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E Pluribus Unum ?. Review of partisanship in the course, and in the election The demographics of the parties How do we define liberal and conservative ? The issues that divide conservatives and liberals The paranoid style in partisan politics
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E Pluribus Unum? • Review of partisanship in the course, and in the election • The demographics of the parties • How do we define liberal and conservative? • The issues that divide conservatives and liberals • The paranoid style in partisan politics • The “New World Order” and the paranoid tradition • The history of immigration and populist nativism • Liberalism, conservativism and populism • Populism and representative self-governance
Pew Charitable Trust Political Party Quiz • Do you think it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage? • Do you strongly favor, favor, oppose, or strongly oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally? • Do you think abortion should be… • Having increasing people of different races, ethnic groups and nationalities in the U.S. makes this country a...
The Hispanic Electorate • 42.2 million white millennials and 11.9 million Hispanic millennials will be eligible to vote in 2016. • Between 2012 and 2016, about 3.2 million young U.S.-citizen Latinos will have advanced to adulthood. • On an annual basis, some 803,000 U.S.-born Latinos reached adulthood in recent years. • About 1.2 million adult Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. legally become citizens between 2012 and 16.
The Paranoid Style in American PoliticsRichard Hofstadter (1964) The paranoid is a militant leader. . . [who] does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated.
Populist Paranoia “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.”
First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. • Second, Top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy. . . has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests. • Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.
Joe McCarthy, 1951 “How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men. . . . What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. . . . The laws of probability would dictate that part of . . . [the] decisions would serve the country’s interest.”
A Texas newspaper article of 1855: . . . It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism. . . . The Pope has recently sent his ambassador of state to this country on a secret commission, the effect of which is an extraordinary boldness of the Catholic church throughout the United States. . . .
Manifesto of Populist Party (1895) “The gold gamblers of Europe and America. . . . have kept the people quarreling over less important matters while they have pursued with unrelenting zeal their one central purpose. . . . Every device of treachery, every resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the international gold ring are being used to deal a blow to the prosperity of the people and the financial and commercial independence of the country.”
The Illuminati: the Original Anti-American World Order Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies (1797) argued that masons are committed to “rooting out all religious establishments, and overturning all the existing governments of Europe.” It had become “one great and wicked project fermenting and working all over Europe.”
George H. Bush’s “Toward the New World Order” (1990) “Until now, the world we've known has been a world divided—a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now, we can see a new world coming into view. . . A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations.” Pat Robertson’s The New World Order (1991) “A one-world government. . . in the control of privately owned but government-chartered central banks” working with the Trilateral Commission, New Age idolatry, and the UN to set the stage for the Antichrist. Robertson referred to the Illuminati and to Jewish bankers as part of the conspiracy.
“What Makes People Vote Republican?”Haidt (9/8/08) Conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world. Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?
Many Americans . . . honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. • Morality is not just about how we treat each other; it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. • Morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.
Understanding what Democrats don't understand about morality. • First, imagine society as a social contract invented for our mutual benefit. Philosophical efforts to justify liberal democracies . . . invariably rely heavily on intuitions about fairness and reciprocity. • But now imagine society not as an agreement among individuals but as something that emerged organically over time as people found ways of living together. The basic social unit is not the individual, it is the hierarchically structured family, which serves as a model for other institutions. Such a view values ingroup/loyalty (tribalism), authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. These values support moralities that bind people into intensely interdependent groups that work together to reach common goals.
Politifact: The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere."
Trump, Nomination Acceptance Speech: Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.
How the Government of Qatar Runs Hillary Clinton: Short of an armed revolution, Trump is the best answer
