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Thinking that one single person could end an entire religious movement with 'arguments' is totally naive. Neither thinking that Reagan wasnt on board with them

Thinking that one single person could end an entire religious movement with 'arguments' is totally naive. Neither thinking that Reagan wasnt on board with them for speaking up against certain personas. Birchers were behind most of the administration and the circles that got that administration elected then, and they are still the spearhead of the more extreme American conservatives today. One can argue that the group is not as clear cut as it was because they meshed with a lot of other groups like the Evangelists. But the origin of what is the American reactionary movement is those Birchers.

ch4s3 4y ago
Your being overly reductive and your take totally ignores the absolute failure of Bircher candidates to elected outside of say Georgia.
rayiner 4y ago
> But the origin of what is the American reactionary movement is those Birchers. The more straightforward explanation is that the reactionary movement in America is due to the anti-democratic means American liberals have used to achieve social change, which differs markedly from what is the case in other developed countries. For example, Germany and France don’t have as strong of a reactionary anti-abortion movement because they never had anything like Roe that overruled the public opinion on abortion. In America over half the country still disagrees about the ban on school prayer, including apparently the democrat Mayor of New York City: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-york-playbook-pm/2023/02/28/eric-adams-when-we-took-prayers-out-of-schools-guns-came-into-schools-00084832 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-york-playbook-pm/20.... Meanwhile in the UK, school prayer is still legally mandatory: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/20/oxfordshire-parents-win-right-to-prayer-free-school-assembly https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/20/oxfordshir.... That law is adhered to more or less depending on the local community, and overall declining religiosity. But American liberals overruled public opinion on this more than 70 years ago. If you repeatedly use the nuclear option to overcome political opposition you’re going to generate a reaction. You don’t need a Bircher conspiracy to explain what happened.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > The more straightforward explanation is that the reactionary movement in America is due to the anti-democratic means American liberals have used to achieve social change, which differs markedly from what is the case in other developed countries. For example, Germany and France don’t have as strong of a reactionary anti-abortion movement because they never had anything like Roe that overruled the public opinion on abortion. That's patently false. The majority of the progressive policies you speak of were legislated by actual left win (not liberals) governments that came to power after Ww II. These governments and coalitions did not have absolute majority. In most cases they did not reach 51% representation even, mostly ~20% to ~30%. In all of these countries there were conservative segments that staunchly opposed these policies and represented ~20% of the population. The rest of the population belonged to other parties that aligned more or less with differing sides of the argument. So considering how the popular opinion was more or less evenly split in these countries at the time, by your proposition they all have legislated those measures anti-democratically. But this part of your argument requires special attention: > the reactionary movement in America is due to the anti-democratic means American liberals have used to achieve social change There is no way to democratically win over those who want to live in 200 years ago with the traditions and practices that belong to two thousand years ago, practicing child labor, segregation, treating women as 2nd class beings, denying actual natural reality and trying to enforce their own false belief as the truth. From conservative American states which just recently legalized child labor to delirious kooks who say that the Earth is flat and dying in the process of launching their own homemade rockets to prove or confirm that belief, the American anti-intellectual religious fundamentalists are exactly the same today like how they were back then. If the society of 19th century did not override them and made progress happen, they would successfully have prevented a lot of the social and even technological progress that you take as normal today. They were openly against technology and they wanted to stop or limit its progress. You can see the heritage of that anti-intellectualism in how Mormons live today. If this feels like an unlikely case, note that the religious fundamentalist segments of the society DID succeed in keeping out or limiting scientific and technological progress in most of the Middle East from 18th century until mid 1950s, and that is the reason why those regions have fallen behind the rest of the world this much.

ch4s3 4y ago

Your being overly reductive and your take totally ignores the absolute failure of Bircher candidates to elected outside of say Georgia.

rayiner 4y ago

> But the origin of what is the American reactionary movement is those Birchers. The more straightforward explanation is that the reactionary movement in America is due to the anti-democratic means American liberals have used to achieve social change, which differs markedly from what is the case in other developed countries. For example, Germany and France don’t have as strong of a reactionary anti-abortion movement because they never had anything like Roe that overruled the public opinion on abortion. In America over half the country still disagrees about the ban on school prayer, including apparently the democrat Mayor of New York City: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-york-playbook-pm/2023/02/28/eric-adams-when-we-took-prayers-out-of-schools-guns-came-into-schools-00084832 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-york-playbook-pm/20.... Meanwhile in the UK, school prayer is still legally mandatory: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/20/oxfordshire-parents-win-right-to-prayer-free-school-assembly https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/20/oxfordshir.... That law is adhered to more or less depending on the local community, and overall declining religiosity. But American liberals overruled public opinion on this more than 70 years ago. If you repeatedly use the nuclear option to overcome political opposition you’re going to generate a reaction. You don’t need a Bircher conspiracy to explain what happened.

unity1001 4y ago
> The more straightforward explanation is that the reactionary movement in America is due to the anti-democratic means American liberals have used to achieve social change, which differs markedly from what is the case in other developed countries. For example, Germany and France don’t have as strong of a reactionary anti-abortion movement because they never had anything like Roe that overruled the public opinion on abortion. That's patently false. The majority of the progressive policies you speak of were legislated by actual left win (not liberals) governments that came to power after Ww II. These governments and coalitions did not have absolute majority. In most cases they did not reach 51% representation even, mostly ~20% to ~30%. In all of these countries there were conservative segments that staunchly opposed these policies and represented ~20% of the population. The rest of the population belonged to other parties that aligned more or less with differing sides of the argument. So considering how the popular opinion was more or less evenly split in these countries at the time, by your proposition they all have legislated those measures anti-democratically. But this part of your argument requires special attention: > the reactionary movement in America is due to the anti-democratic means American liberals have used to achieve social change There is no way to democratically win over those who want to live in 200 years ago with the traditions and practices that belong to two thousand years ago, practicing child labor, segregation, treating women as 2nd class beings, denying actual natural reality and trying to enforce their own false belief as the truth. From conservative American states which just recently legalized child labor to delirious kooks who say that the Earth is flat and dying in the process of launching their own homemade rockets to prove or confirm that belief, the American anti-intellectual religious fundamentalists are exactly the same today like how they were back then. If the society of 19th century did not override them and made progress happen, they would successfully have prevented a lot of the social and even technological progress that you take as normal today. They were openly against technology and they wanted to stop or limit its progress. You can see the heritage of that anti-intellectualism in how Mormons live today. If this feels like an unlikely case, note that the religious fundamentalist segments of the society DID succeed in keeping out or limiting scientific and technological progress in most of the Middle East from 18th century until mid 1950s, and that is the reason why those regions have fallen behind the rest of the world this much.