Will MacAvoy on why TEA Party radicals shouldn't even be considered Republicans

[foolsguinea]

Two videos. They're short.

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I find this interesting, because it makes a strong comparison to the Rush Limbaugh dittohead view of the left as a monolithic mudheap of dirty, dirty hippies

Comments

[underlankers]

It seems like that, but it's not the case. The GOP has always had a strong anti-intellectual streak and a powerful anti-immigrant streak. The whole Know-Nothing movement was enfolded into the GOP as one of its fundamental constituencies in the Lincoln era. American populism has always relied on the idea that stupid people are good. Science and messing with it is certainly harmful (and I might repeat not limited to the post-WWII era, the old USA did things like injecting people with STDs and refusing them treatment as "science"), but then there's deliberately prolonging a war and being as incapable of winning it as the other guys. There's organizing witch-hunts against faux Communists and offering a potential but never used dolchstosslegende for the people fighting and bleeding against the real Communists in Korean hills, attacking the guy who won WWII as a filthy Bolshie Traitor. There is of course the Southern Strategy and the endless GOP obsession with legislating marriage, and even in some cases still fussing about interracial marriage.

Just because something seems one way does not mean it actually is that way. The GOP, simply put, is a political party that was always a refuge of violent cranks and moral cowards, and has been so since its origin out of the old Whig Party. American politics itself, for that matter, long relied on the law of hang thy neighbor. There is a good argument, in fact, that American society was semi-savage well into the 20th Century for just this reason.