BOOK REVIEW: The right gives away its guidebook - will we listen?

[cornermouse]

You might want to take a look.

Sirotablog
http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/

BOOK REVIEW: The right gives away its guidebook - will we listen?

America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power
America's Right Turn was written in 2004 by David Franke and Richard Viguerie, the conservative direct mail guru - and I'm really sorry I didn't get around to reading it right when it came out. For the record, I cannot stand promoting a book by conservatives, but this book is absolutely essential reading that, frankly, too many self-anointed Democratic/progressive "experts" ignore. Though not a linguistically well-written book and a bit bogged down with long-ago debunked GOP talking points, the book is nonetheless a must-read for anyone working in the progressive movement – and I say that understanding that the term “must-read” has become so overused as to be rendered meaningless. But this really is a must-read, because it cuts straight to the heart of how movements – regardless of ideology – are actually built.

One of the major misconceptions on the left is that all we need to do is build nebulous “infrastructure” for the Democratic Party and all of our problems will be solved. Just fund more 527s, more GOTV operations and more think tanks to better “package” the same GOP-lite prescriptions of many Democrats in Washington and eureka! – America will be fixed. This “infrastructure” mantra is repeated ad nauseum to the point where it’s become a cliché - from professional Democratic consultants to big donors in the Democracy Alliance, all we hear is “infrastructure” – never ideology.

But as Viguerie shows, that’s exactly how liberals lost the last thirty years, and how conservatives – shunning such an outlook – came to prominence. Conservatives – unlike their progressive counterparts inside the professional political apparatus and the blogosphere – started building their movement in the late 1950s as separate and distinct from the Republican Party. Viguerie, for instance, recounts how in 1977 he turned down a major offer to work for the National Republican Congressional Committee “because I wasn’t happy with the drift of the Republican Party and didn’t want to be co-opted by the GOP establishment.” He goes on to state that the movement found its strength in being able to “concentrate on advancing the conservative agenda rather than the Republican agenda the agendas most definitely were not always the same.”

[ixion]

1. here's the thing about government and ideology: it's a bad thing

I think the GOP ideology -- the heart of their power -- is what needs to be neutralized. Creating a progressive framework built around an ideology of any kind will only make things worse, not better.

Ideology itself needs to be disavowed, and simply not allowed in the public discourse. Why? Because ideology does not exist, necessarily, on the basis of reality. Rather, it exists in a vaccuum of it's own creation. That is, it lives in the reality bubble generated by the ideology. Ideology is subjective, and the government should remain objective, IMO.

[rfranklin]

2. Objective like cost-benefit analysis?

I think you have to have an ideology that provides direction for what you want to achieve and then try to be pragmatic about how to get there.

The problem with ideologies is that they attribute virtues and behavior to people that are usually lacking. For instance, capitalists claim that there is some sort of "level playing field" when we know that people favor their children, relatives and friends over more qualified candidates. Certain businesses are more favored because they have paid bribes to politicians and the people who make purchasing decisions.

The same is true of those of us who are socialists. We often ascribe altruism to people where very little exists.

[ixion]

3. yeah, outside of a vaccum there has to be some ideology for practical motivation

but it should really be something so abstract as to be a universal. For example, I think people (except psychotics) agree that murder is bad. Okay, so we want to weave that into the fabric that is our ideology. When it comes down to more personal issues, though, like drug use or sexual orientation, government should be strictly hands-off. These are moral issues best left to the local community, or to the individual. Federal mandates for these types of things -- these purely human types of things that are personal issues -- should be off limits to federal government, IMO.


I think that people need to be allowed to be human, and that communities should be allowed to form based on certain, shared characteristics of the constituents, but that at the federal level this more specific ideology manifests as something more vague, like "live and let live".

[FormerDittoHead]

4. Building a separate movement has allowed them to distance themselves from Republicans...

...while maintaining their ideology.

Even today, in the face of all the mis-deeds of Republicans, "conservatives" merrily go around talking about how Bush wasn't a REAL "conservative".......

And so the myths of the perfect state of no-government, "personal responsibility", "character", racism no longer exists, the rich are that way because they're better, the economy as it is is fair and nothing should be done about it, poor people have the same power as the rich, etc., remain.

All it takes is another Karl Rove to package that up with anti-abortion anti-gay fundies and we're still struggling to find majorities (example: the Senate) when, IMO, Republicans should be getting only 20% of the vote...

It's a fact that our lack of ideology, even a vague one, has allowed the think tanks to LABEL us with one (eg: "fag commies") or at the very least exclaim that we don't have a "plan for the future" etc.

This book seems to (not having read it) make a very good point which echoes the framing crowd: set the agenda, create the argument, set the language, or forever be playing THEIR game...