December 19, 2006

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Gingrich: or really just the Grinch I'm in a foul humour. In part because of this tidbit from the paper. Link: Gingrich, on a Mission, Has No Time to Campaign for ’08 - New York Times. Mr. Gingrich’s mission, as he sees it, is to save American civilization from the gravest crisis it has confronted since the Civil War. He has also set as a goal what he calls the restoration of God to a central place in American government and culture. Here's what Gingrich advocates in his new 10 point Contract on America: Social Security privatization, electoral reform, radical streamlining of government, and “patriotic education” for schoolchildren and immigrants. The document also includes a call to “recenter America on the creator from whom all our liberties come” and to appoint judges who understand “the centrality of God in American history.” So, his analogy is the civil war. His politics make it seem like he wants a southern victory after the fact. Perhaps he takes the possibility of northern secession seriously. Maybe that's why Southern Republicans are so big on the 2nd Amendment. At any rate, he thinks in terms of a war in a split country. And, his victory involves enriching the rich and sending more of the poor into hopeless, generational misery--neoliberalism's equivalent of slavery. How to control this society? Fear of God. It's easy, with patriotic education (and people on this blog have criticized me for introducing left wing education camps..tsk. tsk, get with the program, people! educations camps are tres chic these...

Jodi Dean

Jodi Dean is a political theorist.

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