Conservatives without co.., p.27
Conservatives Without Conscience, page 27
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25.
In a conversation I had with Vice President Agnew in December 1970, he told me of his admiration for Hoover at a time when others in the Nixon White House were trying to get Hoover to resign.
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26.
Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 411–12.
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27.
Facts on File Yearbook 1970 (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1971), 698.
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28.
Terri Bimes, “Reagan: The Soft-Sell Populist,” in W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh David Graham, eds., The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism & Its Legacies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 61.
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29.
Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 159–60.
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30.
This material is drawn largely from Phyllis Schlafly’s Web site at http://www.phyllisschlafly.com/.
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31.
Elizabeth Kolbert, “Firebrand: Phyllis Schlafly and the Conservative Revolution,” The New Yorker (November 7, 2005) at http://www.newyorker.com/printables/critics/051107crbo_books.
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32.
The source of this material is in part the National Women’s Party Web site on the ERA at http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/, and in part Ruth Murray Brown’s book For a “Christian America”—A History of the Religious Right (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), 15–62.
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33.
Phyllis Schlafly, “Is the Era of Big Government Coming Back?” The Phyllis Schlafly Report, vol. 35, no. 7 (February 2002) at http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/202/feb02/psrfeb02.shtml.
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34.
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 81.
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35.
I can remember Richard Nixon grousing, in 1971, that Republicans had but one small think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, which today is also an affluent great-granddaddy. In recent years there has been a proliferation of right-wing think tanks. For example, the Heritage Foundation Web site refers to some 564 experts or organizations espousing conservative views, including the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom in Washington, D.C. (See the Heritage Foundation, “Policy Experts,” at http://policyexperts.org/organizations/organizations_results.cfm.) Do think tanks matter? Do all their books, position papers, seminars, and briefings influence policy? No definitive answer is possible, for there is no way to measure accurately. Donald E. Abelson, Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2002). But clearly they have influence. Former conservative activist and writer David Brock (who had his own eye-opening experiences with conservatism and created the Media Matters for America Web site that puts the lie to conservative misinformation and propaganda) wrote in The Republican Noise Machine, “In 1998 Heritage spent close to $8 million, or 18 percent of its budget, on media and government relations.” David Brock, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), 58. Spending such sums enables them to keep their name before policy makers, and today conservative think tanks appear to have a far greater influence than moderate ones, even long-established organizations like Brookings. I undertook a rather simple, albeit unscientific, test of the relative strength of the major think tanks on Capitol Hill by noting how often they were referred to on the floor of the House and Senate since 1995. Using the Government Accountability Office’s search engine for the Congressional Record, I found the following:
Year The Heritage Foundation The Cato Institute American Enterprise Institute The Brookings Institution
1995 135 87 59 15
1996 63 59 35 11
1997 80 48 40 22
1998 54 22 29 11
1999 49 24 21 4
2000 55 24 19 5
2001 53 23 29 5
2002 48 19 14 8
2003 85 17 51 5
2004 56 56 27 4
2005 70 27 27 6
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36.
Jean Stefancic and Richard Delgado, No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America’s Social Agenda (New York: Temple, 1997). Work product of the conservative think tanks, however, has become notably predictable, and they are not generating great ideas; rather, they “produce studies with one or more preordained conclusions: that liberal solutions will only increase the power and oppressiveness of government and bureaucracy; that they deprive worthy citizens of their liberty, or that they benefit criminals at the expense of victims; and, most often, that more laissez-faire and lower taxes for business is always the best policy.” Herbert J. Gans, “Tanking the Right,” The Nation (January 27, 1997), 28.
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37.
Notes, telephone conversation with Senator Barry M. Goldwater, March 1995.
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38.
Barry M. Goldwater with Jack Casserly, Goldwater (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 386.
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39.
Ralph Z. Hallow, “Weyrich fears ‘cordial’ ties between GOP and the Right,” Washington Times (June 17, 2005) at http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050617-125248-4355r.htm.
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40.
E. J. Dionne, “Roasting the Rightest of the Right; Conservatives Turn Out for Tough Guy Weyrich,” Washington Post (April 2, 1991), E-1.
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41.
Ibid.
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42.
Jeff Jacoby, “The Christian Right’s Double Shocker,” Boston Globe (April 26, 2001), A-15.
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43.
For example, when Michael Deaver left the Reagan White House to set up a highly lucrative lobbying operation—with Canada, South Korea, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia among his A-list of clients—Paul Weyrich called for a special prosecutor to investigate charges of conflicts of interest. (Martin Tolchin, “Conservatives Say Deaver Case Hurts Reagan,” New York Times [May 1, 1986], A-21.) Although he could not back it up with specifics, Weyrich later shot down Bush I’s nomination of Senator John Tower to be Secretary of Defense because he opposed Tower’s alleged drinking and spending time with women “to whom he was not married.” (Suzanne Garment, “The Tower Precedent,” Commentary [May 1989], 44.) Weyrich was relentless in his attacks against Bill Clinton. (Anonymous, New York Times [November 12, 1995], 6-37.) However, Weyrich wrote thoughtful op-eds critical of conservatives and the Reagan White House, following revelations about the Iran/Contra debacle. He explained that “our government was designed not to play great-power politics but to preserve domestic liberty” through “separation of powers, congressional checks on executive authority, the primacy of law over raison d’état—all of these were intentionally built into our system.” He continued, “The Founding Fathers knew a nation with such a government could not play the role of a great power. They had no such ambition for us—quite the contrary.” Weyrich also raised a problem in 1987 that remains to this day: “If the executive does what it must in the international arena, it violates the domestic rules. If the Congress enforces those rules, as it is supposed to do, it cripples us internationally.” Paul M. Weyrich, “A Conservative Lament; After Iran, We Need to Change Our System and Grand Strategy,” Washington Post (March 8, 1987), B-5.
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44.
Anonymous, New York Times (November 12, 1995), 6-37.
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45.
Steve Bruce, “Zealot Politics and Democracy: The Case of the New Christian Right,” Political Studies, vol. 48 (2000), 263–82.
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46.
Religion scholar Laurence Iannaccone reported that an “enormous multi-year study, sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Science, and directed by religious historians Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby…enlisted over a hundred researchers to describe and analyze dozens of ‘fundamentalist-like’ movements across five continents and seven religious traditions” to explain fundamentalism. Yet this “Fundamentalism Project,” as it is known, came up with “no clear definition of fundamentalism, no objective criterion for deciding which religious movements are ‘fundamentalist,’ and nothing approaching a theory of fundamentalism.” Laurence R. Iannaccone, “Toward an Economic Theory of ‘Fundamentalism,’” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, vol. 153 (1997), 100. The Fundamentalism Project, to the chagrin of evangelicals, labels them as a fundamentalist religion.
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47.
Corine Hegland, “Special Report: Values Voters—Evangelical, Not Fundamentalist,” National Journal (December 3, 2004).
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48.
Micklethwait and Wooldridge, The Right Nation, 83.
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49.
Special Report, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” Economist (June 23, 2005) at http://www.economist.com/world/na/PrintFriendly.cfm?story_id=4102212.
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50.
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Bush’s Gains Broad-Based: Religion and the Presidential Vote (December 6, 2004) at http://people-press.org/commentary/pdf/103.pdf.
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51.
Special Report, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” The Economist (June 23, 2005).
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52.
Joel Rogers, “Devolve This!,” The Nation (August 30–September 6, 2004), 20.
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53.
Mark Noll explained evangelicalism as the “belief that lives need to be changed”; the “belief that all spiritual truth” is found in the Bible; dedication to active lives in service of God, or to “evangelism” (spreading the good news) and “mission” (taking the gospel to other societies); and conviction that Christ’s death on the cross provided reconciliation between a holy god and sinful human beings. See Ethics & Public Policy Center, “Center Conversations: Understanding American Evangelicals, A Conversation with Mark Noll and Jay Tolson” (June 2004) at http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2115/pub_detail.asp.
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54.
Ethics & Public Policy Center, “Center Conversations,” 18.
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55.
Ibid.
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56.
Christian Smith, Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 3.
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57.
Smith polled over twenty-five hundred church-going Protestants in a 1996 telephone survey that he reproduces in the book. He acknowledged the weakness of this type of polling, and the results are now dated. Nonetheless, the surveys have some rather alarming findings. For example, a survey focusing on the South revealed that 87 percent of self-identified evangelicals believed that the United States was founded “as a Christian nation”; 92 percent saw “a serious breakdown of American society”; 68 percent believed “morals should be based on an absolute, unchanging standard”; 69 percent disagreed with the notion that religion is a private matter “to be kept out of public debates over social and political issues”; 55 percent believed “Christian morality should be the law of the land even though not all Americans are Christians”; 68 percent believed the “federal government should promote traditional values in our society”; and 77 percent believed “the mass media is hostile to [evangelical] moral and spiritual values.” (Ibid., 200.) In a survey of religious identity and influence, only 35 percent of the evangelicals disagreed with the statement “Everyone should have the right to live by their own morality, even when it is not Christian morality.” This, of course, suggested that as many as 65 percent of evangelicals wanted to tell others, regardless of their beliefs, how to lead their lives. (Ibid., 201.) This poll also showed that 90 percent of the evangelicals believed “Public school instruction should include Christian views of science and history,” i.e., intelligent design and creationism. (Ibid. 204.) A more encouraging result was in the Religious Right Survey (a nationwide poll of over a thousand conducted by Gallup in 1996) that revealed that only 4 percent of all polled, including evangelicals, admired David Duke, who was then running for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana.
Smith and his collaborators also interviewed evangelicals face-to-face from select locations, but it was a very small sample that had not been selected randomly; in addition, these kinds of interviews are not always as candid as anonymous responses. In short, this is not a scientifically representative selection of all evangelicals, but rather a largely anecdotal collection of information gathered from evangelicals willing to talk with sociologists. As another social scientist, familiar with this work, explained, “The sampling procedure is critical, since Smith says his interviews tell us what evangelicals really think and want. That is a big claim and it means he has to have a representative sample. The evidence strongly suggests he does not. This team apparently did two studies using face-to-face interviews. One involved 130 church-going Protestants in six different locations around the U.S., and the second involved 187 evangelicals and others in 23 states. Neither of these is a national sample. If you look at the map in the book, you can see that most of the interviewees (in the second, larger study) came from places near large universities. You can even guess the academic affiliation of many of the sociologists involved by looking at the map. One consequence is that the Deep South, which has the largest concentration of evangelicals in the country, is pretty underrepresented. One might well find that evangelicals who live in university communities have higher educational attainments, etc., than other evangelicals. A second issue is how the researchers found the particular evangelicals in their locale to interview. We aren’t told, but in the Acknowledgments Smith thanks the pastors who ‘in many cases’ granted the researchers access to the interviewees. So it is quite plausible that the investigators contacted the pastors of conservative Protestant churches in their area, and the pastors selected—at least to some extent—the evangelicals to be interviewed. That makes it potentially a very biased and misleading sample.”
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58.
Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1999), 191.
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59.
Ibid., 52, 58, 59.
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60.
Ibid., 54.
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61.
Ibid., 55, 56.
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62.
Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 2–3.
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63.
Ibid., 34–35.
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64.
Ibid., 100–101.
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65.
