re: #9 Sol Berdinowitz

These guys long for an age which never existed, one in which we all lived as self-sustaining, self-sufficient settlers on a piece of pristine wilderness we carved out and tamed with our bare hands…with only minimal help from the Federal army in driving off those pesky natives.

I have a pet notion that Thomas Jefferson had exactly that ideal in mind; a land of smallholding farmers, everybody with their own little patch, free to pursue their interests within the bounds of their class. I think he was a bit of a Romantic that way, and it doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t get along with Hamilton, who saw that a powerful America demanded centralization.

The right wing is fundamentally just a bunch of Romantics, imagining back to some non-existent time when White Might was Right, gays didn’t exist, kinder, kueche, und kirche was the guiding notion of womanhood, and everybody was happy being precisely the same as everybody else.

Of course, the whole thing is bullshit, but people do love their fantasies.