Comments on: DeMille on Rights, Liberty, and the Right to Work

By: links for 2010-02-09 | The 'K' is not silent

links for 2010-02-09 | The 'K' is not silent — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:04:04 +0000

[...] DeMille on Rights, Liberty, and the Right to Work (tags: article editorial history laborunion theamericanculture) [...]

By: S. T. Karnick

S. T. Karnick — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:33:59 +0000

This is a very interesting observation, Clay. I agree that the Democrat and Republican traditions up to the twentieth century can be profitably seen as you characterize them here. Since the rise of the Progressive movement early in the twentieth century, there has been no major U.S. political party that wasn’t fully elitist, as you suggest. The Republican Party became the party of Wall Street, while the Democratic Party became the party of big government, but both were eager to use government coercion to achieve their aims.

As you say, the only plausible way at present to return authority to the people is to reorient the GOP to the Goldwater-Reagan heresy and away from its elitist roots. One can see nascent progress in this direction in the Tea Party movement, but it remains an open question whether the elites can coopt the movement and exploit it to their own ends as usual. Perhaps this new century will indeed bring a new politics, as the last one did.

By: clay barham

clay barham — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:20:58 +0000

The battle in America between the Old and New World traditions are seen in our two main political parties. The Republican Party is the older of the two if we take it back to Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, to Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Nelson Rockefeller and John McCain. Republicans are elite meddlers believing the national government should manage the industry and affairs of the American People. They stumbled in the 1960’s with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. They left the party with people who do not accept original GOP policies.

The Democrat Party was the libertarian, state’s rights, individual freedom and local government party, following Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe to Jackson and Cleveland. They made the biggest swing from their policies at the turn of the century, adopting the Old World policies of Rousseau and Marx. The GOP, except for the Goldwater-Reagan moments, held fast to their better-than-thou beliefs from its origin. In the life of our Republic, the only political party that held fast to the ideals of America, which made her free and prosperous, was the 19th century Democrat Party. I’m afraid it will take reorienting the GOP to take our country back. claysamerica.com

By: S. T. Karnick

S. T. Karnick — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:04:13 +0000

Thanks, Mike. I didn’t know that about Caspary, and it’s very interesting to hear. I don’t see anything political in Otto Preminger’s superb film adaptation of her novel Laura, but I haven’t read the book. It’s important, of course, to recognize that an avowed communist could be a skilled and edifying writer, as Dashiell Hammett certainly was. And that’s an important point: marxist and marxism-influenced critics (meaning nearly all the best-known ones of the past six decades) have overwhelmingly refused to see the value of art works by people who don’t share their politics.

By: Mike Gray

Mike Gray — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:40:00 +0000

Sam — This is an excellent article. The reactions of Hollywood’s elite to the influence of — in fact, the outright infiltration by — Communists in their profession is a story studiously avoided by many historians of popular culture. Somehow the only terms they’re comfortable with are “Red scare” and “McCarthyism.”

I’m presently reading a collection of shorter fiction by Vera Caspary (LAURA). She was not only a member of the CPUSA, but even after she left the party she never publicly repudiated its aims, settling into the more comfortable and less controversial position of being “anti-Nazi.”

—Mike