The Roots of the Right Wing in the U.S.
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The Roots of the Right Wing in the U.S.
We, too, are concerned with academic freedom at CUNY. We are getting nibbles of attacks on faculty who are teaching in Middle East studies and also complaints about the fact that such a large proportion of faculty seem to be Democrats ;-). I set up this list to respond to same. As I happen to live near Columbia, I am also aware of things there along these lines. I don't think we are into a full scale McCarthy era thing, but I well remember Bill Buckley haunting Yale in my undergraduate days -- God and Man at Yale:
http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/wbuckley1.html
in which he attacked particularly Sid Lovett, chaplain and then a college master who had been imprisoned as a pacifist during WW1 -- and was much beloved by all. Buckley used to hang around the fringes, trying to knock off this or that student as a potential disciple, and, I am sure, haunted the secret society, Skull and Bones, through which both Bushes passed. He was allegedly a vehement anti-Semite as an undergrad -- his family hung out in Franco's fascist Spain and Buckley actually taught Spanish as a returned-from-the-wars undergrad and member, I gather, of the right wing Catholic lay group, Opus Dei, still lurking at the fringes of our universities today with its covert agendas (a chapter is near Columbia):
http://www.mond.at/opus.dei/
I watched him squirm in 1955 at the last gasp "One Million Americans for McCarthy" rally at Madison Square Garden, on the podium with the proverbial "little old ladies in tennis shoes," (gender biases in those days), ex-generals, etc.
Buckley is the font of our right wing movement and its 300+ think tanks (e.g. the Manhattan Institute) sponsored by such as Richard Mellon Scaife: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/04/27/scaife.profile/ out of inherited monies, cranking out their propaganda and the ugly movement which eventuated out of Buckley's family's Texas oil money. That Buckley accent is as phony as the proverbial wooden nickel. They tell me that the family portraits with purple backgrounds line the entrance hall to the Connecticut home where Buckley would entice the above-mentioned undergrads (Yes, I was invited, but declined.). We should be aware that we are dealing now with a most dangerous foreign import that is using our country for its own devious purposes! Cutting back on college and university funding is part of the game of dumbing down Americans.
I suspect that the uneasy coalition of right wing Catholics, fundamentalist Protestant scam artists (e.g. Falwell who started out at a segregationist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell ), libertarians, and just plain greedies is unstable and will come unglued at some point. I can't understand how the right wing 'Zionist' organizations (e.g. AIPAC which is sponsoring some of the attacks on Middle East Faculty):
http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467
can hang together permanently with the apocalyptic Protestant rightists who are celebrating (in advance) the destruction of Israel and the deaths of all the Jews who were not smart enough to join Jews for Jesus while there is still time. Read St. Paul's Letter to the Romans in which he viciously attacks the competition (Jews who have not converted whom he accuses of "stealing from the pagan temples.") which set going 2 millennia of pogroms climaxed by the Holocaust. Elsewhere he coined the infamous slogan: "the Jews killed Jesus" that was recelebrated in a certain recently much publicized film along these lines which even got to the Anti Defamation League a bit as a warning of potential things to come, I hope. Needless to say, "The Passion" starts the story after the life of Jesus and his concern for the poor and obsesses with the final suffering and anticipated apocalyptic return (to destroy those Jews!) rather than the prophetic concerns for social justice that were the original Gospel message for which this suspected terrorist ("zealot" in biblical translation) was executed cruelly (crucifixion being ordinary punishment for slaves) by a notoriously brutal Roman Governor, Pilate -- not the nice guy portrayed, I gather, by Gibson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
Yahoo lists ask you to sign in for a (free) Yahoo email membership. One can use it as an alternate address or check it once a year -- or never. Best, Ed Kent
The Roots of the Right Wing in the U.S.
We, too, are concerned with academic freedom at CUNY. We are getting nibbles of attacks on faculty who are teaching in Middle East studies and also complaints about the fact that such a large proportion of faculty seem to be Democrats ;-). I set up this list to respond to same. As I happen to live near Columbia, I am also aware of things there along these lines. I don't think we are into a full scale McCarthy era thing, but I well remember Bill Buckley haunting Yale in my undergraduate days -- God and Man at Yale:
http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/wbuckley1.html
in which he attacked particularly Sid Lovett, chaplain and then a college master who had been imprisoned as a pacifist during WW1 -- and was much beloved by all. Buckley used to hang around the fringes, trying to knock off this or that student as a potential disciple, and, I am sure, haunted the secret society, Skull and Bones, through which both Bushes passed. He was allegedly a vehement anti-Semite as an undergrad -- his family hung out in Franco's fascist Spain and Buckley actually taught Spanish as a returned-from-the-wars undergrad and member, I gather, of the right wing Catholic lay group, Opus Dei, still lurking at the fringes of our universities today with its covert agendas (a chapter is near Columbia):
http://www.mond.at/opus.dei/
I watched him squirm in 1955 at the last gasp "One Million Americans for McCarthy" rally at Madison Square Garden, on the podium with the proverbial "little old ladies in tennis shoes," (gender biases in those days), ex-generals, etc.
Buckley is the font of our right wing movement and its 300+ think tanks (e.g. the Manhattan Institute) sponsored by such as Richard Mellon Scaife: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/04/27/scaife.profile/ out of inherited monies, cranking out their propaganda and the ugly movement which eventuated out of Buckley's family's Texas oil money. That Buckley accent is as phony as the proverbial wooden nickel. They tell me that the family portraits with purple backgrounds line the entrance hall to the Connecticut home where Buckley would entice the above-mentioned undergrads (Yes, I was invited, but declined.). We should be aware that we are dealing now with a most dangerous foreign import that is using our country for its own devious purposes! Cutting back on college and university funding is part of the game of dumbing down Americans.
I suspect that the uneasy coalition of right wing Catholics, fundamentalist Protestant scam artists (e.g. Falwell who started out at a segregationist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell ), libertarians, and just plain greedies is unstable and will come unglued at some point. I can't understand how the right wing 'Zionist' organizations (e.g. AIPAC which is sponsoring some of the attacks on Middle East Faculty):
http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467
can hang together permanently with the apocalyptic Protestant rightists who are celebrating (in advance) the destruction of Israel and the deaths of all the Jews who were not smart enough to join Jews for Jesus while there is still time. Read St. Paul's Letter to the Romans in which he viciously attacks the competition (Jews who have not converted whom he accuses of "stealing from the pagan temples.") which set going 2 millennia of pogroms climaxed by the Holocaust. Elsewhere he coined the infamous slogan: "the Jews killed Jesus" that was recelebrated in a certain recently much publicized film along these lines which even got to the Anti Defamation League a bit as a warning of potential things to come, I hope. Needless to say, "The Passion" starts the story after the life of Jesus and his concern for the poor and obsesses with the final suffering and anticipated apocalyptic return (to destroy those Jews!) rather than the prophetic concerns for social justice that were the original Gospel message for which this suspected terrorist ("zealot" in biblical translation) was executed cruelly (crucifixion being ordinary punishment for slaves) by a notoriously brutal Roman Governor, Pilate -- not the nice guy portrayed, I gather, by Gibson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate
posted by Ed Kent at 9:29 AM
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