Word: tocquevillians
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...George W. Bush is an emphatic Tocquevillian. His plan enlisting faith-based organizations to solve social problems is a Tocquevillian project...
...campaign, noodling themes of class warfare and identity politics, speaking on the veiled premise that society is divided between oppressors and oppressed, between bloated white Republican clubmen and a rainbow coalition of everyone else. Oddly enough, Gore's running mate, Joe Lieberman, had been on record as a devout Tocquevillian, on the side of religion, morality, patriotism and the American exceptionalism - the United Colors of Bill Bennett. Or at least he was Tocquevillian until Gore telephoned. Lieberman sold a few of his principles down the river to run with the Gramscians...
...Sound familiar? Is this Gramscian/Tocquevillian split the same as the red/blue 50-50 division we saw on the electoral map in November? Yes, but not exactly. In millions of individual citizens' minds, elements of the two views blend. For example, I am essentially Tocquevillian, but the Tocquevillian American should nurture an enormous tolerance that is enabled by the assumptions 1) that American life ought, above all, to be fair, and 2) that there's enough here for everyone. But tolerance to a Tocquevillian is condescension to a Gramscian. Gramscianism lives on an invidious and Europeanized zero-sum kind of thinking...
...advanced in America. You see them in "hate crimes" laws, in gender equity legislation, in forced corporate "sensitivity" training, in the menace of coerced "right thinking" in the universities. You feel the nuances of it in casual conversation. It's an attitude at a cocktail party. To speak Tocquevillian (the deepest American cultural tradition) is as bad as lighting up a cigarette at a dinner party on the Upper West Side...
...Tocquevillian is the Gramscian's right-wing fascist. But the Gramscian, you see, is a vicious Kluxer in her own right. As Bugs Bunny says, "This means...