Steven answers “I see the right wing trolls have dumped in...”

Susan Paxton asked this question about Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America:

I see the right wing trolls have dumped in on this book, which is interesting. Anyone else suspect right wing hysteria means the book has hit a nerve?

Steven I've read the book and the critiques, and the critiques are pretty lame --
mostly identifying a quote that might have been too tightly condensed (it w…moreI've read the book and the critiques, and the critiques are pretty lame --
mostly identifying a quote that might have been too tightly condensed (it wasn't) and a few people claiming the footnotes don't always support the argument she's making... Lots of them dig up "evidence" that they claim refutes her claims, but the examples do nothing of the kind... here is a typical specimen from Reason (AKA Koch Brothers Monthly): https://reason.com/blog/2017/10/25/pu...

That piece uses quotes from Buchanan to demonstrate that he wasn't a racist... but MacLean made it clear throughout her book that Buchanan was talking out of both sides of his mouth on racism -- and she documents it. That, in fact, is a key point of the book: that they used all this talk of "liberty" as a Trojan Horse to get their ideas into the mainstream.

In that same critique, the writer opens what he thinks is his most devastating take-down with "Perhaps most significantly, while some Virginians did indeed use the state's voucher-like tuition grants..." to show that some Virginians used vouchers to pay for segregated schools... but MacLean also made it clear that most Virginians wanted to follow the law, so there is no contradiction there. Her target is Buchanan, not all Virginians... So when this yahoo points out that some Virginians used vouchers to pay for segregated schools, he's not proving her wrong in any way. In fact, he's providing more detail into how the Byrd/Buchanan direct approach fell apart -- which is why the Kochs created the Cato Institute to create fake research, and why they also started funding Reason to promote one thing: privatization...

The one legitimate critique I saw came from a liberal author how felt she was giving Buchanan too much "credit"... basically focusing on one story line at the expense of others... well, that may be true, but Jesus... don't all books do that? This one is pretty exhaustive.(less)

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Democracy in Chains

by Nancy MacLean

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