"A few isolated groups in the backwater of American life"

The NAACP has this week proposed a resolution which will condemn the Tea Party for its tolerance of racism within its ranks.

At the risk of this blog turning into Gipper-and Palin-watch*, I was interested in the former Alaskan governor's Facebook riposte which, yet again, evokes Ronald Reagan:

President Reagan called America’s past racism “a legacy of evil” against which we have seen the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights. He condemned any sort of racism, as all good and decent people do today. He also called it a “point of pride for all Americans” that as a nation, we have successfully struggled to overcome this evil. Reagan rightly declared that “there is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country,” and he warned that we must never go back to the racism of our past.

This opened a straightforward denial and evasion of the issue which the NAACP provocatively addressed, reinforced by an avowal of personal colourblindness - which, like Reagan, she expressed as founded in her family experience.

Palin found in Reagan's 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, known most for its "evil empire" line, his declaration of a post-racist America. She might have also noted his horror at "the resurgence of some hate groups preaching bigotry and prejudice" and his call for the audience to "use the mighty voice of your pulpits and the powerful standing of your churches to denounce and isolate these hate groups in our midst". Still, she is generally accurate in her representation of Reagan's belief in America's triumph over its racial division. This was a self-deception, albeit one that was practical and politically useful - allowing Reagan to incorporate the Civil Rights Act he opposed into a narrative of American exceptionalism, and ignore the southern strategy which he employed.

More appropriately, Palin might have quoted Reagan's speech in 1981 to the NAACP's annual convention:

A few isolated groups in the backwater of American life still hold perverted notions of what America is all about. Recently in some places in the nation there's been a disturbing reoccurrence of bigotry and violence. If I may, from the platform of this organization, known for its tolerance, I would like to address a few remarks to those groups who still adhere to senseless racism and religious prejudice, to those individuals who persist in such hateful behavior.If I were speaking to them instead of to you, I would say to them, "You are the ones who are out of step with our society. You are the ones who willfully violate the meaning of the dream that is America. And this country, because of what it stands for, will not stand for your conduct."

The speech went on to acknowledge continued African-American economic inequality, but emphasised that the answer lay in tying the NAACP's goals to achieving general economic independence and ending reliance on federal intervention. In light of, amongst other issues, Reagan's opposition to the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, the speech met a chilly response - and Reagan never returned. Later in his presidency, the chair of the NAACP , William F. Gibson, would call the administration "anti-black, anti-woman, anti-minority and anti-civil rights", and Reagan personally as "reactionary and racist".

Reagan's attacks on racism extended only as far as the extremist fringe, never to those he counted as his political base or allies. Palin echoes his political evasion. Still, the NAACP's resolution suggests a tendency to view any conservative movement as a resurgence of massive resistance, and to attack it, vigourously, politically and symbollically - evading any possibility of aligning African-American advancement with conservative aims, or effectively isolating truly racially-motivated activists.


*I have discovered another site which has taken on this role enthusiastically.

Ronald Reagan: Citizen Legislator

At the National Review Corner, "A Time for Choosing" is recalled. Bizarrely, Steyn and Long remember Reagan as an opponent of strong, charismatic moral leadership in the presidency. Reagan, of course, is celebrated most amongst modern presidents for strong, charismatic moral leadership. This attack on Obama's pretence to leadership and those who accept it reflects the increasing trend on the right to focus on Reagan's activism in the early '60s. Then, Reagan could most legitimately claim not to be a politician, but merely a citizen outraged with the growth of government and the decline of culture, and spoke more angrily and apocalyptically than any other period. Where his presidency might provide too many lessons in compromise, and too many favourable comparisons with Obama, his first years as a Republican provide a model for powerless, populist opposition.

JeffreyLord, a former Reagan official, also looked back to Reagan in the '60s last week in the American Spectator. Potentially an interesting look at how the NYT reported on Reagan and the conservative movement, and how that compares to modern coverage of the Tea Party, Lord's article swerves towards a rant about an elitist "Establishment". In Lord's understanding, Reagan and the Tea Party are representatives of an American tradition of anti-establishmentarianism which includes George Washington, Sean Hannity and, somehow, Lincoln. This narrative depends on a rigid definition of "Establishment" and a few blindspots: firstly, that the Hollywood political leader and GE spokesman Reagan was somewhat of an established elite himself; secondly the long tradition of leftist anti-Establishment types for which, in the '60s, Reagan was the foe; and thirdly, the fact that Reagan's presidency Established a political dynasty still represented well in the Beltway and the Fourth Estate.

Owl City on a Hill

Adam Young, the ascendant electro-popper also known as Owl City, has been putting the words of Ronald Reagan to music on his current tour. Reagan's speech on the 1986 Challenger disaster provides a dramatic, emo opening to "Meteor Shower", an otherwise short, simple little number:



Young is a Christian whose lyrics, while ambiguous enough to appeal to millions of needy teenagers, certainly reflect a simple, devotional faith. Traditionally, Reagan has appeared as a warmongering villain or vacuous buffoon in American music - as this list suggests. Owl City has cast aside the angry, political punk of his forefathers and is offering the American youth an image of Reagan as an inspiring, spiritual leader.

The Speech of the Unknown

Reagan had a bunch of stories, and this involves one of my favourites. Over the decades he would occasionally relate a tale about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, where the delegates waver at the last minute, only to be roused into action by an unknown speaker at the back of the hall. After signing, they turn and find the stranger has mysteriously disappeared. Reagan enjoyed the drama and its hint of miraculous intervention at America's birth. In 1981, a minister wrote to inform him that the speaker was, in fact, John Witherspoon. Though the president graciously received the information, the story was robbed of its mystery, and he never told it again.

Mitch Horowitz, an historian of the American occult, has uncovered an interesting new aspect to the story. Reagan never gave a source for his tale, though in 1974 at CPAC, he mentions he heard it from "a writer, who happened to be an avid student of history", but that he himself " never researched or made an effort to verify it". Horowitz now has, concluding that Reagan took the story from occult philosopher Manly P. Hall:

After publishing his great work, Hall spent the rest of his life lecturing and writing within the walls of his Egypto-art deco campus in L.A.’s Griffith Park neighborhood. He called the place a “mystery school” in the mold of Pythagoras’s ancient academy. It was there in 1944 that the occult thinker produced a short work, one little known beyond his immediate circle. This book, The Secret Destiny of America, caught the eye of the future president, then a middling Hollywood actor gravitating toward politics. Hall’s concise volume described how America was the product of a “Great Plan” for religious liberty and self-governance, launched by a hidden order of ancient philosophers and secret societies.

Reagan's telling of the story apparently matches Hall's version, suggesting that "the president’s reading tastes ran to some of the outer reaches of esoteric spiritual lore". Reagan believed in an ordained destiny for America, though he attributed this to divine sources, rather than the more earthly (if not grounded) idea of an ancient conspiracy. This revelation, however, certainly suggests a new meaning to another oft-repeated aphorism:

You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.

I will call it mysticism!

Back on the Radio

A Texas radio station has mysteriously started to play just Reagan speeches.

The country music station plays soft, but there's nothing, really nothing to turn off...