Here’s the latest in our series of “PBC Minute” videos, featuring top progressive authors. Here, Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm and Nixonland, talks about the current disarray in conservative ranks and tells us about the book he’s currently working on, the third installment of his “Backlash” trilogy. We taped this a few weeks ago at the America’s Future Now! conference in Washington, D.C.  (See previous PBC Minutes here.)

[Posted by Paul Gleason]

This is the first in a series of posts about Richard Hofstadters classic essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”

In 1963, at Oxford University, the historian Richard Hofstadter gave a lecture entitled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” He argued that the hysterias of certain right-wing movements—such as McCarthyism, the John Birch Society, and the Goldwater campaign—were no aberrations. Rather, their belief in foreign infiltration and the impending collapse of the Republic followed a particular, and peculiar, American tradition. Hofstadter traced this “paranoid style” back through American history, all the way to the Puritan preachers who thundered from their pulpits against a conspiracy to convert their Protestant nation to “Popery.”

Hofstadter’s lecture quickly became famous and remains a classic of American political thought. What follows is Hofstadter’s definition of the paranoid style and what he calls its “ancillary themes.”

Definition

“The central preconception of the paranoid style [is] the existence of a vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts of the most fiendish character.”

Ancillary themes

The plot is epochal
“The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a ‘vast’ or ‘gigantic’ conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy.”

The end is near
“The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. … Time is forever just running out.” Read More

Via Juan Cole: Chatham House Study Definitively Shows Massive Ballot Fraud in Iran’s Reported Results
The numbers do not add up. You can’t have more voters than there are people.

BloggingheadsTV: Gary Sick & Afshin Molavi: Witnessing History in Iran
Deep divisions within the Iranian regime… Moussavi, the “accidental leader” of the opposition… Eroding legitimacy and expanding repression… Obama’s huge challenge… Afshin: What Bloggingheads viewers can do… Political Islam: It’s not easy being green…

Boston Review: The View from Tehran: Changing Iran from Within
American policy has…focused on advancing America’s own economic interests and military supremacy; been a major factor in modern Iran’s stalled political and economic growth; fostered a military mentality in Iranian political life.

Galleycat: Newsweek Reporter Arrested in Iran
Maziar Bahari, a reporter and documentary filmmaker who has covered events in Iran for the magazine for more than a decade, had been detained without cause by Iranian authorities.

Guardian Books: “I Feel I Should Be There”
For the Iranian-born comedian Shappi Khorsandi, the current turmoil in Tehran brings back poignant memories

The following is excerpted from The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be by Michael Lux. In the book Lux shows that while conservatives were very much in the asendancy during the period after 1970, progressives were still able to notch up some impressive and valuable legislative and policy successes, to the benefit of the country as a whole. Here’s a partial list of progressive achievements in the last three decades, each secured over fierce conservative opposition.

1. Superfund (1980) for polluters that goes towards the cleanup of toxic dumpsites.  Republicans allowed it to expire in 2004.
2. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (1983) originally vetoed by Reagan.
3. The Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) allows employees to take (as of yet) unpaid leave for health or family reasons.
4. The Motor Voter law (1993) made voter registration significantly easier.
5. The National Service Initiative (1993) allowed young people to volunteer for social service programs in exchange for a small stipend and tuition help.
6. The Reinventing Government Initiative (1993) significantly cut down government bureaucracy and paperwork.
7. Cutting crime (1990s) with more cops, crime prevention programs, and stricter gun control.
8. The S-Chip program (1997) expanded healthcare coverage to millions of children.
9. Minimum wage increases (1996, 2007)
10. New congressional ethics legislation (2007, 2008) “…to clean up the stench left by the scandals of the previous few years.”
11. The Sarbanes-Oxley Bill (2002) created modest regulatory oversight in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals.

Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover

Edited by Katrina vanden Heuvel and the Editors of the Nation

Wall Street and Washington: How the Rules of the Game Have Changed
by Steve Fraser
Originally appeared on TomDispatch, September 19, 2008

What is Washington to do as the financial system collapses? Clearly, stark differences in approach as well as in public policy have already emerged. Bailout Bear Stearns and pump up the brokerage and investment business with new lines of credit. Nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the backs of the taxpayer—but let Lehman drown. Tell the financial community to save itself, after which Bank of America salutes and buys Merrill Lynch. Then, the Fed gets cold feet and decides it can’t let an institution the size of the insurance giant AIG go under as well. Washington is left staring into the abyss. The old rules no longer apply.

And that’s the point. At moments of crisis since the mid-1980s, the relationship between Washington and Wall Street has changed fundamentally, at least when compared to anything that would have been recognizable in the previous century. As a result, the road ahead is dark and unknown.

During the nineteenth century, Washington was generally happy to do favors for Wall Street financiers. Railroad tycoons, who often used those railroads as vehicles of extravagant speculation, enjoyed subsidies, tax exemptions, loans and a whole smorgasbord of financial fringe benefits supplied by pliable Congressmen and senators (not to mention armadas of state and local officials). Read More

A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story

By Diana Butler Bass 

Introduction

After Jesus

In the mid–1990s I was having dinner with a friend. Although she studies religion professionally, she claims no personal faith. Somehow the conversation turned to my Christian commitment, part of my life that has perplexed her.

“I don’t understand how you still can be a Christian,” she stated.

“I know, it isn’t the easiest thing to be these days,” I lamented, feeling a little foolish. “But I just can’t get away from Jesus. I actually love Jesus and his teachings.”

“Jesus?” she questioned. “I don’t have any trouble with Jesus. It’s all the stuff that happened after Jesus that makes me mad.” Read More

Some links on Iran — a partial, subjective list, to be sure, but all good/interesting:

• Quill & Quire: Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi joins fight against Iranian “coup d’état”
• Charlie Rose: A conversation about the Internet’s role in the coverage of the Iranian elections
• On Point: Week in the News
• TheRumpus.net: Now is a good time to read The Shah of Shahs
• TPMtv: On the Ground in Iran

From a few weeks ago, Gov. Howard Dean on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on the urgency of comprehensive health care reform, and what real reform needs to look like. (Shorter version: “Let the American people choose.”)

He also says: “Bipartisanship comes second to doing the right thing. And bipartisanship isn’t worth it if we have a crummy [health care reform] bill.”

Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform is out July 12. Buy it for FREE on pre-order today at Progressive Book Club.

Following is an excerpt from How to Win a Fight with a Conservative by Daniel Kurtzman.

As with many things in life, we are often our own worst enemies. These seven habits are like Kryptonite to the partisan warrior and must be painstakingly avoided.

1.    Becoming Overly Emotional
There’s nothing more counterproductive to your cause—or costly to your metaphysical well-being—than becoming emotionally unraveled in the middle of an argument. If you’re experiencing heart palpitations, developing blurred vision, or emitting cartoon steam, from your nostrils while your opponent is sitting their stone-faced, you’re not winning. Keep your rage in check at all times, and don’t take things personally.

2.    Oozing Condescension
Even if you believe you’re talking to a breathtakingly misguided ignoramus, conceal it. If you patronize or belittle your opponents, they’ll only dig in their heels. They’ll also think that you’re a sanctimonious, pompous wanker.

3.    Spewing Hateful Invective
There’s nothing wrong with using hard-charging rhetoric and sharp-edged words, but if you want to be persuasive, you need to stop short of savage insults, epithets, and ridiculously inflammatory rhetoric (e.g., calling Republicans Nazis or crazed totalitarian, bigoted fascists.) Many media bloviators have built entire careers on hysterical diatribes, but that only works when you’re preaching to the choir. Back on planet Earth, you’ll never succeed in making a winning argument if you come off as a raging misanthrope.
Read More

Here’s another in our series of short video interviews, each running a minute (give or take), with PBC authors. This one’s with Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, which tells the inside story of how the US government shredded the Constitution after 9/11, adopting “war on terror” policies —indefinite detention, rendition, torture—that violated the most basic and cherished American values.