1962 politico-climatology
I ran into a book the other day, I’m tempted to call it a historical curiosity and not much more — but I know better. The 1962 publication Men of the Far Right by Richard Dudman, which — whatever else it does — defines lines of political demarcation as viewed from the vantage point of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era.
The Men of the Far Right include
Senator Strom Thurmond
Senator Barry Goldwater
National Review founder William Buckley, Jr.
John Birch Society founder Robert Welch
General Edwin A. Walker
McMarthy backer Gerald Smith
American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell
If I’m at first tempted to play the game of “Which of these things is doing its own thing?”, ot figure out which you cannot connect to any other, I am stalled because I do not really know the answer. Likewise, these divergent figures do not a coherent movement make, even a fledgling one. To see George Lincoln Rockwell placed next to Barry Goldwater is a wee bit jarring. But, I suppose I can connect them through the “5 Degrees of Seperation” ploy — scratching about for thematic ties if not actual ties. Easy enough to tie him to Thurmond; easy enough to tie him to Welch — from either direction there you can tie to Smith, and from there to Rockwell.
Goldwater appears today as the harbinger of the future. From the vantage point of 1962, we are working through the strands of a hyper patriotic marked anti-communism which lined Joseph McCarthy as a pre-eminent figure of the “Right” in Eisenhower’s America — and lines General Edwin A. Walker as a key figure, and we are sorting out the strains of the Depression-era politics — meaning that Gerald Smith was a sort of Ghost from the Past.
In a previous decade, Strom Thurmond would be characterized as relatively moderate on racial issues compared to his Southern Dixiecrat Governor compatriots. By the time he jumped ship to the Republican Party, flagged at the press conference with Barry Goldwater, his role had changed, though I suppose would end up being overshadowed by George Wallace and/or Lester Maddox.
These days, Barry Goldwater’s image has been refurbished somewhat, an erstwhile maverick crypto-liberal, albeit with libertarian predilications. The semi-haliography is partially the result of shifting political alliance shifting and resulting political issues, and partially historical amnesia. Never mind — nothing is ever one dimensional, even if we try to conceptualize things as such. He is cited as someone who represents the “old Republican Party”, a decent sort where the current crop has “lost his way” — which seems disingenuous enough, seeing as he would have been the figure placed where we place Bush and the neo-cons and theo-cons today, and belly-ache on how the Republicans have lost their way and gone crazy in nominating this nutcase–
who had the fancy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.