Read on Twitter
The John Birch Society, which pioneered the “we’re a republic not a democracy” meme that Mike Lee echoed yesterday, hated Chief Justice Earl Warren with a burning passion because of his anti-Jim Crow rulings. The JBS associated democracy w/ integration, that’s why they hated it. https://twitter.com/hakeemjefferson/status/1314195031633190913
Here’s a thread on the JBS where you can hear them say this (and offer many other contemporary GOP talking points) in their own words. https://twitter.com/sethcotlar/status/1312609600256970752
The JBS and the 1964 GOP nominee Barry Goldwater cloaked their defense of Jim Crow in the language of “freedom.” They claimed to oppose the “tyranny” of a federal government that was trying to “force” local white people to give up on white supremacy.
They claimed to be advocating only for “local control” and “freedom of association,” but everyone knew those were code words for white supremacy.
And thus follows 50+ years of the American right describing every progressive effort to defend the rights of marginalized group as a “tyrannical power grab designed to impose their radical agenda on the nation.” As if same sex marriage will destroy heterosexual marriage.
This germ has been present within the political culture of the GOP for a long time, but it really started to grow back in the Tea Party era when Glenn Beck breathed new life into it. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1182320355643285504?s=20
My two primary areas of scholarly focus are the political culture of the founding era, and post WWII conservatism, to this whole "the founders built a republic not a democracy" thing is right in my wheelhouse. Here's a much longer essay on that theme. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1232710245891227648?s=20
And before folks chime in with their defenses of Goldwater, here's a thread on why his personal lack of bigotry doesn't excuse him from the opportunistic appeals he made to Southern segregationists. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1226891118710648834?s=20
In 1965 Bob Novak noted that the Goldwater-ites sought to rebrand the GOP as "the white man's party" in order to gain the votes of white Southerners. They knew what they were doing, though they tried to cloak it in the principle of federalism. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1272264794846814208?s=20
