This article did a good job of showing how the different branches of "conservatism" are at odds with each other. As a libertarian with progressive tendencies who hangs out mostly with people who would classify themselves as "liberals", I see a paradoxical attitude toward immigration in their beliefs. On the one hand they give a great deal of vocal support to unions and on the other hand label as a "racist" anyone who points out that the tide of illegal immigrants undercuts the value of labor for native-born American citizens. And most liberals are also environmentalists, sympathetic to any effort to preserve wildlands, parks, etc. Of course, the human assault on the natural world is largely a consequence of overburdening the planet with an excess of people, most of whom develop consumerist tendencies in our culture. Most of the continuing increase in U.S. population has been shown due to the influx of recent immigrants.

Personally, I find the labels of "conservative" and "liberal" unduly divisive and useful mainly to those who plainly manipulate politics in this country through media control. Much more useful is the effort to build communities of interest from across the "political spectrum", to get people to think about issues themselves individually rather than just going along with what they have been told is the "liberal" or the "conservative" position.

sure don't seem to see it that way.

Thanks, this is intellectually fun, very well-written, and incisive. I think it's also very true. I have been saying for a while now to friends that it seemed like the entire country has been taken over by the south. "Look at Clinton," I'd say. He threw poor mothers into the labor force to produce cheap labor for the well heeled, and so he could look "good" by cutting welfare rolls. How progressive is that? Not only that, but his comments and behavior during his wife's campaign as well as his influence on her smacked of George Wallace. It amazed me to listen to her sound like Wallace, and then I remembered to whom she was married. The anti-intellectualism (Clinton was not an intellectual in the same way JFK in the guise of being savvy, clever and a smooth talker.

Didn't the Southern dixiecrats go into a revolt before the ink was even signed on Johnson's civil rights legislation? And hasn't that revolt continued until now? And while white supremacy isn't the same as during Wallace's time, it is certainly the case that white supremacy has not disappeared. Just because we have a biracial man whose father is from Kenya, not Jim Crow south, running for office does not mean that white supremacy isn't alive and well. Anyone who thinks that the faux shock over Rev. Wright on the part of white America isn't symptomatic of some form of white supremacy is deluding themselves. Wright said what is said in the Black community every day, yet whites acted like they were having a collective heart attack for overhearing it. And then after the shock came the vicious attacks on Wright that were way over the top, like some kind of hysteria really, followed by Obama's "break" with Wright. These are not the politics of a "post-racial" America. These are the politics of southern racism defused throughout the entire society.

For perhaps the first time, too.

This is brilliant. I have rarely read a more accurate, if mordant and disturbing analysis of the legacy of Jesse Helms and the Dixiecrats, who did, indeed, manage to shape the politics on both sides of the aisle. There is little left to be said, and I would only take minor exception to one part of Lind's article: he says

There was a snooty, WASP-y, plutocratic Northeastern conservatism, which was pro-business, internationalist, mildly philanthropic and in favor of birth control for European immigrants and third-world nations. And there was Robert Taft's Midwestern conservatism, which was anti-labor, fiscally conservative, protectionist and isolationist, and is represented today by Patrick Buchanan.

Just kindly disregard the "was"s in that paragraph. There still are these factors, they are still at large, but they are far more difficult to recognize in the mists of time than a Jesse Helms was. They're still there, masquerading as good, "salt of the earth" liberals. Lind acknowleges as much by pointing out my favorite neighorhood bully, Pat Buchannan, as their representative. Buchannan may have mellowed outwardly over the years, but he is, deep inside, still the punk who loves to push the little guys around, who still feeds on the resentment he himself breeds, a more refined and therefore elusive version of Helms.

They're still out there, Helms is definitely not dead -- just buried -- and there is still plenty of work to be done. It is no longer acceptable to simply flog the south as the last safe target of dismissal, denigration and faux liberal bigotry. The whole joint stinks, and now that the Jesse Helmses of the world are thinning out, it is more clear the curse of the pre-1960s south has been handed off to people we'd never recognize as the enemy because they don't dress or talk the part.

The one little set of "was"s aside, Michael Lind, this piece is perhaps your magnum opus, at least here, on Salon. Thank you sir.

Michael, I'm with ya until your next to last sentence:

"When, inevitably, the occasional populist protest figure like Perot, Dobbs or Huckabee appears, the affluent progressives quickly close ranks with the corporate conservatives."

Are you f-ing serious? Perot, who was about as much a plutocrat as anyone who ever tried to buy his way to the White House with his own billions? Dobbs the corporate bigot? Huckabee whose tax plan would have, while helping the poor, been a bigger bonanza for the rich than W's tax cuts? If those are populists, I'll stick with the "affluent progressives."

The chocolate ration has been increased. Winston Smith knows the chocolate ration has been reduced, but he knows the penalty for dissent. The state says it is increased, so everyone celebrates. The State is always right.

Today in America the System can't fail. If it should falter, the banks, Wall Street, we will bail them out and move on. The burden of risk is borne by the individual. If we step out of line and join a union, we are fired. If we get sick and miss work, we are fired. If we are unlucky, we are fired. And when fired, kiss the health insurance goodbye, and then it's one short step to losing the house. But everything is fine! The politicians on Teevee say so. Just look at productivity and profits. Exxon made a googol dollars last quarter, going for two googols this quarter. Everyone should celebrate! The System is always right.

How much more or less humane is the Corporation than Big Brother? In which society, "DixieAmerica" or Oceania, is the individual more mobile, or valued more? Jesse Helms and the Southern Way - right up through Dubya - set out to destroy that villain FDR and his "Freedom from Fear" and "Freedom from Want" and have succeeded pretty well.