A few months ago, Christopher Rufo gave a speech at Hillsdale College that he called “Laying Siege to the Institutions.” I listened and was appalled by his claim that society was in desperate trouble because of the ascendance of 1960’s radicals, that public schools were the root of all evil, that such public schools needed to be replaced by unfettered school choice, and that what we need is to return to the good old days of 1776.
Peter Greene listened to Rufo’s immortal words, and he gave them a close reading. He concluded that Rufo wants to eliminate public schools, oust the radicals who took over all the important institutions, and take charge of them himself with his allies.
Greene ends his piece as follows:
The short form of all this is that radicals from 1968 gave up the violent overthrow of the US and–somehow–a couple dozen of them managed to take over every single institution in the country as well as transforming from scruffy radicals into elites. Rather than chase them out, we should trash the institutions they poisoned and start over, with freedom-loving ordinary people.
So, several thoughts.
First, why settle on 1968 for your big year, as if you weren’t repeating themes from 1950s McCarthyism or 1930s Red Scares or anarchism freakouts from earlier still. Is your audience conservative Boomers who always hated those long-haired hippy commie weirdos?
There’s a lot of internal inconsistency here. Some serves a narrative purpose; those shadowy elite ideologues who took over the country need to be both super-powerful (because we need to be justified in Getting Them and also, that beautiful victim card) and a tiny group (there’s more of us Real Americans than them).
Other inconsistencies aren’t really inconsistencies, but tells. Your side is ideologues; my side has values. When you use the “levers of power” you are oppressive and evil, but when we get our hands on them, we will use them to enforce our will. That is only inconsistent if you think some sort of principle should be involved here, but the only principle involved is “People like me should be empowered to enforce our will on others, because our will is righteous true and serves us.” Break corporations and make them support your view. Fund only the institutions that say what you agree with. The answer to the oft asked question, “Why is that wrong when I do it but right when you do it” will always be “Because we are right and you are wrong.”
Or, as Frank Wilhoit puts it:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Rufo doesn’t represent any sort of conservatism I recognize, but that’s the mask they’re wearing these days.
The other thing striking about Rufo is how overtly and deliberately political he is (Politics is “the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit” –P. J. O’Rourke). All of this is about using words and forming phrases to leverage and accumulate power, taking positions and maneuvering around your opponent. The people on the other side are not actual human beings; they have no good intentions, no legitimate concerns. In fact, none of this has to do with people with actual honest concerns or differences. Rufo doesn’t invoke ordinary people with some sense of who they are and what they want and need, but because invoking them gives an argument some extra weight and helps build a winning frame.
Certainly there’s no thought about a institution-free society. Rufo talks as if we just cut all the supports and let everyone be free, as if that wouldn’t result in a society in which people were only as free as their bank accounts allowed them to be. Rufo and his crowd would be plenty free.
There’s certainly no concern about the larger effects of these tactics. What happens, for instance, in a society where trust has been systematically crushed and undermined? Nothing good, I’m betting, but Rufo’s perfectly happy to go there, and increasingly others are willing to go there with him (here’s Laura Ingraham calling for an end to public education).
I’ve sparred and chatted with plenty of folks on the other sides of these issues over the years. Over the last decade they have become even less likely to demonize opponents, more likely to see nuance and issues on all sides, even when they disagree. They have been mostly conservatives, with a conservative’s natural tendency to want to preserve things. Maybe I’ve been naive to think that some of them were never going to go this far, even as I’ve understood that much of them have been pointing in this direction, and many of the folks financing the movement wanted exactly this. But I wonder what they think privately of this new slash and burn addition to the crew.
Rufo represents an extreme version of ideas that have long been around, like the idea that public education is just a scam so that the teachers union can get teachers jobs thereby resulting in dues that fill the coffers of the unions which are just fronts for the Democratic party. Or the idea that if government went away (and stopped making me pay taxes to support Those People) then we would all live in a happy paradise of freedom. Or that a bunch of stuff (under the umbrella of anything from evolution to segregation to CRT) is being taught to undermine my view of the world and make my kids think stuff I disagree with.
Like his buddy DeSantis, Rufo is not so much about conservatism as he is about authoritarianism, about christianist-fueled control or replacement of all institutions (and do notice–Rufo does not distinguish between public institutions and private corporations–he wants to run them all). This is aggressive, smart authoritarianism that only really has one question to ask before it either lifts you up or smashed you– are you on their side? Trumpsim was just some throat-clearing for these folks; soon I’m afraid they’ll be in fuvoice.
I recommend that you read Greene’s piece in full.
Education, dumb luck, old money, or the complete subordination of ethical principles are seemingly the only entry points to possibly achieving the Horatio Alger myth and extreme wealth. Take away public education, and what are you left with?
This link belongs here too, like the abortion debate, this is about much more than public education. But public education is the plug, when removed, that makes it easer for everything else to go down the drain:
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-calls-republican-led-states-defy-federal-government
Very much related to this, here’s a snippet from a recent story on Cruz in HuffPo:
Note how both Cruz and Rufo use the same language with respect to American history, but with a meaning not at all related to what they are saying. When Cruz says “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history” he, and Rufo, doesn’t mean what we know that means. He’s saying “ignore the past two centuries of our nation’s history and go only what happened prior to that matters.” But here’s the rub that truly shows he and they are not nearly as smart at they think they are. Two hundred years ago Marbury was settled law. Unfortunately, if one has no knowledge of or interest in American history, if it’s just what people see around them and what their like-minded friends, people like Cruz and Kirk make sense.
scary words “if one has no interest in American history…”
Most of the right today are extremists. They do not want to conserve; they want to destroy. I find it amusing that Rufo, born in the early 1980s, is blaming the ’60s for society’s shift. All cultures evolve with time. The right today is led by insecure, white men that feel threatened by shifting demographics, and they want to assert their power. This may be their cultural motive, but I think their political influence is libertarian authoritarianism. Stepping on the necks of black, brown people and women they believe will right their ship of grievances, and blowing up civil society and institutions will allow them to rule like the sun kings they believe they are.
I saw a label for the new political center of the Republican Party, which explains both their religious zeal and their desire to impose their views on others: Christofascist.
I don’t know if this is Christofascist, but it is certainly inhumane (and inhuman) and being done in the name of a government that represents Americans. The individual tragedies caused by these public policies are piling up. (As an aside, interesting that this is in Yahoo Sports feed. I guess it’s for all the hurdles pregnant women and those in labor have to navigate.)
https://sports.yahoo.com/woman-left-bleed-10-days-184515591.html
The movie, “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” makes this same point with a speech at the end (that probably never happened). Conceptually one can connect the dots.
The ’60s (and ’54) put America on the path (and in the Supreme Court) to inclusion. They hate that.
That’s what these right wing tea party self-indulged mostly silent gop conservatives and those drinking their kool-aid detest. They put 21st century “We” in We the People.
(And they hate regulations and taxation and any ‘values’ that differ from theirs).
Their version of “public” as in “taxpayers I pay your salary and provide this service” includes public education.
To borrow an misguided phrase, so much for no child left behind.
What is their endgame? Not every child educated? The “leftover” kids educated in public schools decimated without funding? “Choice schools” with no regulations, no public representation on boards, no federal or state audits…
And, just curious, where did these fools go to school? Probably not private or parochial or Ivy League or state colleges or college at all. Where do their kids go to school? While this is proof that the schools DO need to do a better job if these idiots got diplomas, you’d think they have to admit public school worked for them (except probably didn’t get to sit at the cool kids table and this is payback)
If there is anything I have learned over this radical right wing insurgency it is that the theory, for every action there is a reaction, is blatantly false. For every Newt Gingrich to Chris Rufo that comes out from under a rock, there is a progressive that goes silent into a cave. Where are reasonable alternative voices? The proverbial pendulum of conventional political wisdom no longer swings. back and forth. It’s on a right wing ascent that keeps getting higher..
“Laying Siege To Institutions” is expensive. Bake Sales and Tee Shirts don’t cut it. Hillsdale must have helped the MFL Tampa Summit held SAT 7/16.
Because someone figured out a financially-ambitious Sponsor Advertisement.
$50,000 Presenting/$30,000 Platinum/$20,000 Gold/$10,000 Silver.
Betsy DeV was a headliner and got the crowd on their feet cheering & clapping by coming right out and saying it. “I personally think the Department of Education should not exist.”
Moms For Liberty Living and Loving The Dream.
The AFT really dropped the ball when Rufo came out about CRT. Whether it is or isn’t in public schools, it was clear they underestimated the power and influence Rufo would have. I know no one likes to hear this, it’s much easier to call opponents “fascists” or “Nazi’s” but just like the playground, words and insults do little to stop people who are dead set on getting their way.
Me? I’m going to do my part and teach my students to have nuanced, robust discussions and to think critically about the issues that affect them. That’s all I can do.
Look, if someone is, in fact, a fascist, it is entirely appropriate to call him or her a fascist. There are many fascists among the Republicans these days, starting with their cult-of-personality Glorious Leader who asserts that he is the state (“I have an Article 2 that says I can do anything I want as president.”) and called upon the military to act as a police force against BLM protestors and for the Border Patrol to shoot unarmed protestors and continually harped on an enemy within and loved monuments and military parades and was consistently racist and scapegoating about that racism. Every fascist trope. If it walks like a duck and. . . .
He based his entire political presentation of self upon three fascist tropes: the return to a mythical golden age, the betrayal by enemies within, and a supposed danger posed by a minority group.
Plus he tried to carry out a coup, as fascists will do.
But unfortunately, he and his supporters are coup d’etwats, so they failed.
LOL. Well said, SomeDAM. I call this the Cuckoo Coup. I can’t think of it without picturing Ghouliani with his hair dye dripping down his face speaking in front of Four Seasons Landscaping across from the dildo shop.
Unfortunately for them.
Fortunately for the rest of us.
As Bob makes clear, he is not name calling, but describing accurately. This is part of the problem. “Back in my day” we said calling a spade a spade. We need to do more of that. Bob is also quite correct that Rufo’s strategy and goals are very much fascist, just draped in nicer, more benign language that can be more easily manipulated when people don’t abide by accurate descriptions or care to.
Society is “in desperate trouble because of the ascendance of 1960’s radicals”
Yes, the ass-end-dance of 60’s radicals to corporate boards has really put the corporatocracy in dire straights.