Horizon

To what extent does this vision entail nostalgia for the slavery days?

None from me nor (as I read it) from Ransom. I have no doubt that some of the nuts that took over alt.thought.southern probably wouldn't find anything to clash with their views there, but they'd have to read in anything beyond the occasional mild and vague apologetic for antebellum slavery.

It should be remembered that even to conservatives writing in the Thirties, slavery had passed from most living memory. Perhaps it's ignoring the nuance of Southern land tenure systems, but I can't remember any of the Twelve Southerners advocating a return to the kind of leisure society built on unfree labor that requires the lash to enforce its heirarchy. That was one of their main flaws: advocating a way of living while ignoring that one had to make a living in order to attain it.

Ah. Thx. Just seems as though your basic sitting around implies getting someone else to do the work.

Or is the point that the work might be better left undone?

Very interesting, Ben. The admiration for European fascisms was widely shared in the United States, left and right, prior to the advent of Hitler to power in Germany. I think you are correct, that the Twelve Southerners did not really long for a return to slavery on old South plantations and that they just hadn't much thought about labor systems, though several of them became strong advocates for the non-slaveholding plain white farmers that were the bulk of the white population in the Old South.

Ralph, I'm surprised to see you saying that European fascisms were popular on the U.S. left. What is your basis for this statement?

Speaking of which, can anyone recommend a good basic mainstream history book that would explain how far overt pro-fascist organizations such as the Silver Shirts got in the pre-WWII U.S.? And what was done about them once the U.S. came into the war? I know a little about the way the security services came down hard on organizations deemed to be Japanese-nationalist and, to some extent, German-nationalist and Italian-nationalist, but I have a feeling that non-immigrant ideological sympathizers with fascism may not have been treated with similar suspicion or severity. Is that correct?

Or is the point that the work might be better left undone?

That is precisely what is meant by the reference to unkempt fields and to driving an "unmanly bargain with nature" in the selection I quoted. Their rejection of Progress and Industrialization involves a sometimes-explicit rejection of Industry. In retrospect, the South (whether the "Twelve Oaks" version or the contemporary "country districts" version) is used the same way that modern writers use France or Scandinavia — a utopian image of what-might-have-been if Americans had chosen leisure over consumption.

Before I continue much further, let me cut-and-paste Bawer's much less sympathetic take on the Agrarians within their times:

The year was 1930. In Russia, millions of peasants were dying as a result of Stalin’s brutal collectivization program; the Empire of Japan was on the verge of launching a bloody and barbarous invasion of Manchuria; Hitler, his power growing daily, was a scant three years away from gaining control of Germany. Nearly everywhere on the planet, totalitarian ideology – whether in the form of Nazism, fascism, or Communism – seemed to be on the rise; many believed that democracy was doomed to extinction. The United States, which had just been rocked by the stock-market crash and was sinking fast into the Great Depression, seemed powerless to stop the march of tyranny. Fortunately, in the forthcoming world conflict, America would enjoy three crucial advantages: an excellent military, a strong industrial base, and a populace that believed in liberty fervently enough to make extraordinary sacrifices on its behalf. In the first of these three attributes, one region – the South, with its long and distinguished martial tradition – excelled; in the other two, it fell perilously short. Its economy was agrarian; its society was founded on a staggeringly undemocratic, and seemingly intractable, system of racial inequality and segregation. Yet it was these latter two elements of Southern life and culture – the very elements that most critically enervated a nation that would soon be called upon to serve as the stronghold of world freedom – that the contributors to I’ll Take My Stand most passionately defended.

At a time, in short, when America’s intellectual elite should have been lifting high the torch of democracy, Tate and company were serving up proposals for social change derived from the pre-Civil War slaveholding states and the French fascist movement. For Tate, to be sure, both the Old South and the Action Française paled alongside medieval feudalism, which in his view (no joke) came closer than any in history to answering humanity’s deepest needs. As he saw it, the social structures of the Middle Ages, while admittedly imposing certain limitations, provided a greater sense of meaning and security than did free modern societies, which in his view suffered from a calamitous lack of certainty, purpose, and unifying symbols. Twentieth-century capitalism and communism just didn’t cut it, and the antebellum South, while pointing in the right direction, hadn’t quite put the whole thing together properly.

and on race:

Indeed, when they used the word "Southerners," the Twelve Southerners almost invariably meant either whites or upper-class white males. (Of the twelve, only Robert Penn Warren made it clear that he actually thought of blacks as Southerners.) When they did acknowledge the existence of "negroes," it was not to recognize their labor or to lament their centuries of mistreatment, but to view them as a problem (or, as contributor Donald Davidson would later put it, an "irregularity that had somehow to be lived with"). In his essay on education, for example, John Gould Fletcher argued that it was "a waste of money and effort" to try to educate blacks, since schools exist to create "gentlemen"; Northern-style public education, he complained, "puts that which is superior – learning, intelligence, scholarship – at the disposal of the inferior." For his part, Frank Lawrence Owsley griped that after the Civil War the South "was turned over to the three millions of former slaves, some of whom could still remember the taste of human flesh and the bulk of them hardly three generations removed from cannibalism." (Owsley was not the only author in I’ll Take My Stand who seemed to be convinced that free cannibals make for a society in drastic peril, while enslaved cannibals make for a bucolic paradise.) Even Warren, who in his essay affirmed that "it will be a happy day for the South when no court discriminates in its dealings between the negro and the white man," dismissed the idea of integration as "radical" and "eccentric." (To his credit, Warren – unlike some other contributors to I’ll Take My Stand – later repudiated his early prejudices.)

I think Bawer both misrepresents the Agrarians and is unduly harsh on even his misrepresentation. But I read I'll Take My Stand in an impressionable frame of mind, so he serves as a balance.

admiration for European fascisms...prior to the advent of Hitler to power in Germany

I'll second Martha's question, Ralph. I also might qualify your "advent of Hitler to power" comment, as most of the Western admiration for Hitler I've seen came from the period between 1933 and the onset of the War.

One thing that I hadn't really thought much about was the connection between fascism and romanticism. You read about it, of course, in the context of Viva la muerte! Spain, or Naipaul's interviews in Malaysia, but seeing it crop up in a domestic form (and especially one I'm sympathetic to) does drive it home.

book that would explain how far overt pro-fascist organizations such as the Silver Shirts got in the pre-WWII U.S.?

I'll second the call for recommendations. My only image of them comes from the footage of a Deutsche-American Bund rally in Madison Square Garden in Frank Capra's Why We Fight.

Martha and Ben, I'm thinking primarily of admiration on the American left for Mussolini in the 1920s -- not suggesting support for Franco in the 1930s.

Admiration for Mussolini such as whose?

...Actually by mentioning Franco you've brought up the one and only case I can remember of left-wing support for a European fascist: Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker organization, backed Franco by default because she was appalled at the anticlerical atrocities of the Spanish left.

Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell are two examples, Martha, but I am never surprised when I read on the left in the 1920s and find admiration for Mussolini.

Marcus Garvey was an early admirer of both Hitler and Mussolini's brand of revivalist nationalism, apparently not appreciating the extent of its racist foundations until quite late.

Would you precisely call Marcus Garvey a lefty? A separatist isn't the same thing, you know.

Would you precisely call Marcus Garvey a lefty?

I wouldn't precisely call him anything. I just thought I'd throw it in.

Steffens, OK, ouch. And I suppose Jack London, who didn't really know the difference between socialism and fascism, was almost that vintage though mainly earlier. But I admit not knowing much about Tarbell. Is this essay a sample of her politics? It seems pretty ickily paternalistic (maternalistic?) in spite of itself.

It seems pretty ickily paternalistic

Must not be her, then. After all, you'd never find paternalism on the Left.

Meaning what? Where I come from, "left" means the people get to make the decisions democratically and "right" means the top property owners get to push everyone else around. How is it where you're from?

Meaning what? Where I come from, "left" means the people get to make the decisions democratically and "right" means the top property owners get to push everyone else around.

You can't mean to imply that this is all it means?

No. Of course all kinds of people claim to be or are accused of being one or the other. But the essential principle of the left is democracy and the essential principle of the right is Father Knows Best.

But the essential principle of the left is democracy and the essential principle of the right is Father Knows Best.

One of the many, many problems with this formula is that it makes no sense at all when applied to all kinds of real-life political problems. Look at, for example, the question of universal health care. Now you can jump through as many hoops as you want to prove that a huge federally mandated bureaucracy organizing everything would actually be "the people" getting to make all the decisions, while lack of regulation is really Father Knows Best: but in the process you'll have to contort the definitions of your terms so far as to make them essentially unrecognizable.

Where I come from, "left" means the people get to make the decisions democratically

Martha, with all respect, where you come from "left" means "democratic" means "good", and you're willing to redefine those terms accordingly, and retrospectively exclude examples that clash.

Eugenics is bad, therefore its advocates couldn't have been from the "left". The filibuster is good, therefore it must be "democratic". The right means "top property owners get to push everyone else around," but Kelo is just hunky-dory. And "Father Knows Best" apparently has nothing at all in common with campagins for PC speech, against smoking, for environmental regulation, against corporal punishment, or for gun control.

To your credit, you rarely insist on rewriting history to tar your opponents. But you do tend to whitewash the side you identify with.

You've just attributed at least two opinions to me that I don't actually hold. Probably more. Are you talking to me or to some straw liberal in your mind?

We've had the eugenics discussion before in this forum, as well as the filibuster discussion. On the first, you gave no ground whatsoever in your assertion that Eugenics proponents couldn't have possibly been on the Left, and in the second you only grudgingly admitted that the filibuster is, in fact, a restraint on the will of the people — though with a fair amount of fudging.

I'd have to re-read discussion revolving around Kelo and the "Lost Liberties Hotel" for relevance. The rest is merely a list of nanny-state positions which I think are indisputabably favored by the Left — a response to the Right = "Father Knows Best" claim you make right here, and not an assertion about your opinions on those particular nanny-state measures.

Tell me where I've erred.

Alan -- The health care case is a pretty good example of the idea that the right tends to place its faith in private rather than public authority. I suppose the exception to that is the case of corporatisms that merge public and private.

Ben -- well, exactly. You've come up with a list of positions you attribute to liberals in general, and then you've decided that I support and have defended all of them.

Ben, another point: the actual positions taken by people you would label as "liberal," and the abstract discussion of what constitutes "the left" are different things. You may even recall a time in this country when it was commonplace to criticize liberalism from the left. Lyndon Johnson, for example, was generally defined as a "Cold War liberal." The critics of the Vietnam War were not therefore conservatives.

While we're at it...

You've come up with a list of positions you attribute to liberals in general, and then you've decided that I support and have defended all of them.

Martha, assuming you're referring to my "Father Knows Best" laundary list, that is precisely the opposite of what I said. Please re-read it. I'm well aware, for example, that you're no advocate of gun control, and understanding something of the (perceived) human cost of environmental regulation.

However, I think it is indisputable that each one of those five positions has been consistently advocated by the Left, from the moderate to far end of the spectrum, and that they have been generally opposed by the Right. Furthermore, I also think it indisuptable that each of those positions are examples of "Father Knows Best".

Your claim was that "the essential principle of the right is 'Father Knows Best'". Here are five counterexamples to your claim. Your support (or lack of it) for the various propositions is irrelevant to the argument.

Please either address my characterization of those propositions' support by the left, or address my characterization of them as examples of "Father Knows Best". Otherwise, Q.E.D.

Regarding the other half of my post, here is where you dodge the Eugenics charge, here is where you assume the "democratic" mantle for the filibuster, and here is our brief discussion of Kelo, which I will concede that you don't defend.

the actual positions taken by people you would label as "liberal," and the abstract discussion of what constitutes "the left" are different things

Certainly. But the fight over labels is one you often seem to take up, preferring to twist language in such a way that you can make the kind of sweeping generalizations you do above: rather than conceding that in a pursuit of a noble goal, individual runners have often stumbled, and sometimes the entire team has gotten turned around and started running backwards.

Alan -- The health care case is a pretty good example of the idea that the right tends to place its faith in private rather than public authority.

Yes, and the Left prefers things the other way round. In other words, the identity of 'Father' changes. But the existence of Father does not. You can't have it both ways, calling it paternalism when one side does it and an expression of The General Will when the other does.

While we're at it...

I actually read his article on megachurches when it was linked from the Christianity Today weblog. You'll pardon me if I can't be bothered to waste my time reading anything else by someone so clearly uninterested in talking to me.

The thing that persons on the Left ought to keep in mind is that true democracy in the west would largely lead to the implementation of almost everything they hold to be wrong. In England for example if the the majority had been given votes on mass immigration and the death penalty then the former would never have occurred and the latter would still be on the statute book. The Left want just as much patrician or matrician control as the Right; in fact they often want a great deal more- socialism being essentially an interventionist creed. So, please, no more of your reductionist definition of Left and Right.

I think this all just goes to show that such formulations are worth little more than starting pissing contests, that blogland staple.

I suspect that by "father knows best" Martha meant something more along the lines of "father can do whatever he wants to you cause he's got lots of money".

Ben, that link only goes to Christianity Today. Which article are you referring to? This one?

Do you have a similar reaction to this one from a recent Harpers?

If you think it's misleading I'd like to hear about where you think it goes wrong.

That's the Morford article I was talking about. I'll take a look over the Harpers one and let you know what I think.

I really enjoyed the Sharlet article. The creepiness of the New Life megachurch or its leadership is presented by investigation and example (Monday morning phone calls with President Bush or his advisers, the self-aggrandizing paranoia of "Control", etc.), rather than Morford's taunting. For some reason, I found Morford's sneers even more offensive when they were so transparently ignorant (hand-rolled nickels, etc) to anyone who's had contact with a member of one of these megachurches.

The only place I thought Sharlet was editorializing inappropriately was in his explanation of "shorter commutes, more family time, lower mortgages," as hard-right codewords which was a take I found baffling. His footnote 3, however, I thought was spot-on.

I also wish he'd either developed his "you have to choose" exchange more or left it out. He's insisting that Colorado Springs moderates choose between New Life & James Dobson and "us", but never explains who "us" is besides some allusions to New York City.

At any rate, thanks for the link.

No problem. Glad to hear you liked it, because I thought it was fascinating.