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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (16091)	8/17/2007 4:57:33 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22250

Re: The new book in question is titled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”,... The reason why the Israeli spell over the US polity is so powerful is that it blends with US white supremacism --the latter merely extrapolates the Jewish fancy of "God's Chosen People" into "God's Chosen (White) Race".... Made In Texas George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics By Michael Lind, New America Foundation New America Books/Basic Books \| January 2002 210 pp. \| ISSN: 0465041221 [...] For the most part, Lind's book is a recounting of Texas history: the story of a divided state with two conflicting traditions. One is the Texas of Lyndon B. Johnson, Ross Perot and Sam Rayburn; it's "a society eager to embrace the Space Age and the Information Age." It's "led, not by good-old-boy businessmen and political demagogues, but by a visionary and earnest elite of entrepreneurs, engineers, reformist politicians and dedicated civil servants. . . . The preferred society of these Texans is a broadly egalitarian meritocracy, not a traditional social order stratified by caste and class." These folks are "sentimental nationalists" with "little if any sense of Southern identity" or loyalty to their region. They believe in an activist federal government that serves ordinary Americans. George W. Bush's conservative Texas is "a society with a primitive economy based on agriculture, livestock, petroleum and mining, with a poorly educated population of workers lacking health protection and job safety. . . . This Texas is a toxic byproduct of the hierarchical plantation system of the American South, a cruel caste society in which the white, brown and black majority labor for inadequate rewards while a cultivated but callous oligarchy of rich white families and their hirelings in the professions dominate the economy, politics and the rarefied air of academic and museum culture." These folks are attached to "military values unknown anywhere else in the English-speaking world, except in other Southern states. The inhabitants of this Texas are deeply localist and tend to view Washington, D.C., as the enemy." [...] newamerica.net

To: sea_urchin who wrote (16091)	8/17/2007 5:01:07 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 22250

Follow-up to my previous post: March 20, 2003 Michael Lind, Author of "Made in Texas" A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW If you ever wanted to learn the full lowdown on Bush's roots as a full-fledged member of the Texas Neo-Confederate plutocracy, "Made in Texas" is the book to read. Michael Lind, who wrote the celebrated "Up From Conservatism," offers a trenchant intellectual analysis of the reactionary, right wing roots of Bush in the lone star state. Lind's central thesis is that -- despite the popular stereotype of Texas as a "Western" state -- Texas is really a state with two distinct traditions. Bush is not a product of the "Western" cowboy heritage (although he is packaged that way). Rather Bush is heir to the Southern economic and political perspectives that were forged during the years of slave-powered cotton plantations (the ultimate in a low-wage economy). The book casts a wide net in exploring the implications of Bush's Southern style outlook, including his immersion in Armageddon theology. BuzzFlash learned more about Bush's worldview in Lind's book, sub-titled "The Southern takeover of American Politics," than any book we have read in the last year. Lind is a Senior Fellow of the New America Foundation. His three previous books of political journalism and history, "The Next American Nation" (1995), "Up from Conservatism" (1996) and "Vietnam" (1999) were all selected as "New York Times Notable Books." He lives in Washington, D.C. and has a ranch in Texas. * * * BUZZFLASH: The most fundamental premise in your insightful book, "Made in Texas," is that despite the stereotype of Texas being a Western state, there are actually two major cultural and political traditions that divide Texas. Can you summarize their characteristics? MICHAEL LIND: Despite its Western trappings, Texas has always been part of the South, which provided the ancestors of the majority of white Texans as well as the dominant culture into which newcomers of all races tend to be assimilated. The demographic center of gravity in Texas has always been East Texas, which is cotton plantation country, not cattle country. The major exception to the rule is Central Texas -- Austin, San Antonio, and the Hill Country -- where immigrant German pioneers with values similar to those of Germanic Americans in the Midwest and Great Plains were historically more progressive than the dominant Southern conservatives. BUZZFLASH: How does George W. Bush represent the part of Texas that is an extension of the deep South? LIND: As odd as it may seem, the West Texas in which George W. Bush grew up was an extension of the Deep South, for the simple reason that most West Texans were of Southern descent and shared Southern conservative values. Immigrants like Bush's Yankee parents were not numerous enough to change the culture; on the contrary, they were assimilated to it. The West Texas in which George W. Bush grew up was a homogeneous society dominated by transplanted Southern Protestants. It was Goldwater country and Reagan country before it became Bush country. Although he was born in Connecticut, Bush is a genuine cultural Texan, having lived in Texas from infancy. His political values -- ranging from aggressive militarism in foreign policy to small-government ideology and fervent support for laissez-faire economics -- are those of the Jeffersonian/Jacksonian political culture of Texan Southerners. [...] buzzflash.com