Two Armies Side By Side

I don't usually watch much TV news, but I made a point of watching Chris Matthews' special documentary this week on "The Rise of the New Right." He talked about it ahead of time on Rachel Maddow's show, and to tell you the truth I was more interested in some things he said in the interview than I was in the documentary itself.

He told Rachel:

There's two armies that march almost side by side through American history.

There's the progressive army that led for abolition, that fought the Civil War, the good guys of the Civil War. And then of course, those who really pushed for reconstruction afterwards like Thaddeus Stevens and the good guys, the radical Republicans of that day.

And alongside is this other army, the know-nothings and then the Klansmen that came along later. And then, you've got in the 20th century - it's the same pattern - it's the progressives moving a step or two ahead of this reactionary army that rides right along them, some camp followers playing off the dispossessed, those who resent change.

It's the same with sexual orientation today. There's always going to be another group growing along saying this threatens traditional marriage. This threatens something here. Transcript: Rachel Maddow show, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 [Edited after listening to the video: JimK ]

I don't suppose the perspective originates with Chris Matthews but I appreciate him putting it out there at this point in time when it can be helpful to get a gods-eye view of the issues.

Do you remember learning about the Know-Nothings in history class? I don't either, they were a pretty powerful political movement in the early days of the United States. Here's the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for them.

The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery. Most ended up joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election. Wikipedia: Know Nothing

This was in a young America, living people could remember the Revolution. Nutty rightwing conspiracy theorists are as American as apple pie, it turns out. Two armies marching side by side, one fighting for kindness, fairness, objectivity, and the other fighting to preserve the power structure that rewards them with privilege. It's always been that way in this country.

I don't think I have ever met a person who actually believes that the US should allow slavery today, the buying and selling of human beings on the open market, depriving them of citizens' rights, considering them legally as property. But less than two hundred years ago slavery was widely accepted. The progressive abolitionist movement was successful, slavery is not only outlawed in this country but reviled by the great majority. I remember some mutterings when John Kennedy ran for President, that he would have to do anything the Pope told him to do, but really there is not much left of serious anti-Catholic prejudice in this country, some of us may oppose the church's stand on some topics but we don't just hate them because they're different from us, or because the Pope is going to become a tyrannical dictator. Even after the relatively recent civil rights revolution, public opinion has changed. There are still undercurrents of prejudice, and I have met people who don't believe that black people should have equal rights to whites but it is well understood in all levels of society that racial discrimination will not be tolerated. The progressives may bring fairness into the world kicking and screaming, but after a while those norms become the status quo and people accept them. The women's revolution -- there are still some awkward jokes and details to work out, but everyone knows a woman should get the same pay as a man for the same work, there is simply no reasonable argument against it, though the concept would have seemed absurd not so many years ago, within my lifetime. The progressives push for something, and over time it is accepted but in the meantime those who are known as "conservatives" will make progress as difficult as they can.

It was also good for Matthews to tie this historical trend to the issue of sexual orientation today. It's just the same, today's know-nothings cling to their stereotypes about gay people while the progressives continue to hammer out kind, fair, and objectively accurate policies, laws, and social norms. There is no doubt where the movement is headed, we are moving toward an era when sexual orientation simply doesn't matter. It's not here yet but it's visible on the horizon.

After discussing a number of races to be determined this fall, Matthews continued:

But we'll have to see. I don't know. I think this is a bad year for progressives. It's a tough economy, and you're always blamed if you're in power.

But the American people have sort of a gyroscope, something that always brings them back to center, we're very much - and nobody wants to hear this on the right, but we're very much like France in that way. We're a bourgeois country, you and I know that. We're a bourgeois society.

We're not an ideologically proletarian country or a right-wing militarist country. Generally, we listen to those voices and we never go further right than say Reagan, and the minute he got into office, he moved very much to the center, as governor of California, for example, on issues like abortion rights. He moved to the center.
I don't think we are an extremist country, but these voices are frightening. And at a time of economic desperation, if you will, they're being listened to. But the one ironic - I don't want to call it silver lining - the one whisper of possible good coming out of this horror in the Gulf of Mexico, which is really hurting our North America, the love we have for this part of the world, our own part of the world, is that maybe it convinces people that government is important.

As you said earlier in the program, government has a very positive role to play. To regulate - when you get on the airplane, don't you want to know there's an FAA? When you open up a can of tuna, don't you want to know that there's somebody who's making sure it doesn't have ptomaine in it?

Don't you want somebody on your side besides the money guys? And I do think that we're looking at the gulf as a country. I think the Republicans even - the very conservative Republicans, I think, are very hesitant now to say "Do nothing" to their president. "Don't do anything, let the industry do it." I haven't heard that voice this week. Isn't it interesting?

It's a horrible way to get there, but we're there, I think. [ Transcript edited after listening to video: JimK ]

Good point, a sad point but a good one, the silver lining on the Gulf disaster. Everybody is in favor of lower taxes, that's not a conservative position, everybody prefers to have control over their own money. Everybody is in favor of freedom and of keeping government out of our private lives, that's not a conservative position, they don't want government to stay out of gay people's lives, for instance, or marijuana smokers' lives, or prostitutes' lives. The difference between conservatives and liberals is what they think government should do, not how big it should be. Conservatives don't mind spending a billion dollars a week on a war against a population that poses no threat to us, but you let an injured immigrant use the emergency room and they will stand outside with picket signs demanding that the government do something about the "problem."

Conservatives were put into an awkward position during the debate over health-care reform, for instance, they had to be careful to oppose this health-care reform without saying something that would sound critical of Medicare, which they really don't want to lose, and which is the ultimate and very successful example of the progressive model for health care. In the Gulf spill, conservatives hate to criticize a gigantic corporation, which might be interpreted as a lack of confidence in the free market (and some politicians might lose generous contributions), but they love to take the opportunity to criticize the Democratic President, and the only way to do that is to assume that the federal government should be in charge of cleaning it up. Progressives and conservatives switch sides on that one, progressives think BP should pay for their own mess, the rightwingers are calling for the government to do it.

In fact the "new right," as Matthews calls them, uses simple concepts like tax reduction and small government as catch-phrases to lull voters into supporting them. Everybody is in favor of those things, each in his own way, and people who are stupid enough to believe that "liberals" want bigger government and higher taxes are stupid enough to join up with a movement like the Teabaggers. The know-nothings have always been there, but you can't just accept them, unfortunately you have to fight them tooth and nail every step of the way, because people don't have time to think things through and they will be persuaded by a catchy phrase. The good news is that America is progressing in spite of them. There is no slavery now, black people have civil rights, women have rights in the workplace that they never had, LGBT people are on the brink of being treated with respect. Progress is made, but it is a constant fight.