argues that the political right foments fear and attacks the left by the use of persecution politics. he examines what he considers the paranoia of the right and how it's affecting american political debate. mr. wolraich discusses his book at barnes & noble booksellers in new york city for about an hour. >> so i'm michael wolraich, i'm a founder of dagblog.com that's dagblog.com. it's a multi-person blog famed across the blogosphere for civil if occasionally sharp-tongued debate. come check out the rep parte there. we always have a good time. i'm sorry also, as lou said, a regular contributor to cnn.com, and i got my start blogging at talking points memo café.

this is my fist book, "blowing smoke." i won't try to read the whole title again because that'll take up the rest of the time. there are, i'm going to give you four readings. the first reading from the preface will tell you what persecution politics is all about. the second will give you an example of how politics has been used. then i'll give you, then we'll go back in the time machine and see where this all started, and finally in the fourth i'll talk about what effect persecution politics has had on the political system, particularly the elections that we had just a little bit over a month ago. so without further ado, why is it okay to discriminate against white males, demanded msnbc commentator pat buchanan, his

voice shrill with outrage. is the volume okay? his colleague -- too loud? his colleague, lei chel -- rachel mad dow, had canned him on her show to discuss sonia sotomayor. warming instantly to the topic, buchanan indignantly denounced the suffering of white males in america as if he could physically whack the whole idea of affirmative action to bits. he was sort of going like this. he admonished maddow chiding, you never look at these guys who are working class guys with their own dreams just like sonia sotomayor. >> the much-younger maddow dismissed his reproached and reply with the a half smile, you're living in the 1950s, pat. but maddow was wrong because there was no affirmative action

to speak of the 1950s, and the notion that white people suffered from are reverse -- from reverse discrimination did not become popular until the '70s. right-wing stars like rush limbaugh and glenn beck have accused of racism against white people. a few days later, i wrote a blog post about a lawsuit over the national motto of the united states, in god we trust. during my research for the article, i learned that the doctrine of the separation of church and state is really l a liberal scam to discriminate against christians who are suffering from greater oppression than american white males. rush limbaugh's younger brother explained the day tails in "persecution, how liberals are waging war against christians." perhaps former representative hostettler of indiana read it. he accused democrats of

denigrating and demonizing christians, and he fumed the long war on christianity in america continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our christian heritage. as i read about the long war on christianity with buchanan still on my mind, the parallels between with accusations of white victimization and christian persecution popped wrightly on the screen of my -- brightly on the screen of my laptop. i had previously considered conservative complaints about mistreatment to be a reflexive gripe like the line from charlie brown by the coasters: why is everybody always picking on me? but in july 2009, it suddenly occurred to me that the accusations amounted to more than political grumbling. they represented key tactics in a pervasive, deep-seated political strategy by the right. i had no idea how deep it sat.

as i burrowed backward in history, persecution narratives appeared and nearly every critical moment from the formation of the religious right to the rise of fox news. at the same time, the present day political scene in the fall of 2009 abruptly went mad. tea party protesters carried signs comparing obama to hitler as glenn beck warned of communist conspiracies at the highest level of government. and everywhere that madness reigned, i found the thread of persecution paranoia winding through. i call this thread persecution politics. it is a rhetorical strategy to convince millions of white gun owners that an evil conspiracy of elites, black radicals, gay fascists and other disturbing bad guys are taking away their rights, their guns, their health care, their freedom, their traditions, their children and their favorite television programs.

blowing smoke is a history of persecution politics, how it gans, why it works and what it has done to the country. is so that's what persian cushion politics is. here's an example of how it's been used. how many of you people have ever read the drudge report? if you haven't, i don't necessarily recommend it. [laughter] drudge report is a conservative news site. it was founded by matt drudge, and it was, got fame for breaking the monica lewinsky story back in the late '90s. now, the drudge report typically has a very, very large alarmist headline. you might call it ginormous. it takes up the half, half the screen. and there was a particular

headline on september 15, 2009, that read: white student beat p on school bus -- beaten on school bus: crowd cheers. the magic word in this drudge headline, the one that earned it a gargantuan font, is white. the conservative editors of the drudge report are not particularly interested in racially-motivated school bus with beatings, they're not even lahrly interested in racially-motivated school bus beatings. but if the victim is white, the assail hasn'ts are black and a butts load of students calls out, beat his ass, then drudge throws a fat-font fit. and not just drudge. fox news aired footage from the school bus surveillance camera. the anchor man i didn't meanly warned viewers that the video was disturbing, perhaps because it had been edited with a slow motion replay of flailing punches as a voiceover intoned

the two suspects are 14 and 15. they are african-american, the victim is white. on kelly's court, host megyn kelly indignantly demanded punishment for the assailants, for the cheering children and for the hapless bus driver. she declared the scars this kid is going to suffer for the rest of his life thanks to those hooligans on that bus can't be, can't be overstated. though the fact the victim did not require hospital care suggests that the scars could, in fact, be overstated. unless, perhaps, kelly was referring to the emotional scars inflicted by public humiliation on national television. at the front of the persian or cushion parade twirling his big, black bigotry baton marched rush limbaugh, fulminating about the hellish state of obama's america. greetings, my friend, it's obama's america, is it not? obama's america, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. i mean, you put your kids on a

school bus, you expect safety. but in obama's america, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, yeah, yeah, right on, right on. the school bus assault must have seemed like a godsend to limbaugh timeed just right. he continued, and, of course, everybody says, oh, the white kid deserved it. he was born a racist, he's white. "newsweek" magazine told us this. we know that white students are destroying civility on buses, destroying civility in classrooms all over america, white congressmen destroying civility in the house of representatives. by that part limbaugh had become so excited that he surrendered any remaining shred of coherence and attempted to connect obama's socialist economic policies to segregated buses. we can redistribute students while we redistribute their parents' wealth.

i mean, we can just redistribute everything. just return the white students to their rightful place, their own bus with bars on the windows and armed guards. they're racist, they get what they deserve. make that segregated prison be buses for white school children. the hyperbole is vintage limbaugh. his rhetorical strategy is to raise his pitch a couple of notes higher than what he really means to convey singing a piercing f-sharp to communicate a shrill e. the exaggeration entertains his audience and infuriates liberals, and when those high notes across the line of of acceptable public discourse, limbaugh just shrugs and patses it off as satire. indead, it's not always -- indeed, it's not always easy to distinguish limbaugh's parities from the jon stewart show. because barack obama is president, it is now open white season on white children, and black people are now allowed to hit them.

but there are two important differences between limbaugh's hyperbole and stewart's parity. one, stewart is funny. two, he exaggerates the highlighted absurdity whereas limbaugh everyone -- does it for emphasis. what did he mean when he suggested obama wanted to pack white children onto their own bus with bars on the window? he meant that the obama administration discriminates against whites the way racist state governments used to discriminate against blacks. when he said we can distribute their parents' wealth, he meant that obama wants to take money from middle class white people and give it to poor black people. and finally, when limbaugh said they're racists, they get what they deserved, he meant that obama hates whites. the message in short: he will call you names, he will take your money, he will persecute your children because he hates you and everything you stand for. boom, boom, boom went the

persecution drums as limbaugh hurled his baton into the air and the crowd went wild. unfortunately for limb bag, reality sometimes interferes with exploiting someone's personal misfortune to make a political point. though the police captain who investigated the school bus assault initially described the attack as racially motivated, he later retracted the assessment explaining, it was premature on my part. the incident appears now to be more about a couple of bullies on a bus dictating where people sit. limbaugh, drudge and fox news soon dropped the story leaving it to the white supremacists that showed up in illinois the following weekend dressed in black and carrying bull horns and nazi flags. at a rally, they demanded the say sail atlantas be prosecuted for hate crimes shouting, double standard and, white power. yes, the nazis were concerned about hate crimes. welcome to obama's america.

so next we're going to jump back in time and see how this all got started. what's distinctive about persecution politics and separates it out from other previous paranoid movements in the u.s. such as the red scare and other movements is that in persecution politics the leaders have appropriated the language of civil rights. the civil rights movement, only they've turned it on its head. they embrace discussion of of persecution and civil rights, civil liberties, but they say it, they say we're the ones being discriminated against. it's us white people, us christians. and, in fact, it was a reaction to the civil rights movement where they kind of took a if you can't beat 'em, join 'em approach and used the same language but, again, turned it around. the spark to this movement was,

in fact, school integration in 1954. so we're going to talk about that, how this movement got started and how those ripple effects carried out decades later today. in 1954 the u.s. supreme court ruled in brown v. board of education of topeka that segregated schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment setting this motion a chain of events that would lead to the birth of the persecution politics movement in the late 1970s. one of the men who precipitated these event was jerry falwell. at the anal of 2, falwell founded a church in virginia. he railed against brown v. board of ed proclaiming if justice warren and his associates had known god's word and had e do sired to do the lord's will, i'm quite confident that the 15954 decision $1954 decision would never of have been made.

when god has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line. after the supreme court decision, white politicians and parents sought alternative means to uphold god's line of distinction. they found it in the seg academies, short for segregation academies, all-white private schools that blossomed like daisies in the south after public schooled desegregated. host county, mississippi, was typical. this first year after public school desegregation, white enrollment in the county's public schools dropped from 771 to 28. in the second year, it dropped to zero. prince edward county, virginia, simply shut down public schools leaving black students without any school in the county that would take them. southern state governments did what they could for the cause offering tuition grants, what republicans now call vouchers, so that poor white students could continue to be educated in this an environment free of dark

pigmentation. when a federal court such grants unconstitutional in 1969, the seg academy sought out tax deductible donations to subsidize low-income whites. for example, one holmes county school said unless we receive substantial contribution, there will be many, many students whose minds and bodies are just as pure as those of any of their classmates and playmates who for financial reasons alone will be forced into one of the intolerable and repugnant other schools. other schools is in quotes there. in 1969 black parents in holmes county filed a lawsuit demanding that the irs deny tax exemptions to the three seg academies in the county. the courts ruled that the federal tax funds to finance private schools for the purposes of segregation violated the equal protection laws of the 14th amendment, and the irs began holding tax exemptions.

nonetheless, seg academies adopted officially nondiscriminatory language, admissions policies while still practicing de facto segregation, and private all-white schools continued to proliferate across the south. over time most of the acad hawaiis adopted christian affiliations such as jerry falwell's lynchburg christian academy described as a private school for white students. a 1973 wall street journal article documented the emergence of this new variety of seg academy. these days christian schools and segregation academies are almost synonymous. thus, when the irs proposed strengthening the tax exemption rules in 978 to force seg academies to act ily recruit minority students and teachers, many southern christians reacted with fury and alarm. as a result, the irs proposal

played right into the hands of a young conservative strategist with big plans. in 1962, 19-year-old paul why reck, a radio journalist from wisconsin, called on the chairman of the wisconsin republican party to denounce the supreme court ruling that banned prayer in public schools. but the chairman refused to get involved insisting, our business be people would think it was strange that we're getting 1r0ed in -- involved in a religious issue. that was the moment i said to myself, by golly, this is just after track. i'm going to see to it one day that the party will listen to these kinds of issues. soon after, wyrek went to work for republican politicians in the washington where he continued to struggle to persuade the party to embrace socially-conservative causes like outlawing abortion, ending busing and sport sporting -- supporting school prayer. he founded the heritage

foundation, the think tank which discarded the scholarship. the following year wyrek left heritage because the board of directors wouldn't put enough emphasis on social issues. that's like leaving the room in catholic church because the pope won't put enough emphasis on religious issues which, incidentally, wyrek also did. after leaving heritage, he focused on the political potential of evangelical church, but he was tiemied in his effort to -- stymied in his effort to mobilize them. they were accustomed to keeping their distance from politics, adopting the position expressed by jerry falwell in 1965: preachers are not called upon to be politicians, but soul winners. wyrek elaborated, christian conservatives have been told for years ever since the scopes trial that they should not be involved in politics, that it was a sin to be involved in

politics, that you would lose your soul if you were involved in politics. years later falwell and others promulgated a myth that the shock of roe v. wade finally broke the slumbering religious right enraging christians across the country and promising him to launch the moral majority. the chief problem with this story is that it's false. many fundamentalist organizations, including the southern baptist convention to which falwell belonged, were originally pro-choice and viewed abortion as a catholic issue. former president of the southern baptist convention delaired after -- declared after roe v. wade, i have always felt that it was after a child was born that it became an individual person. and girth of the baptist press wrote, human equality and justice are advanced by the supreme court abortion decision.

moreover, the moral majority was paul wyrek's brain child. he was certainly concerned about abortion, but his primary objective in founding the organization was to unite fundamentalist evangelicals, catholics and even jews in a variety of social and political causes. wyrek believed that the new organization needed a figurehead. he first tried to recruit robertson who turned him down. falwell accepted, but it took some persuading. in addition, a former falwell associate dismissed the topic of abortion recalling the religious right did not start because of a concern about abortion. i sat this non-smoke-filled back room, and i frankly do not even remember abortion being mentioned as a reason why we ought to do something. according to wyrek, even evangelicals who opposed abortion did not see the need for political response to roe v.

wade. their attitude was if there are abortions and there are all these problems, we're living in our own little communities, and we have open christian schools and prayer, and can prayer will be recited there, and we simply don't need to be involved. the issue that did finally propel the religious right into action was not abortion, but the 1978 be irs proposal to crack down on segregated schools. wyrek explained. what galvanized the christian community was not abortion, school prayer or the era. i am living witness to this because i was trying to tibet those people -- tibet those people interested in the those issues, and i utterly failed. what changed their mind was jimmy carter's intervention against the christian schools trying to deny them tax-exempt status. richard vision ri has been created with -- credited with finding what was once called the new right. he claimed that the irs desegregation proposal was the

spark that ignited the religious right's involvement in real politics. thus, in a crucible of racism and piety baked red hot by the fear of corrupted youth, a movement was born. the role of the irs desegregation proposal and the birth of the religious right has been welcome well documented. less discussed has been the fiction, the fuel that fired the imaginations of those who answered the call. for while the irs proposal clearly threatened segregated education, its impocket on religious -- impact on religious education was incidental. any school that failed to meet the requirements could easily adjust by recruiting minorities. for people to see the irs proposal as an attack on christian education, they had to see the desegregation objective as an excuse for going after the christians. wyrek's wording, carter's intervention against christian schools on the basis of so-called de facto segregation

suggests exactly this point of view. these days we have come to expect the right wing to represent any democratic initiative as a pretext for christian persecution, but it was not always so. before the 1980s religious and right were not fused together. fundamentalists and evangelicals hailed the election of jimmy carter, a former sunday schoolteacher, a friend of reverend billy graham and the first evangelical president of the united states. he was not a president one would suspect of seeking to corrupt christian youth, but carter seemed to mutate almost instantaneously in the minds of evangelicals from good christian leader to anti-christian autoaccurate. the appearance of a newville rain of the american -- an ideological network that had cunningly invaded cart's government in its fiendish bid. it was called secular humanism. humanism is a vague term

denoting the study of human history and culture, hence the term humanities. in the 20th century, religious reformers used the term to describe an emphasis on human as opposed to divine affairs. in this vein, a number of intellectuals signed the humanist manifesto in 1933 that laid out the tenets of religious humanism. the loose movement would later produce a rather insignificant organization of several thousand members called the american humanist associate. association. secularism is also a vague term coined by george jacob holyoke to denote a rejection of e theological answers to science and ethics. secular humanism is a concept so nebulous that its definition defied even william sapphire in trying to nail jell-o to a tree.

the term's nature stems from its origins or rather its lack of origins in any genuine political movement. it's a make believe doctrine invented by christian theologians to blame an imagined enemy for the diminishing influence of religion in modern seat. it was later repurposed as a code word for the practices of anyone who disagrees with them including liberals, feminists, atheists, civil libertarians and internationalists. the first historical record appeared in 933 court -- 1933 courtesy of william george peck who in a series of lectures predicted the imminent collapse of the false gospel of secular humanism. ten years later the nonexistent doctrine now threatened christianity, quote, more powerfully than in any period since the end of the dark ages, end quote, according to the archbishop of canterbury, william kemp l. and in 1949 episcopal bishops

warned their colleagues, we have been contaminated by the secular humanism of our time as if it were toxic slime. in 1965 at the end of the revolutionary second vatican council, pope paul vi bowed to the new alien overlords saying secular humanism revealing itself in its horrible anti-clerical reality has in a certain sense defied this council, but we call upon those who term themselves modern humanists and who have renounced the highest realities to give the council credit at least for one quality and to recognize our own new type of humanism. we, too, in fact, we more than any others honor mankind. but while secular humanism may have threatened england and subjugated rome, it was no match for the superintendent of public instruction in california and defender of the youth from the onslaught of secular humanist

brainwashers. he became a conservative darling by blaming problems in the public school system on a dull reading curriculum that included stories about the stupid adventures of. ♪ the eskimo boy. then in 1969 rafferty's emergency response team produced the ground breaking guidelines for moral instruction in california public schools which located the true i villain behind muck muck and little pais toe. pedro. the guidelines also blamed them for teaching such evils as sex education, marxism and evolution. outraged american conservatives soon answered the secular humanist infiltration of the american education system in the circuit courts. in 1972 the religion editor of the washington evening star sued the national science foundation in the interest of 40 million evangelical christians for funding a biology textbook that failed to mention the important science of creationism. the student accused the

government of establishing as the official religion of the united states secular humanism. he lost. i'm going to skip a bit here. there are a few more cases that conservatives mounted against the religion of secular humanism, all of which lost. so when -- which brings us up to 978. so when the irs moved against seg academies, the christian soldiers were already manning the trenches and deploying advanced teams. they knew exactly who was behind the proposal and what its hidden purpose be was. a former nixon staffer and up and coming news commentator named pat buchanan spelled out the coercive role of the irs in the stealthy, slippery slope assault. the so-called segregation academies establish everywhere that some judge has handed down an integration order or busing decision have long been public enemy number one at the irs, he said. but this new procedure is a new departure, and its implications are sweeping.

if allowed to stand, every private school in the country can can be threatened with loss of its tax exemption if it does not conform with the social values of the secular humanism which is the newly-established religion of the united states. the response to public treaties from wyrek, buchanan and other leaders was overwhelming. the irs received 120,000 letters of protest, more than it had ever collected in response to a proposed change. senator strom thurmond joined newcomers like representative steven simms and senator orrin hatch in excoriating the irs. senator jesse helms who exemplified southern racism and christian e van yes limb was against the collectivist, totalitarian religion as he called it. he sponsored a bill to prohibit the irs from be enforcing antidiscrimination rules. this time the bill passed, and the irs capitulated leaving

singed globs of goo splattered across the steps of capitol hill. wyrek and falwell launched the moral majority, the religious right had found it roar. so i'll skip the rest of the chapter on secular humanism but touch at the end its legacy. but though the dream has faded, the war against secular humanism left a legacy that conservative strategists have tapped again and again. bill o'reilly's progressive secularists, for example, are direct descendants of the mythical secular humanists of yore. they're the progressive secularists focused on christmas spirit rather than textbook dock try nation. they share the objective of a brave new i progressive world, and their penchant for christian persecution, indeed, many influential secular humanists including the aclu, the activist judges and the liberal media evidently converted to progressive secularism en masse sometime in the 1990s joining

forces with new secular schemers like george soros, peter lewis and media matters.org. in 2010 glenn beck stripped o'reilly's progressive secularists of their secularism. he told leaders, what we're talking about is an ideological movement that has set its sight on the destruction of the constitution and the fundamental transformation of our republic. it's called the progressive movement. ex-progressives led by obama, pelosi and michael moore combine the revolutionary ambitions of 1950s communists with the repressive tendencies of the secular humanists, the progressives don't stand for anything except the destruction of all that is good in america. every cause they champion is part of their master plan to seize power and tyrannize everyone, but that's a story for another chapter. more broadly, conservatives found in the area of secular

humanism and the irs desegregation threat a new strategy for extending and mobilizing their political base. invent a liberal conspiracy that indoctrinates children with immoral, anti-christian ideas. they have repeatedly exploited the fear of brainwashing to provoke outraged hostility towards anything they oppose including women's rights, gay rights and the teaching of evolution. as well as to incite resentment against a certain president who may be a marxist. in the process be they began to hue a new fish sure in the american society transforming modest political divisions into an unbridled conflict between white christian conservatives and their imaginary antagonists on the left. undermining mutual trust until it reached a point where the president of the united states cannot speak to american students about the value of education without provoking a nationwide paroxysm of hysteria.

so i have one more reading, and this will be brief with more talking, and it's going to, i'm going to address the elections that we've had, and maybe you heard about them. the, what -- when the tea parties exploded in 2009, the pundits were initially dumbfounded about what to make of them and conventional wisdom soon became that they were a product of the economic recession. and then so when tea party candidates challenged moderate republicans and replaced them with people like christine o'donnell of delaware and sharron angle of nevada and rand paul of kentucky, the pundits looked at it as a populist

uprising against the mainstream incumbents. but, in fact, the tea parties while the actual organizations are new, they don't represent a new movement, in my opinion. the, they are simply the latest instance of the persecution politics movement which is 35 years old and started in the late 1970s. the, for example, when the challenging moderates in the elections, challenging the moderates in delaware and nevada, that was a strategy that was used by paul wyrek back in the 1970s. he and his colleagues of the new right raise a lot of money to take on the liberal and moderate republicans of the day and actually through their or purges forced a lot of them from office. i mean, there were a number of republicans in the northeast back in the '70s, and they were quite liberal or moderate, and they've all essentially been

eliminated as a result of these purges which were very much like the tea party purges that we've seen many -- in the past, this past year. so i'm going to talk just a little bit about how those purges worked and what it's doing to the country. as i burrowed into the history of the modern conservative movement while writing this book, the republican party often took me by surprise not because of the extremism of some republican leaders, but because of the wide diversity of opinions and ideologies that the party once tolerated. the gop has grown increasingly conservative over the past few decades, but to read prominent republicans expressing opinions that would now be considered heresy was nonetheless startling. business people would think it's strange that we're getting involved this a religious issues, or the party's timid noncommittal abortion plan. the question is one of the most

controversial of our time. it also involves complex questions relating to medical science and criminal justice. there are those in our party who favor complete support for the supreme court decision which permits abortion on demand. there are others who share sincere convictions that the supreme court's decision must be changed by a constitutional amendment prohibiting all abortions. others have yet to take a position or they have assumed a stance somewhere in between polar positions. but starting in the late 1970s, such ideas began fall being out of the party platform. there was no one single moment of metamorphosis, but rather a series of small hue -- mutation as idealogues gradually replaced those of another era. with the liberal republic long gone, dogmatic tea party supporters are now expunging conservative legislators who are

not conservative enough. they are continuing to push the party even further into the sooty, smoky fire of paranoid extremism. it's worth noting that, you know, in the previous section i mentioned that orrin hatch was one of the original new right insurgents, conservative insurgents. he was one of the people that paul wyrek got in. and as soon as the election were over, eric erickson of political blog red state.com who's been one of the tea party voices, made up a list of people he wanted to purge in 2012, and one of those on the list was orrin hatch. so it shows you how far we've come. over the years political analysis have offered various explanations for the rightward drift of the gop be. some point to nationwide disenchantment with large social programs, some point to the cultural shifts of the '60s.

most of these explanations place the impotence on the mood of the american electorate suggesting that liberal and moderate republicans died out because they failed to adapt to the changing political climate. i submit an alternative hypothesis. the liberal and moderate republicans were hunted into extinction by their more aggressive conservative cousins who wielded a powerful new weapon that was highly effective at galvanizing their political base. the weapon was persecution politics. even as conservatives extended their dominance over the country as a whole, their sense of persian cushion increased, they turned up their attacks on liberal elites and invented a new victim class that fused whites, christians and the working class into a loose affiliation they called conservatives, traditionalists or real americans. the formation of the new victim class we sip tated the widespread fear that spawned the tea parties.

the tea parties then inherited the mantle of persecution politics. to see how this happened, we will need to return once more to the beginning of the story. the -- so, again, this is where the, this is where i talk about paul wyrek and the purges that they enacted. now, at the time the pundits said, oh, you know, these right-wing people, they can't win with. and this will doom the republicans. what, in fact, happened was while they did lose seats in the northeast, they got a lot more seats in the rest of the country. these were conservative republicans, not liberal or moderate republicans. and by 1992 the conservatives which had been the wing of the republican party were able to actually put, take over the leadership of the party and put people like newt gingrich into power in congress. and not only did that not -- not

only did this conservativism spell the end of the republican party, they actually gained more power. two years after that, 1994, was the republican revolution in which the republicans swept back to power, controlled both houses for the first time in 40 years. now, the exact same thing happened in 2006, 2008. normally, the standard line, standard policy when a party loses big in the elections is they moderate. they say, okay, we have to get back the independents, we have to get back the moderates. that didn't happen. instead, the republicans went right, and you got the tea parties, and they actually purged the few moderates that were left. and, again, the pundits were wrong. they didn't lose, they won big particularly, they won big a month and a half ago despite the fact that they went further right than ever.

so just the last two pages, then i'll take questions. that sums it all up. democrats reassure themselves that ultra conservatives might win the primaries, but they're too extreme to win in the general elections. and as we saw, rand paul won and sharron angle lost barely. but even if republican extremism hurts the party in the short run, history suggests the long run is another matter. when the new right purged rockefeller incumbents in 1978, democrats captured seats in massachusetts and new jersey. ultra conservative ideology come wine with the the persecution narrative attracted voters, and by 1994 conservatives swept into power. today's gop now includes people like michele bachmann, paul brown, steve king and ron paul and now rand paul as well. even gop mavericks like john mccain have turned right to insulate themselves from purges,

endorsing positions they might secretly detest and refusing to compromise with democrats for fear of being named republican in name only. in short, as the republican party became -- it became more powerful, and as it became more powerful, it became more extreme. the democratic wins of 2006 and 2008 had much to do with unhappiness over the iraq war, the collapsing economy and republican political scandals. when the wheel of american politics turns again, the most conservative and paranoid-prone gop in recent history may welcome to power with a popular mandate to take back the country. and, unfortunately, i think we may be ability to see that next year. the fact of the matter that right-wing persecution mythology is compelling to americans as has been repeated by falwell, buchanan, limbaugh, o'reilly, beck and palin to name a few. it has seduced millions to embracing right-wing ideology by convincing them that only the

right appreciates them and defends their interests. it has mobilized the most fanatical voters in the country to turn out for elections in order to destroy imaginary enemies. it has obliterated the possibility of bipartisanship by pretending that compromise is treason and by punishing the traitors. it has encouraged america's most violent to fulfill their fantasies of armed insurrection. it has accomplished these ends by breaking the nation in half. in persecution politics there is no america, one nation indie visible. there is red america versus blue america, real america versus berkeley and washington, d.c., christians versus secularists, freedom-loving patriots versus despotic marxists, moose berger appreciate yea to haves versus arugula munchers, black radicals, militant homosexuals and subversive illegals. once upon a time in america, there were genuine radical

progress is who pitted the working class against the robber barons. such people are hard to find these days. radical conservatives have supplanted them. for almost 40 years the right wing has been developing a new class consciousness. the new class is not dominated by income, it is vaguely circumscribed by a black cloud of hysteria that right-wing leaders have composed from bits of race, religion, ideology, education, geography and culture. each year it seeps deeper into the nation's bones. it will not be easy to excise this cancer. [applause] thank you very much. we'll now do some questions, i guess, followed by the signing. and afterwards if anyone wants to join us, there's a bar at amsterdam and 84th, george

healey. we'll be going there for a drink afterwards. i hope everyone can come. so maybe some questions? yes. >> didn't theodore roosevelt run as a progressive? >> yes. and glenn beck -- >> [inaudible] >> sorry. the question was didn't theodore roosevelt run as progressive? the progressive movement was actually with neither straight up republican or straight up democrat. there were progressives in both parties. at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. glenn beck has, i believe rejects teddy roosevelt, but he's particularly concerned about wilson who he essentially sees as some kind of satan who is setting in motion a century

100-year motto destroy america. you can go to glep beck.com if you want -- glenn beck.com if you want the details. [laughter] i talk a little more about it, i have a chapter on glenn beck where i -- >> [inaudible] teddy roosevelt was acceptable. >> glenn beck has, he's very open about who he'll -- he's very -- he has a big ten philosophy about who he'll include in his conspiracy theories. yes. >> michael, in light of the aftermath of the election, where do you see the democrats going? what have they learned, what have they not learned? >> uh, well -- >> briefly. >> i think we're going to, we're going to find out. it's, they're still finding their ground, and there's a lot of divisions among the democrats now. some, like obama, who are favoring compromise and some who are on the left who are

rejecting any compromise and want to take a hard line and fight fire with fire. the, one of the things that i argue is that certainly the extremism needs to be called out, and that the only thing that that has proven repeatedly to stop the growth of paranoia is to across the political spectrum challenge these ideas. and i would hope that that happens. however, i don't, i don't really see that happening right now. i see, you know, a very active challenge on the left, on the far left, but i think no one's going to respond to it, and i see the moderates as being very conciliatory not only in their politics in terms of making deals, but also in their rhetoric and really not challenging the type of paranoia and the type of stories that the

right has been using. i've argued on cnn, also, that i think the left, the democrats really need to get a story. they really need a narrative. and one of the tools of persecution politics has been this great story that has good guys and bad guys. the -- battling it out. and it's seduced a lot of people. and the left really doesn't have a good story, so i hope they'll get one, but i'm not optimistic at this point. >> as a postscript to that, it always seems like the democrats are on the the offensive. why is that? why are they unable to counter that? they always seem to be in defensive mode, don't they? >> so the question is why are the democrats in defensive mode? the, i see what the democrats are doing is a lot what the republicans had done in prior to the 1970s where the republicans were for 40 years a

minority party. and they, they basically eked out what compromises they could get. and responded to challenges by going more moderate with the, you know, they had goldwater was an exception of somebody on the right, but then they lost so big with goldwater they said, okay, we've got to go back to the middle. and that kind of mentality is, is pretty strong among the democrats right now. whenever they get beaten, they go to the middle. whenever republicans get beaten, they go to the right. what that means is everybody's going right. and, you know, until, until what the republicans have been doing starts being challenged more, i see us continuing that trend. >> hi. the modern occurrence of this persecution politics that you see in the united states, do you

think it's unique to the united states? or is it, you know, more a global phenomenon? but if it's only in america, why do you think that is? >> so it depends if you, if you're talking broadly -- it's a great question. the question was is this, is persecution politics a global phenomenon, or is it a national phenomenon? particularly an american phenomenon. and the answer is that, that broadly speaking it's global, it's human. it's human nature in a way. the, take, for example, this is a fairly extreme case, but in the former yugoslav republic when serbians were attacking muslims in bosnia, they were claiming to be the victims. they would present them as defending themselves against turkish aggression, sort of

appealing to centuries-old legend and centuries-old history where the serbs were the victim. so this idea, claiming the victim -- claiming to be the victim as an excuse for attacking a minority is not new. what is more new and more american is lahrly using the specific -- particularly using the specific language of civil rights. that really is very much comes from the civil rights movement talking about their first amendment rights, for example, like you wouldn't necessarily be, you know, you might not be talking about it in a country that doesn't have the first amendment. or talking about separation of church and state and, you know, the religion of secular humanism and how that's persecuting christians. so, so it's a human phenomenon with an american twist. >> time for one or two more. >> okay. one or two more questions. yes.

>> the, the republican right that is merging as a powerful force you've documented, are they aware that the demographics are not in their favor in terms of the, you know, immigration, hispanics, etc. are they making efforts to reach out to the very people that they're scared of in a way? >> so the question is are the, are the leaders of persecution politics movement, are they aware of the demographic change where the u.s. is becoming less white and more hispanic? the answer is not only are they aware of it, they use it as a recruiting tool. pat buchanan will talk a lot about how america is losing, he called it our, losing our ethnocultural core which reminds me of ""star trek,"" i think, we're losing our ethnocultural core, captain.

the, they don't -- unlike george w. bush, karl rove who actually were trying to make inroads among hispanics, the persecution -- the leaders of the persecution politics have not been. they've been, these are the folks who are, you know, behind the laws in arizona which, again, they'll talk about, oh, we just need to defend, you know, white arizona from the racist hispanics that are trying to take it over. their strategy is to focus on the base and build a very strong base that controls the conservative party, and, you know, for now it's going to work. i mean, they may have to change, you know, there are some that are, that have reached out to african-americans and hispanics. we may see that starting to change, but for now it's not. one more if it's quick.

>> what do you make of the republican national committee contest now, they're trying to get out the incumbent, and be what do you make of that little struggle? >> yeah. so the, so the rnc is currently trying to -- the republican national convention, michael steele, the black leader of the, the black chairman of the republican national committee for the past two years, i think, or maybe it's four years, his term is back, is done, and he's trying to run again. and republicans really don't want him to run because they really, you know, they want to present themselves as, you know, a party open to all races, and they like having, you know, a black guy at the helm, but they don't like michael steele. so i think for a lot of reasons, there are a lot of reasons not to like michael steele. i wouldn't like michael steele if i was republican either. but they don't want to act too

aggressively, so they were hoping he would just bow out which he seems like he's not going to do. me, i'm going to enjoy -- sit back and eat the popcorn and enjoy the entertainment until they get that figured out. all right. thank you very much, everyone. [applause] >> michael wolraich is the founder of the political commentary blog dagblog.com and a contributor to talking points memo café. to find out more, visit blowingsmokebook.com. >> well-known author kithty kelly has written about frank sinatra, nancy reagan, the bush family among other topics and now oprah. kitty kelly, does oprah have a role in the political world? >> oh, no question. being probably one of the most powerful women not just in our country, but globally, she has immense power because she's a communicator and she influences

millions and be millions of people. just ask president obama. [laughter] she really back in 2000 when george bush was running against al gore, gore's poll ratings were much higher than bush's, but after bush appeared on oprah, she baptized him with her female audience, and his polls went up and look what happened. in fact, chris rock kids her all the time and says, you're the one who elected george w. bush. so, yeah, she has immense power. >> and, in fact, george w. bush for his "decision points" just went on oprah recently to talk about it. >> it was a safe berth for him. i saw a little bit of it, and it was a very receptive audience for bush to put forward that particular book. >> generally, what's been oprah's influence on american culture?

>> well, you know, oprah has been on our television for 25 years, so we've sort of grown up with oprah. she's had immense influence especially with women. that is really her target audience. she's been fabulous for books. her book club was wonderful, writers adore her, authors will kill to get on her show. i'm afraid this book is not going to make the oprah book club. [laughter] but she does have immense power in influencing people. >> what's your goal as an author? is. >> as a biographer my goal is not simply to tell the life story of a very powerful person, but to bring in the times in which they operated. now, my biographies are what they call unauthorized. i prefer independent myself, but i don't do them with the

authorization of the person. by the time someone is as powerful as oprah winfrey or frank sinatra or nancy reagan, they've already got legions of publyists who have been telling their story a long time, and i try and get behind that mythology to a better reality. >> what's your next topic? >> i don't know. i'm open for suggestions. really after doing oprah winfrey she was a biographer's dream. she really, she gave me such a gift. now, it did take, it did take four years to do this book, and i had to interview over 850 people to get the story. it was a fabulous story. i mean, she was born poor in a racist state, she's become one of the most powerful, beloved icons really of our century. so it was a gift to be able to write her life story.