealClearPolitics, 4 June 2010,
http://www.realclear politics.com/articles/2010/06/04/the_university_guild_vs_glenn_beck.html
.
41
“Every author is glad to sell books”:
Ibid.
42
“The typical procedure of the higher paranoid scholarship”:
Richard Hofstadter,
The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 37.
