The American Ultraright: A Genealogy of Basic Beliefs and Practices

Raja, Masood Ashraf

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-58490-8_3

Masood Ashraf Raja²

165 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter explains the ideological and political lineage of two branches of American conservatism: the religious right and the libertarian right. The chapter offers a detailed account of the philosophical writings that inform the American right and then provides an analysis of certain organizations that are avowedly conservative in their mission and political actions.

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Notes

1.
Huntigton, Samuel P. “Robust Nationalism,” The National Interest, No. 58 1999/200: 31–40.
2.
Ibid. p.33.
3.
Jenkins, Jack. “Limbaugh: ‘If You Believe in God, Then Intellectually You Cannot Believe in Manmade Global Warming’,” Think Progress. Accessed May 28, 2014. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/14/2469341/limbaugh-christians-global-warming/
4.
National Center for Education Statistics. “Fast Facts.” Url: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91. Accessed February 28, 2014.
5.
Ibid.
6.
The Hobby Lobby case is now the best example of this kind of reasoning.
7.
From the Focus on the Family web site: http://www.focusonthefamily.com/about_us.aspx. Accessed April 6, 2014.
8.
Organizations like Answers in Genesis are good examples of this Christianization of education: https://answersingenesis.org/
9.
From the web site of the Christian Coalition of America: http://www.cc.org/about_us. Accessed April 6, 2014.
10.
From the web site: http://www.cc.org/our_agenda. Accessed April 6, 2014.
11.
For details see Bracher, Mark. Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006): 13–15.
12.
For a detailed discussion of the strict father model read Lakoff, George. Moral Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002): 65–107.
13.
Ibid. p.67.
14.
Ibid.
15.
Fish, Stanley. “Interpreting the Variorum.” Reader Response Criticism. Jane P. Tompkins, ed. (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980): 164–184.
16.
Eagleton, Terry, Literary Theory. 1983. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008): 14.
17.
I am citing this from a book focused on American literature and the culture wars but I think it applies clearly to the politics and culture of Christian right as well. For details, read Jay, Gregory. American Literature and the Culture Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997): 31.
18.
Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981): 31.
19.
Ibid. p.32.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1998): 204–227.
22.
Al-Ghazali. “Appendix II,” Deliverance from Error. 1115 AD. Trans. R.J. McCarthy. (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 1980): 151–244.
23.
The preceding discussion is a long detour but is needed to link this information back to the Christian right of contemporary America, especially since so many of these narratives of the nation figure primarily in their public discourse.
24.
Noble, David. Death of a Nation: American Culture and End of Exceptionalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
25.
Ibid. p.4.
26.
Ibid. p.5.
27.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. Frontier and Section. Ed. Ray Allen Billington (Englewood: Prentice-Hall, 1961).
28.
Ibid. p.61.
29.
Ibid.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Nobel. p.17.
32.
Ibid. p.18.
33.
Ibid. p.19.
34.
Beard, Charles and Mary Beard. The Rise of American Civilization (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1959): vii.
35.
Ibid. p.vii.
36.
Ibid. p.xiv.
37.
Noble, David. 20.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid. p.30.
41.
Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present. 1982. (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005).
42.
Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1993).
43.
In fact, a former Governor of Indiana and President of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, was so scared of the book that he actually banned it from the K–12 curriculum as well as from university courses. For details visit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/mitch-daniels-howard-zinn_n_3625599.html. Accessed May 1, 2014.
44.
Bynum, Haywood III. Oklahoma Protesters Threaten to “Secdee” [sic] from Union If Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos Is not Cancelled. Top News. http://topekasnews.com/oklahoma-protesters-threaten-secdee-union-neil-degrasse-tysons-cosmos-cancelled/. Accessed April 17, 2014.
45.
Luskin, Casey, Cosmos Episode 2: “Mindless Evolution” Has All the Answers—If You Don’t Think About It Too Deeply. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_episode_083331.html. Accessed April 17, 2014.
46.
I am using here the two kinds of self as researched by Carol Dweck. For details, see Dweck, Carol S. Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 1999).
47.
O’Reilly, Bill. The O’Reilly Factor (New York: Broadway Books, 2000): 90.
48.
Ibid. p.86.
49.
Ibid. p.86.
50.
Ibid. p.87.
51.
Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974): ix.
52.
Ibid. p.7.
53.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration. Ed. Iam Shapiro. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003): 101–106.
54.
Ibid. pp.111–112.
55.
Ibid. p.121.
56.
Ibid.
57.
Ibid. p.136.
58.
Ibid. p.137.
59.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. 1776. Ed. Edwin Cannan. (New York: The Modern Library, 1994): 481–502.
60.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 1759. (New York: Augustus M. Kelly Publishers, 1966): 264–265.
61.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. 1776. Ed. Edwin Cannan. (New York: The Modern Library, 1994): 74.
62.
Ibid.
63.
Ibid. p.75.
64.
Ibid. p.75.
65.
Ibid. p.75.
66.
Ibid. pp.75–76.
67.
Ibid. p.76.
68.
Ibid. p.77.
69.
Ibid. p.78.
70.
Ibid. p.90.
71.
Ibid. p.93.
72.
Spencer, Herbert. Principles of Biology. 1864. (London: William & Norgate, 1864)
73.
Ibid. pp.444–445.
74.
Ibid. p.445.
75.
Ibid. p.444.
76.
Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought (New York: George Braziller, 1959): 31–32.
77.
Ibid. p.5.
78.
Ibid. p.5–6.
79.
Ibid. p.6.
80.
Ibid. p.6.
81.
Ibid. p.7
82.
Ibid.
83.
“The letter from Friedrich Engels to P.L. Lavrov, November 12. 1875,” Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_11_12.htm. Accessed May 2, 2014. Also available in print: Torr, Dona.ed. “Engels and Darwin—Letter to Lavrov,”Labour Monthly, July 1936, pp. 437–442.
84.
For further details on this see Bello, Walden. Capitalism’s last Stand (Zed Books, 2013).
85.
http://www.teapartypatriots.org/ourvision/. Accessed April 24, 2014.
86.
Ibid.
87.
Bello, Walden. Capitalism’s last Stand (Zed Books, 2013): 5.
88.
Ibid. p.5.
89.
Ibid. pp.6–7.
90.
Ibid. 6.
91.
Ibid. pp.7–8.
92.
Rapley, John. Globaliziationand Inequality (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004): 8.
93.
Ibid. 8.
94.
Walden, Bello. p. -8.
95.
Ibid.
96.
Ibid.
97.
Ibid. 9.
98.
Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2014).
99.
My discussion on the role of the state in education is based on the discussion by Ernest Gellner. For details, see Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
100.
Ibid. p.34.

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University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA
Masood Ashraf Raja

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Raja, M.A. (2016). The American Ultraright: A Genealogy of Basic Beliefs and Practices. In: The Religious Right and the Talibanization of America. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58490-8_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58490-8_3
Published: 07 May 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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