Patrick Link

“It is for this reason that this book dramatizes how Cold War liberals reimagined the canon of political thought. Perhaps the greatest recent nominalist historian of liberalism, Duncan Bell, has reminded us that one part of the reshuffling of the liberal tradition is recanonization. Nothing about this, of course, is specific to liberalism; if all history is contemporary history, then all canonizing is too, as the past is reconfigured in light of the present. There may, indeed, be no better way into understanding political thought than by studying what ancestry it claims—and whom it censures or expels. “It is well known that each age writes history anew to serve its own purposes and that the history of political ideas is no exception to this rule,” Shklar observed in 1959. “The precise nature of these changes in perspective, however, bears investigation. For not only can their study help us to understand the past; it may also lead to a better understanding of our own intellectual situation.”13 Yet how mid-twentieth century liberalism invented its own past has barely been broached. In Bell’s classic article, he makes the destabilizing but narrow claim that it was only in the twentieth century that Locke was anointed the founder of liberalism. There is much more to say about the canonization process. It overturned a prevalent nineteenth-century version of liberal theory with perfectionist and progressivist features that Cold War liberalism transformed. Creative agency had been liberalism’s goal, and history its forum of opportunity. The mid-twentieth century changed all that.”
― Samuel Moyn, Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times

“The Soviet Union was allowed exclusive inheritance of the Enlightenment in its own self-presentation as the secular progeny of the historic breakthrough to reason and science. That this proprietary relation to the Enlightenment was implicitly granted looks in retrospect almost like a confession: Cold War liberals were not sure they could defend the Enlightenment from Soviet appropriation, or even that they wanted emancipation, when communists arrogated the project for themselves. It is both regrettable and revealing that, instead of opposing the claim of enemy communists to inherit the Enlightenment by showing how opportunistic it was, Cold War liberals accepted the communists’ claim and indicted the Enlightenment instead.”
― Samuel Moyn, Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times

“The head of the Los Angeles Fraternal Order of Police told CBS Evening News, “I believe that the rap music promotes, by its very language and by its very actions—promotes violence against authority and, consequently, violence against law enforcement.” The music was “infecting young people with hate and bigotry,” editor Philip Gailey wrote in The St. Petersburg Times. “No amount of government aid to the cities will be able to repair the damage the hate rappers are doing to race relations. They are as sick as any Klansman.”
― John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

“Edwards, who certainly did not lack for worldliness and even cynicism, was unsettled by the degree of rancor Duke could inspire. At a debate in front of the state convention of the American Association of Retired Persons, Edwards discovered how deep the Duke appeal went. Edwards promised improvements in services for seniors; the crowd wasn’t interested, but they gnashed at Duke’s red meat about the illegitimate birth rate and the welfare underclass. Edwards tried to appeal to facts: “A welfare mother only receives an extra $11 a week with each extra child she bears. Can you see a woman sitting around the kitchen table scheming to get pregnant to get another $11 a week?” The crowd shouted back, “Yes!” Edwards protested: “He’s appealing to your base emotions. Who is going to be next? The disabled? The old? You better think about it.” He was drowned out by boos. The Louisiana AARP endorsed Duke.”
― John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s