When Was The Right's Golden Age?

I understand conservatism natural pessimism but I'm having a tough time translating the e-mails I have been receiving on a daily basis into some desired political state the Right actually believes in. We forget conservatism sour nature because it got a boost of Western-style optimism with Ronald Reagan. But these days the Right issue jeremiads about impending doom of this country and our civilization. And maybe that's their natural position. But the e-mails I get border on intellectual incoherence.

So what age of America does the Right prefer? Yesterday's Thanksgiving Family Forum for all the GOP candidates that were Christian was all doom and gloom. Newt Gingrich blamed all--yes, all--of problems on secularism. I tried to figure out when America was not secular. In fact, I guess we concede the Middle Ages as non-secular. But from Newt's description, the day we became secular was in 1963 when the Supreme Court ruled against prayer in school. If we walk back to when "In God We Trust" was made the motto of the United States by Eisenhower. This means Newt's golden age was the Eisenhower' era from about 1954-1963.

This seems fair enough. This would be the time when Baby Boomers were young. Newt's view is also held by Hillary Clinton who during the campaign often referred to this period for other more economic reasons. Others can choose this period because it is the only period in the life of a Baby Boomer that the United States was not in a shooting war.

Yesterday I received an e-mail pretending to be a profound piece of political thought that blamed all of America's woes on "progressives" even Joe McCarthy's excesses. The writer is a "conservative" Republican so he skated over Theodore Roosevelt and put the blame for our woes on Woodrow Wilson, who used the powers of the goverment to jail thousands of dissidents. What the author didn't mention was who these dissidents were--labor organizers, conscientious objectors to World War I, Communists, anarchists, socialists like Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. This might have colored the readers' interpretation of the Palmer Period when the United States had its first Red Scare. The writer also mentions a very, very obscure official in the FDR administration who hung a photo of Mussolini on his wall. As for Joe McCarthy, he grew up and was a politician in Wisconsin which has a progressive tradition so his excesses are treated as symptoms of the influence his environment had over him.

Since this article is being widely circulated, what is the ideal age for this. From what I can interpret, the real Golden Age of America was the Gilded Age of the 1890s, which the progressive movement was a reaction to. You can hear this is the words about "wealth creators", "producers" and "job creators" we hear today in conservative rhetoric. Karl Rove modelled his career after Boss Hanna of this period.

But if this is true why don't these people protest our FIRE economy--Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Whatever you say about the robber barrons, they were industrialists, manufacturers, people who built railroads. In other words, they actually invested in infrastructure, which the Right now oppose.

Then we get to the Tea Party Nation. No one has mentioned that the teabaggers ideal--anything before Barack Obama, of course--was America before it had a constitution. The Founders are worshipped for their role in the American Revolution, not for their role in creating a system of government. The implications of this are in Rick Perry's ideas which chronically fly in the face of the established constitution. The same applies to the bizarre resurgence of secessionism as an ideal. Remember John Winthrop's sermon about America as a "City on the Hill" was about America pre-constitution and pre-Revolution. It was a sermon addressed to a Pilgrim theocracy, which is the ideal of the faux Christian Right.

Grover Norquist's ideal is a libertarian one, as Jack Abramoff's book makes clear. For Grover, the ideal America would be the one without income taxes. So this means it would be pre-Abraham Lincoln, who instituted the income tax to pay for the Civil War. It would be an America where only property owners could vote and slavery would exist.

My response these days to these e-mails is believe whatever makes you happy, feel secure and superior to anyone else. It seems to come down to I got mine, you can't have anything.

What I found interesting in yesterday's debate was that someone actually asked New Gingrich what his idea of the common good was. A writer said that Gingrich, now a Catholic, had to be aware of Catholic doctrines about the common good and social justice. But Newt deftly tossed the question aside to discuss the Founders view of liberty, which indeed did not include hedonism as Newt said. But he left this giant question--the question that haunts conservatives--hanging.

When I was growing up the hero of the conservatives was Whittaker Chambers, the book editor at Time Magazine. Chambers argued that the United States had already lost the Cold War and Western civilization was lost. People like David Horowitz still say we lost the Cold War.

I just wish the Right would have a meeting to agree on their ideal age in America. This has gotten too confusing.