Women and Social Movements

When going through McGirr's work part of her second chapter struck me as very similar to a book that was assigned for HIS502. (I really hope I'm getting the book right because I remember the concept) I believe it was Southern Cross by Christine Leigh Heyrman. In Southern Cross the first members of the nuclear family to accept the rising fundamentalist beliefs of the bible belt were the wives and mothers. These individuals then had the task of convincing their husbands, who held the real power, to join these congregations. In McGirr's second chapter she describes something similar in which women became involved in the conservative movement and would then bring in their husbands. (p. 87) It raises an interesting question as to the nature of social movements, particularly those with a religious aspect which both Heyrman's and McGirr's certainly had. Perhaps the influence of women play a larger role than is shown even in modern scholarship?

Reagan: JFK = Karl Marx

1. I'm glad that McGirr didn't compromise her integrity by playing the stupid "fair and balanced" game of braindead "impartiality." It seems that she has attached words like "tirade" to at least half of the quotes from conservatives in the book, and she's not afraid to make these people look like the idiots they were. Good for her.

2. Not much pigment in that cover photo, huh?

3. On a related note: McGirr's treatment of race is a bit funky. Throughout the book, she says several times that OC conservatives weren't as obsessed with race as conservatives in other parts of the country, largely because the OC was essentially all white. She even creates this odd geography where race is important on a north-south axis, but not an east-west axis. (14-15) Umm . . . doesn't that geography privilege a very particular way of looking at race (ie as a southern or southern and northern urban problem)? And moreover, who says that race isn't an issue just because black people aren't around? White people are raced, and so the lovely little middle class bubble that these people exist in is a racial space. Further, the move away from anticommunist hysteria to "law and order" hysteria among these conservatives is deeply impacted by race. It's striking that McGirr is comfortable suggesting that race was at the heart of the conservatism of the (working class, ethnic) Reagan Democrats, but is much less comfortable with attributing those kind of motivations to her better educated, more WASP-ish subjects in OC.

4. Although Reagan may have called JFK a commie in 1959 (189), the Professor Brothers disagree:

McGirr

Have a mixed opinion about this book. One of my biggest concerns about "Suburban Warriors" was about the grassroots nature of the movement. McGirr claims that this was largely a social movement, but I keep finding examples of her pointing out how either the party or other establishment members who came down from on high and helped teach the individuals about the truths of conservatism....I didn't get a really good feel about the agency of the individuals in beginning the "new american right". There is ample evidence about how grassroots efforts helped to bring change in various levels of government, but in terms of its origins....McGirr seems to reserve this for the "big businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals". (70-71,98)

Despite this, I found McGirr's analysis of the make up of the Orange County population and the gradual creation of its demography pretty effective. Although, she brings in a regional analysis of Orange County in comparison with the rest of the country, but does little else in framing how this population is representative of the rest of the country.

Suburban Warriors

In the back of my mind while reading this book, I was trying to assess the question of whether or not this was a social movement like the ones that we have been reading about. It might be easy to write these Orange County conservatives off as a bunch of crazies from the sidelines of politics as was suggested that the Liberals did at that time, but McGirr certainly proves that they were much more than that. I’d like to say they were a social movement based upon the information provided for Orange County, but the hesitation comes from not knowing how representative this trend is for the country as a whole. There had to be differences in the kinds of conservatives that existed throughout the country, unless I am misinterpreting the whole thing. Is it that there were the hard core types of conservatives in Orange County, but Republicans generally elsewhere?

Also, I’d like to know what those Orange County residents who stayed with the Democratic Party felt about all of this activism in their area and how strong was the Democratic Party in California. McGirr did say that overall there were more Democrats and Republicans, but she makes it sound as though the Democrats were powerless to prevent conservative growth. My Italian (like really Italian-born in Italy and came over on a boat), Catholic, staunch Democratic Great-grandparents moved to Costa Mesa, CA during the immediate postwar years to retire and I cannot help to think that they would have been appalled by these activists and the way that they were influencing local governments. It would be interesting to know how people like them, in a sense outsiders, felt amid this conservative society. McGirr makes the early work by the conservatives sound fanatical and intense that it could have been unsettling for those who did not agree with their views.

It ain't easy bein right.

I'm not surprised that this book isn't a class favorite but I've found myself looking at McGirr's work with a kind of sympathetic contempt. It is a tale of a political movement against an embedded and growing ideology, with strong federal power and social upheaval. Now maybe part of my pity comes from the fact that I have read Conscience of a Conservative and as I recall, it struck me as fairly reasonable compared to the criticism normally heard of conservativism. What I found particularly important to McGirr's work is the attachment of the social factors linked to what conservatives were arguing for. What I had hoped for though was a larger analysis of the contradictions of the conservative movement and those of the liberal movement solely for some inserted logic. I will applaud McGirr however for situating the conservative movement in the context of motivations and grassroots action in a period of social movements. I don't agree with the bulk of the conservative movement or the implications of their issues, but I can certainly support fighting the government if for no other reason than entertainment.

say this, mean that

Suburban Warriors provides a good deal of insight into the early days of the conservative movement as well as tracing its ideological and political evolution over a number of years. However, as I was not all that familiar with the conservative movement prior to reading this book, McGirr has left me questioning its essence. She paints the early conservatism as a primarily reactionary and often times paranoid movement which was afraid of change and social progress. She repeatedly concedes that this was not necessarily always case, but her evidence seems to overwhelming point to this conclusion. At numerous points in the book McGirr seems to attempt to balance out her narrative by saying things that downplay the often extremist tone of the movement but then dedicates substantial block quotes to these extremist voices. At best her tone comes across a bit naïve, at worst it betrays a degree of dishonesty. If her view is that conservatism was primarily extremist, in nature then she should make that case. However, if she believes that the extremist element was marginal, than she should provide evidence in support of that premise. It seems as though she is attempting to draw certain conclusions beneath the surface of her main narrative.

Value of a book on Conservatives?

I too have no interest in Conservatives, but I think there a lot that can be gained from reading a text like this.


To quote the Art of War:

"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself."

-Sun Tzu