[Peace-discuss] Bruce Rauner's greatest hits in two minutes

Sun Nov 2 00:16:00 EDT 2014

Kauffman is very much worth listening to. He's a thoughtful contributor to the growing and necessary anti-neoliberal alliance (i.e., left & right together against the Republican & Democrat parties - the playthings of the 1%). The year our White House child-killer became President by co-opting the anti-war movement, Kauffman published "Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism" - rallying Americans against Bush & Obama's neoconservatism.

He was an undergraduate at the University of Rochester 35 years ago, when I was teaching there, and I'm surprised I didn't know him. It was a rather small place then, with a radical history department (e.g., Gene Genovese, Christopher Lasch, Peter Linebaugh) and a reactionary political science department. (My proudest moment was the refusal of the latter to participate in a political forum organized by the editor of the student paper because he'd asked me to participate.)    

Here's Kauffman's bio, from Wikipedia (take the political analysis cum grano salis):
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Bill Kauffman (born November 15, 1959) is an American political writer generally aligned with the paleoconservative movement. He was born in Batavia, New York, and currently resides in Elba, New York, with his wife and daughter. A devout Roman Catholic, Kauffman was also an intimate correspondent of the late Gore Vidal, with whom he shares many ideological similarities.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Rochester, he went to work as an aide to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (which he would later describe as an "anarchist-making experience") in 1981. [He has more to say about Moynihan in the attached talk.--CGE] After leaving Moynihan's employ, Kauffman worked as Washington, D.C., editor for Reason before quitting and returning to Batavia. He is now a contributing editor to Chronicles and Liberty, and he has also written frequently for The American Conservative, The American Enterprise, The Wall Street Journal, and CounterPunch. Kauffman wrote the screenplay to the independent film "Copperhead" in 2013. The film came out in June 2013 to mixed reviews and was directed by Ron Maxwell, a friend of Kauffman's.

Kauffman's politics remain difficult to categorize. He is a "lifelong Democrat" who holds strong libertarian leanings with culturally conservative and isolationist inclinations. He is a critic of development, frequently writes approvingly of distributism and agrarianism, and is strongly anti-corporate. Kauffman has described his politics as "a blend of Catholic Worker, Old Right libertarian, Yorker transcendentalist, and delirious localist." He has also described himself as an "Independent. A Jeffersonian. An anarchist. A (cheerful!) enemy of the state, a reactionary Friend of the Library, a peace-loving football fan." Although he remains a registered Democrat, he rarely supports their candidates or their party platform and has frequently voted Green since the collapse of the Reform Party in 2000.

Other positions adopted by Kauffman that are considered controversial to both the Left and the Right include his support for the Second Vermont Republic secessionist movement, his admiration for 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, his argument that Catholic Worker activist Dorothy Day had much in common with elements of the Right, and his contention that Philip Roth's book The Plot Against America is "the novel that a neoconservative would write, if a neoconservative could write a novel." [As a long-time Roth-reader & -hater, I can say that he's quite right about that.--CGE]

He voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan in 2000. In 2004 and 2008, he voted for Ralph Nader for President of the United States "because I never got the chance to vote for Gene Debs or Norman Thomas." [I did the same (although I met Norman Thomas).--CGE] On September 2, 2008, he addressed the Rally for the Republic in Saint Paul, Minnesota put on by Ron Paul (R-TX).

Writings

His books include Every Man a King (1989), a novel about a young senatorial aide who, disgusted with politics, returns to his rural New York hometown to start a new life; Country Towns of New York (1993), a travel book; America First!: Its History, Politics, and Culture (1995), a history of American populist, isolationist, and anti-imperialist thought; With Good Intentions?: Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America (1998), a collection of (often approving) profiles of the opponents of school consolidation, child labor laws, a standing army, women's suffrage, and the Interstate Highway System, as well as the proponents of homesteading as a means of battling the Great Depression; Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town’s Fight to Survive (2003), the story of Batavia and its decline; Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists (2006), a meditation on American political, literary, and artistic figures whose values he admires; and Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism (2008). He also edited A Story of America First (2003), a memoir by the America First Committee's congressional liaison, Ruth Sarles. Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin, was published in 2008 by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and his latest book is Bye Bye, Miss American Empire (2010).

On Nov 1, 2014, at 10:11 PM, E. Wayne Johnson via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Actually I missed the funny part.
> 
> It seems to be a nasty trash the other guy video
> that reminded me why they call the Democrat party the Stupid party.
> 
> (The GOP is called the Evil Party, and Rauner is likely worthy of that gaggle.
> Rauner sucks, too.  He might not be totally stupid or a baby-killer.
> You can laugh about that.)
> 
> If you like building stuff out of sound bites you might enjoy
> Al Yankovic's interview with Avril Lavigne.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepM8VCGN7c
> The intellectual level is similar.
> Well, actually Yankovic is a fairly smart guy.
> 
> here's a video for defining in part what a useful policy toward the world
> and toward politics might be
> by one of my favourite authors Bill Kauffman (with 2 fs).
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3t0vgIYHx4
> 