Rebellious Conservatives: Social Movements in Defense of Privilege PDF
Preview Rebellious Conservatives: Social Movements in Defense of Privilege
Rebellious Conservatives This page intentionally left blank Rebellious Conservatives Social Movements in Defense of Privilege DavidR.Dietrich rebelliousconservatives Copyright©DavidR.Dietrich,2014. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-43620-7 Allrightsreserved. Firstpublishedin2014by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN® intheUnitedStates—adivisionofSt.Martin’sPressLLC, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,NY10010. WherethisbookisdistributedintheUK,EuropeandtherestoftheWorld, thisisbyPalgraveMacmillan,adivisionofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills, Basingstoke,HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabove companiesandhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnited States,theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-137-43621-4 ISBN 978-1-137-42918-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137429186 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Dietrich,DavidR. Rebelliousconservatives:socialmovementsindefenseofprivilege/by DavidR.Dietrich. pagescm Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. 1. Conservatism—UnitedStates. 2. Socialmovements—UnitedStates. 3. Pressuregroups—UnitedStates. 4. Elite(Socialsciences)—United States. 5. Politicalparticipation—UnitedStates. 6. Politicalculture— UnitedStates. 7. UnitedStates—Politicsandgovernment. I. Title. JC573.2.U6D5452014 320.520973—dc23 2014005093 AcataloguerecordofthebookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. DesignbyIntegraSoftwareServices Firstedition:August2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents ListofFigures vii Acknowledgments ix 1 UnderstandingConservativeProtest 1 2 “ThisIsOurCountry”:IdentitiesofPrivilege 13 3 “SpiralingDownwardonaPathtoAnarchy”:CharacterizingThreats toPrivilege 41 4 “Invaders,”“Murderers,”and“Communists”:AgentsofThreat 85 5 “ToReclaimOurNation”:HowConservativeProtestersWantto ChangeAmerica 127 6 “The‘SilentMajority’IsSilentNoMore”:SummaryandConclusion 155 Notes 167 References 169 Index 177 This page intentionally left blank Figures 2.1 Anti-illegalimmigrationprotestersatthestatecapitolinAustin,Texas 21 2.2 TeaPartyactivistsincostumeattheTexasstatecapitol 31 2.3 ATeaPartyprotesterattheTexasstatecapitol 37 3.1 Ananti-illegalimmigrationprotesteratthestatecapitolinAustin,Texas 47 3.2 ATeaPartyrallyonSeptember11,2010,inWashington,DC 70 3.3 TeaPartyprotesterscarryingabannerinWashington,DC 76 4.1 Ananti-illegalimmigrationrallyatthestatecapitolinColumbia, SouthCarolina 87 4.2 Anantiabortion/pro-lifeactivistholdsasignataprotestin Charlotte,NorthCarolina 102 4.3 TeaPartyactivistsatarallyinWashington,DC 113 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Growing up in a liberal home in a community dominated by one of the most conservative public universities in the country, Texas A&M University, I struggled from an early age to understand conservative political and moral thinking. After attendingTexasA&Mfortwoyears,ItransferredtothemuchmoreliberalUniversity ofTexasatAustin,andthecontrastsbetweenliberalandconservativelogicsbecame evenmoreremarkabletome.IreturnedforayearofgraduateschoolatTexasA&M and had the good fortune to take courses on social movements and race with Paul AlmeidaandEduardoBonilla-Silva,respectively,nearthetimeA&M’sYoungCon- servativesstagedananti-affirmativeactiondemonstration.Theconservativelogicof these protestors eluded me. Why would young, relatively well-to-do white youth, who had obviously not been denied admission to the university due to affirmative actionpolicies,beprotestingapolicythathadnotnegativelyaffectedthem? From that moment, I was hooked on the topic of conservative social move- ments. And this was before the Tea Party! I am indebted to Paul Almeida for encouraging me to pursue this interest, pointing out the relative neglect of main- stream conservative movements in social movements literature. I owe Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, my mentor who packed me off with him to Duke, an immense debt ofgratitudefordevelopingmyknowledgeofracetheoryandmethodsandallowing metoextrapolatethisknowledgetoadissertationstudyoftheanti-illegalimmigra- tionmovementandtheantiabortion/pro-lifemovement.IalsowanttothankDavid Brady, Kenneth Andrews, Linda Burton, and Suzanne Shanahan for their valuable guidanceofmyresearchofthesetwomovements. It was in the midst of my research of the anti-illegal immigration and antiabortion/pro-life movements that the Tea Party began to get America’s atten- tion.TeaPartyorganizationsralliedinfrontofstatecapitolsthroughouttheUnited States,climaxinginmassivedemonstrationsintheUSCapitol.WhileIhadgained insight into the rationales of the anti-illegal immigration and antiabortion/pro-life movements,theTeaPartylogicwasmoreperplexing.TeaPartyprotestorsweredis- proportionatelywhiteandmiddleclassandtherebyhadrelativelyunfetteredaccessto theprivilegesoftheAmericanmajority.Onceagain,aswiththestudentparticipants in the affirmative action bake sale, I struggled to understand why these relatively privilegedAmericanswereprotesting. After attending several rallies, I began to see similarities in the three conser- vative social movements. All of them were fearful of losing privileges, economic, cultural,orotherwise,becauseofgovernmentaction,andtheyfeltinstitutionalized
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