Saturday, January 22, 2011 :::
 
Dos Passos on Liberal Rage

A Mind That Suits promised some time ago to supply a quote from the novelist John Dos Passos, who penned a forward to William F. Buckley's great Up From Liberalism, the book which almost undoubtedly set the course for American conservatism to follow until Ronald Reagan came to power and conservatism took on more of a life of its own, being a much larger house..

He has now unearthed the quote, and it is worth pondering, especially given the shenanigans of last week.  Forgive any typos: they will be corrected as caught on revision.

When Business abdicated in 1929 ti was not the working class who took over, it was the new bueaucracy.  The radical theoriests from the colleges crowded into Wasington. They were in the driver's seat and they knew it.  Whether their work was good or bad is beside the point.  The functions they exercised establisehd them as a managerial class...When the old regime businessmen fell from their thrones, the leaders of a new class took their places.

The "liberal" mentality which Mr. Buckley puts over the barrel in this book is, I am beginning to suspect, the ideological camouflage of the will to power of this new ruling class.  I can't find any other explanatino of these fits of hysteria, these fixations which time will prove to have been irrational...Only some such phenomenon as the esprit de corps of a class recently risen to power can account for the lynching spirit aroused against those who have sought to dislodge any fraternity member, whether bureaucrat or college professor, columnist or commentator, from an entrenched position of power.  The dispartiy between the provocation and the reaction is, as the emotions of the moment cool, what stands out more and more as the characteristic trait of the "liberal."  Here is perhaps a key to the subconscious springs of liberal behavior.

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 7:54 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.