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Alex's avatar

I still feel like Russel Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" is one of the most honest accountings of the history of conservative thought in the US and Britain. Because Kirk himself was (I believe) a misanthrope and elitist, comfortable with racism and highly suspicious of democracy, he made no effort to sand off the misanthropic, elitist, racist, or anti-democratic features of conservative thought.

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B. B. Kirchoefer's avatar

I had never heard of Kendall before, but I'll have to read him. He's basically giving the same interpretation of American history I've come to, but from the other side. Historians of the American Civil War like Foner, Oakes, and McPhereson all argue in their own ways that the Civil War constitutes a 2nd American Revolution, where the modern vision of America as a pluralist democracy finally comes into being. Its probably better to think of America as a white settler society until at least then, and I think that self-understanding of America being a pluralistic democracy only really became hegemonic post WWII, and it seems to be really breaking down now. For that reason, I respect Kendalls honesty in being a conservative who espouses the view that Lincoln was a disaster.

Incidentally, the right wingers I know and talk to here are all obsessed with voter fraud and the "quality of votes". I live in Iowa, and having a conversation about democracy with an acquaintance recently he started babbling about relative differences in birth rates between rural areas and cities being the pretext for why we need to keep the electoral college. It's that grim.

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