This line from Sam Tanenhaus’s article on the “original sin” of conservatism jumped out at me:
Calhoun’s innovation was to develop a radical theory of minority-interest democracy based on his mastery of the Constitution’s quirky arithmetic, which often subordinated the will of the many to the settled prejudices of the few.
Near as I can tell, John C. Calhoun is periodically reincarnated, and most recently as Harry Blackmun. Tanenhaus would be better off if he either thought more deeply about, or else let alone questions of “the Constitution’s quirky arithmetic” allowing policy to be made according to “the settled prejudices of the few.” Yes, I know Blackmun was a Republican, but his ideological descendants aren’t.
February 11th, 2013 | 10:17 pm
I’m no fan of Calhoun’s, but isn’t an insult to his undoubted (if evil) intelligence to compare him to the clueless Harry Blackmun? ;-)
February 12th, 2013 | 10:43 am
djf, could you expand on your statement regarding Mr. Calhoun: “…isn’t an insult to his undoubted (if evil) intelligence.?”
Tell me of Calhoun’s ‘evil.’
February 12th, 2013 | 5:51 pm
My understanding is that Calhoun thought that slavery was a positive good. If so, I think that’s evil.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:38 am
my main beef with Tanenhaus (and Jonathan Chait’s) “white Republican” focus is not that it’s wrong, but that it completely rejects the idea that people in the Nixon era, prejudiced or otherwise, had plenty of legitimate reasons to reject the Democrats.
unless they want to argue that crime at the time wasn’t really a big deal, that people shouldn’t have been disgusted with the radical campus Left, that pre-reform welfare didn’t have deleterious social effects…i could go on. nope, it was all just a giant GOP mindtrick to channel people’s irrational racial frustrations into an opposition to big government (as Chait says,) and so all Republican victories from 1968 on are delegitimized.
it’s all part of a narrative where liberals remain noble and pure and it’s never really their fault when they lose.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:40 am
when i say “not that it’s wrong” i mean that they’re right that the GOP has been more the “White Party” for a long while now. i just don’t really have a problem with that in principle, because i think it’s unsurprising that certain aspects of conservatism will not directly appeal to minorities as much.
electorally of course is another discussion.
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