Up from conservatism

For nearly a decade, Michael Lind worked closely as a writer and editor with the intellectual leaders of American conservatism. Slowly, he came to believe that the many prominent intellectuals he worked with were not the leaders of the conservative movement but the followers and apologists for an increasingly divisive and reactionary political strategy orchestrated by the Republican party. Lind's disillusionment led to a very public break with his former colleagues on the right, as he attacked the Reverend Pat Robertson for using anti-Semitic sources in his writings. In Up From Conservatism, this former rising star of the right reveals what he believes to be the disturbing truth about the hidden economic agenda of the conservative elite - and about their cynical "culture war" strategy for acquiring and maintaining political power. From the Civil War to the civil rights revolution, the southern elite combined a low wage, low-tax strategy for economic development with a politics of demagogy based on race-baiting and Bible-thumping. For a century, these elites dominated southern politics and economics, fortified by white resentment and the disenfranchisement of black voters. Now, Lind maintains, the economic elite that controls the Republican party is following a similar strategy on a national scale using their power to shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle class while redistributing wealth upward. To divert attention from their favoritism toward the rich, conservatives play up the "culture war," channeling popular anger about falling real wages and living standards away from Wall Street and focusing it instead on the black poor and nonwhite immigrants. The right's cynical electoral strategy fabricates issues and frightens voters - particularly low income whites - into voting for Republicans whose policies are devastating the very families they claim to represent.