Friday, September 04, 2009

quote for the day

"Historically, revanchism really meant a kind of nationalistic politic of the European idea from the 19th century about recovering lands that had been taken from you in battle. I used that term metaphorically because it seems to me to capture this idea that conservatives have, that the culture's been taken away from them, that America has been robbed of its values by liberals or they would say socialists like Barack Obama.

It's a politics of resentment, anger and revenge. Revanchism is just a derivative of the French word revenge, for revenge. We're seeing a politics of vengeance now from the right. When Rush Limbaugh said he wanted Barack Obama to fail, he was not just spitting out a provocative line, he was actually handing out a kind of marching orders to the right, which they now seem to be following."
From an interview on NPR with Sam Tanenhaus, author of "The Death of Conservatism" describing how the Republican party and the conservative movement are no longer actually acting in a conservative manner.

Or just listen to the interview here.

If you're really feeling ambitious, read a bigger article/interview with Tanenhaus at Newsweek.

4 comments:

Pryme said...

Good catch; wonder if anyone else will pick it up and run with it.

daveawayfromhome said...

Oh, you know with that darned liberal media, I'm sure that anything that they can do to destroy the Republican Party (and the hope of sweet little American children to grow up free from the tyranny of socialism) they'll do, so no doubt this story will be screaming from the headlines by tomorrow.

Omnipotent Poobah said...

Resentful? Who me?

daveawayfromhome said...

Oh, absolutely, Pooby, you are crazy with resentment.
I can feel it.