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Indispensable enemies;: The politics of misrule in America
Book by Karp, Walter
- GenresAmerican
308 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 24, 2016
False prophet, and rank hypocrite, of Jeffersonian republicanism
Explaining everything in terms of party bossism is indeed bad enough, which is what Karp's primary thesis is, particularly when the explaining gets so ludicrous as to claim that LBJ thought his 1964 Civil Rights Act had co-opted the need for further legislation and so didn't want the 1965 Act **that his own AG helped write** and that **LBJ called for with his famous 'we shall overcome' speech to Congress.** More on that later.
What's really wrong is what's implied in my headline.
Karp thinks that if we just get township-style,and township-sized, local government set up all across America, along with the little red schoolhouses of traditional common schools, to inculcate good republican virtue in our youth, all will be right with the American Republic.
Funny. Jefferson himself didn't want that in his own "country" of Virginia or anywhere else south of the Mason-Dixon.
Yes, Karp correctly points out that Jefferson extolled the establishment of townships in the Northwest Ordinance. Ditto for Jefferson talking up New England-type common schools. But, from the 1798 Kentucky Resolutions on, we have a record of silence from Jefferson on applying the development ideas of the Old Northwest to the Old Southwest.
Either Karp doesn't know this, and thus is too rank an idiot to be writing a book like this, or he does, and he's as rank a hypocrite as about the worst of the politicians he excoriates. (Not to mention that, in the midst of expressing his legitimate worries for minorities, beyond his attacks on LBJ, he ignores Jefferson's own record on slavery.)
Beyond that, Karp is highly naive about what township government could actually do today, beyond installing another level of bureaucracy.
He's also either a rank hypocrite or rankly ignorant about early American history. One doesn't have to swallow the Beards whole, let alone Marx, to know that there were classes in America in 1787 and that Philadelphia 1787 was a conservative second revolution of sorts. This, though, DOES explain Karp's hostility to economic- or class-based explanations of history as expressed in Buried Alive.
Nor, getting back to his bosses and oligarchs theory of government, does Karp explain how these groups originated. It's like they magically appeared out of nowhere. In reality, Jefferson himself was a member of a landed gentry oligarchy. Hamilton was connected by marriage and interest to a Dutch patroon oligarchy.
And, back to Jefferson, and LBJ, again. Despite his professed concerns for minorities, and worries about oligarchies, Karp simply doesn't discuss the history of slavery in the US. Or the history of discrimination. He briefly mentions the second Klan after WWI without calling it the "second" Klan or ever mentioning the original one.
He's also, in part because of his anti-sociology, anti-economics bias, pretty much wrong in his chapter on trade unionism.
The only major thing he gets right is FDR's New Deal being more conservative than most Americans realize. To the degree it excluded blacks, he's right that that is due in fair part to FDR's collusion with Southern Bourbons. That and a few related things are all that saves this from a 1-star rating.
Explaining everything in terms of party bossism is indeed bad enough, which is what Karp's primary thesis is, particularly when the explaining gets so ludicrous as to claim that LBJ thought his 1964 Civil Rights Act had co-opted the need for further legislation and so didn't want the 1965 Act **that his own AG helped write** and that **LBJ called for with his famous 'we shall overcome' speech to Congress.** More on that later.
What's really wrong is what's implied in my headline.
Karp thinks that if we just get township-style,and township-sized, local government set up all across America, along with the little red schoolhouses of traditional common schools, to inculcate good republican virtue in our youth, all will be right with the American Republic.
Funny. Jefferson himself didn't want that in his own "country" of Virginia or anywhere else south of the Mason-Dixon.
Yes, Karp correctly points out that Jefferson extolled the establishment of townships in the Northwest Ordinance. Ditto for Jefferson talking up New England-type common schools. But, from the 1798 Kentucky Resolutions on, we have a record of silence from Jefferson on applying the development ideas of the Old Northwest to the Old Southwest.
Either Karp doesn't know this, and thus is too rank an idiot to be writing a book like this, or he does, and he's as rank a hypocrite as about the worst of the politicians he excoriates. (Not to mention that, in the midst of expressing his legitimate worries for minorities, beyond his attacks on LBJ, he ignores Jefferson's own record on slavery.)
Beyond that, Karp is highly naive about what township government could actually do today, beyond installing another level of bureaucracy.
He's also either a rank hypocrite or rankly ignorant about early American history. One doesn't have to swallow the Beards whole, let alone Marx, to know that there were classes in America in 1787 and that Philadelphia 1787 was a conservative second revolution of sorts. This, though, DOES explain Karp's hostility to economic- or class-based explanations of history as expressed in Buried Alive.
Nor, getting back to his bosses and oligarchs theory of government, does Karp explain how these groups originated. It's like they magically appeared out of nowhere. In reality, Jefferson himself was a member of a landed gentry oligarchy. Hamilton was connected by marriage and interest to a Dutch patroon oligarchy.
And, back to Jefferson, and LBJ, again. Despite his professed concerns for minorities, and worries about oligarchies, Karp simply doesn't discuss the history of slavery in the US. Or the history of discrimination. He briefly mentions the second Klan after WWI without calling it the "second" Klan or ever mentioning the original one.
He's also, in part because of his anti-sociology, anti-economics bias, pretty much wrong in his chapter on trade unionism.
The only major thing he gets right is FDR's New Deal being more conservative than most Americans realize. To the degree it excluded blacks, he's right that that is due in fair part to FDR's collusion with Southern Bourbons. That and a few related things are all that saves this from a 1-star rating.
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August 1, 2019If I could recommend only one book about American politics to anyone interested in the subject, it would be this one. Karp rejected abstract notions about "social trends" in favor of looking at what American political figures actually do. He concluded that, rather than big corporations ruling the US (the standard left viewpoint) or Americans being idiots who get the crappy government they deserve (what one might call the H. L. Mencken position), the people with real power in this society are Democratic and Republican party oligarchs (Karp's term) who want above all to maintain the soi-disant two-party system and prevent Americans' thinking, and acting, for themselves. Karp's analyses of such historical events as the rise of Jim Crow, Wilson's plunge into WWI, the New Deal, Pearl Harbor, the Tonkin Gulf incident, and Nixon's 1972 landslide election victory are elegant, scathing, unconventional, and convincing. He also does a great job demolishing the pretensions of American educators, prefiguring John Gatto's work.
March 8, 2016
If you want to understand why the Republicans are FREAKING out over Trump and the Dems over Bernie, this book makes it clear.
Turns out that there's only really one party: the Oligarch Party. And they share power between their two flavors, Republican and Democrat. When a Trump or Bernie comes along, they both attack. It's a threat to their entire power structure
This book is more indispensable today than ever.
Turns out that there's only really one party: the Oligarch Party. And they share power between their two flavors, Republican and Democrat. When a Trump or Bernie comes along, they both attack. It's a threat to their entire power structure
This book is more indispensable today than ever.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews