The conservative feeling of victimization, grievance and loss is not new and has not been limited to the Christian right. This feeling was the central message of Lewis F. Powell's now-infamous 1971 Confidential Memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. /1
Note that Powell was a corporate lawyer, known for his moderation and soon to be nominated by Richard Nixon for the U.S. Supreme Court, and that he wrote this memo for an organization that represented American business firms. /2
Neither Powell nor the members of the Chamber with whom he dealt saw themselves as culture warriors. Yet they firmly believed that they were under seige. /3
Moreover, as I show in the first chapter of my book, Powell's Memo recapitulated claims made by business leaders and anti-New Deal politicians going back to the 1930s. Powell did not invent the language of what I call "elite victimization."/4
Although Powell wasn't the first to articulate this set of concerns--indeed similar things had been said for forty years by the time he dictated his thoughts to his secretary in August, 1971--his Memo is suffused with a palpable feeling of loss and pending defeat. /5
Powell began his Memo by noting that "No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack." The assault was "broadly based and consistently pursued" and was "gaining momentum and converts."/6
Like Bill Barr, Powell diagnosed a one-sided war in which business had become a beleaguered and passive "whipping-boy": "One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction," he wrote. /7
Against all evidence, Powell imagined business as lacking power: "as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders." /8
Powell went so far as to invert FDR's famous image of the "forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid" by describing that man, not as impoverished, but as a corporate executive. /9
Think I'm kidding? Powell wrote: "One does not exaggerate to say that, in terms of political influence with respect to the course of legislation and government action, the American business executive is truly the `forgotten man.'" /10
Powell imagined business as passive in the face of this onslaught. "Business interests — especially big business and their national trade organizations — have tried to maintain low profiles, especially with respect to political action." /11
Business, in Powell's diagnosis--very much like Christians in Barr's--was unwilling to fight back, leaving the radicals to gain power: "There has been a disposition to appease; to regard the opposition as willing to compromise, or as likely to fade away in due time." /12
Like contemporary conservatives, Powell saw the political choices in binary terms: "the only alternatives to free enterprise are varying degrees of bureaucratic regulation of individual freedom." Although he didn't define free enterprise, he saw any alteration to it as deadly./13
Although he held out hope for the future--provided that business was willing to fight back--he held that, "we in America already have moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism/" /14
Powell's conclusion--"business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late"--can be seen as a secular version of the pessimistic, aggrieved conservative Christian script that Ezra Klein describes as new. /15
Klein writes of them: "They see a diverse, secular left winning the future and preparing to eviscerate both Christian practice and traditional mores. And they see themselves as woefully unprepared to respond with the ruthlessness that the moment requires." /16
The terms are slightly different, but if one subs out "business" for "Christian" the rhetorical patterns and emotional frameworks are nearly identical. Business/Christians, facing a ruthless enemy in a one-sided war, are "woefully unprepared" to fight back./17
My book traces the history of what I call the "businessman's jeremiad" whose similarities with the discourse that @ezraklein writes about are hard to miss. /18
amazon.com/Free-Enterpris…
amazon.com/Free-Enterpris…
@ezraklein Two final points: 1) For conservatives, to a degree that I think we have underestimated, predictions of imminent defeat have served as both a raison d'etre and a rallying cry. /19
@ezraklein By hiving the conservative movement into distinct stands--lilbertarians, traditionalists, anti-communists, etc.--we underestimate the degree to which seemingly staid business free enterprisers developed an apocalyptic, binary language and fought a culture war of their own. /20
@ezraklein fyi, here's a short piece I wrote in 2017 for @BostonReview on the Powell Memo. My book has much more on the many ways in which business free enterprisers helped set the template for the language of modern conservatism./21
bostonreview.net/politics/lawre…
bostonreview.net/politics/lawre…
