Rating: 
Summary: The Wrong Man
Review: Michael Lind and David Frum are arguably the best writers on American politics today. While Lind is a liberal (from Texas!) and Frum a conservative (from Canada!) they share three things in common: impressive intelligence, brilliant writing, and a deep knowledge of history. Now, they share something else, too: they have both written books about George W. Bush, the Republican 'New Right', and America's political future. Frum is adulatory of Bush and the conservative agenda; Lind is highly critical of both. Frum's book is titled 'The Right Man'; Lind's might be titled 'The Wrong Man' (:While Frum claims that 'W' moderated the hard-edged Republican agenda, giving it mainstream appeal, Lind argues that Bush's moderation is chiefly rhetorical and cosmetic. Given Bush's record so far (rejection of international treaties on health, the environment, and law; big tax breaks for rich investors, hikes in defense spending, caps on social spending, the purge of all moderate Republicans from his cabinet-excepting only the too-popular-Powell; and most of all, the monomaniacal pursuit of 'Satanic Saddam'-and his oil fields) I am inclined to agree with Lind. 'W' is well to the right of his father-that is obvious.
The question is, why? And how does he get away with it?
It is in providing the answer to this perplexing question that makes Lind's book uniquely valuable. 'Made in Texas' investigates the geographical, social and historical background that shaped Bush II and the Southern-dominated Republican party of today. I am not going to give a lengthy description of this book, because that would be both boring and redundant. Instead, I will point out the strengths of Lind's book (which many reviewers are too angry/skeptical to admit) and its one major mistake (which no one, apparently, has noticed at all). The main thesis of 'Made in Texas'-that there is a peculiar 'Southern-Oligarchial' tradition, and that it now dominates the Republican party and the Federal Government, is a pretty controversial idea; but it happens to be true. Lind's sources on this point are quite reliable (see the work of D.H. Fischer Fehrenbach, Luraghi, Joseph Fry, and D. W. Meinig, and others). A history of violence, fear and suspicion of government, religious biotry, racial domination and economic exploitation-'the inequities of the selfish, and the tyranny of evil men'-camouflaged by clownish, ranting rabble-rousers-this is all a shameful, tragic, but ultimately undeniable part of the Southern/Texan heritage-'W''s heritage. Lind's depiction of a rival Souther political tradition-the 'Progressive-Modernists' of Woodrow Wilson's Cabinet, and the administrations of FDR, Truman and LBJ, is also accurate-and cause for hope. Hairsplitters may question such a stark dichotomy (obviously, politics is the 'art of compromise'); but overall, Lind is correct. Skipping forward to 1980-2000, Lind shows how the Republicans improved their propaganda by co-option; while its voters and politicians may be predominantly southern, its money and brains are largely foreign/northern. My favorite parts of 'Made in Texas' were the passages on the alliance between the Neo-Cons and the Southern Republicans: 'Incapable of producing intellectuals of its own, the Southern right borrowed some from the East Coast left...by the year 2000, a Frankenstein operation had stitched the bodiless head of Northeastern Neo-conservatism onto the headless body of Southern Fundamentalism.' Priceless! I only wish that Lind had included more about the links between the new reactionary media barons (Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black, Sun Myung Moon) and the ascendant right-wing media. All well and good-but something is missing. Why did the South
go from Liberal stronghold to Conservative bastion? Lind puts the blame on LBJ's Civil Rights act, which unleashed a racist backlash against the Democrats. I don't buy this. No, there is something missing-an entire decade, in fact: the 70s. It was the 70s that lifted the 'new right' from its despised, marginal Dixiecrat/George Wallace status to control of the GOP. Just about everything went wrong in the 70s, and the few things that went right (increased opportunities for women, emancipation of minority races and homosexuals from their subservient/pariah status) made a lot of people angry. These people were largely white, rural, southern, male and religious-the 'hard core' of the modern GOP-often the same people who voted for Truman and LBJ! *It was the chaos of the 70s that disenchanted the Neo-Cons from the left, scared the rich into bankrolling the Right, and enabled the Southern Oligarchy to stage a political comeback-now nationwide-with a triple program of social conservatism/hawkish foreign policy/supply-side economics.* Limited between 1980-2000 by moderate presidents and a democratic congress, this program is now being implemented full force. The gurus of the right are still fighting ghosts from the 70s: Stagflation, Vietnam, and 'Irreligious Hedonism'. Lind tells us the beginning and the end of the story-but skips the middle! The best account of it I can find (ironically) is by conservative David Frum, in his history of the 70s (a better book than his own Bush bio). Lind predicts that Bush and the Southern Oligarchy will destroy themselves by leading the nation to military defeat and economic disaster. It remains to be seen whether Lind, or Frum, will have the last word.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfair Assessment
Review: Michael Lind haphazardly jumbled facts and figures with excessively inaccurate statements to compile a 184 page disaster. In one example, Lind mixes the beginning of the twentieth century with the end of the twentieth century and argues that the social impetus for racism over that period has remained stagnant is unfair and indicates a palpable lack of reliable research by Lind. He seems to have potential to form and address an argument, however, in Made in Texas there is little rational thought or intelligent theses pertaining to Texas politics.
Rating:
Summary: Banana Republican
Review: Michael Lind is a native Texan who loves his state, but pulls no punches about the destructive path its recent leaders (George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, etc.) are taking the nation. He is also one of the more original and unpredictable pundits around. Just when you think you have him pegged ideologically, he throws you a curve. Although a fierce critic of today's Republican right, he also opposes affirmative action and property taxes, and he is no apologist for today's Democratic Party either. The constants in his writing are populism and contempt for conventional wisdom. Check your preconceptions at the door before reading him.
The book's central focus is how Texas as a state and the South as a region have impacted, in both positive and negative ways, American political ecomomy. As Lind sees it, the two dominant political factions in Texas have been the "traditionalists" and the "modernists." He stresses that these labels do not necessarily coincide with "liberal" and "conservative." Today the traditionalists are represented by the Bush family and other Texas Republicans (although Lind also places Lloyd Bentsen in this camp). They are more or less the successors to the 19th century Confederates and the segregationist Democrats who ran the state in the first half of the 20th century. This group, he writes, "is content for Texas to have a low-wage, commodity exporting economy, even if the result is a society with enormous inequalities of wealth and opportunity."
The "modernists" have been more eclectic politically. They have included John Connally on the right, H. Ross Perot in the center and Barbara Jordan on the moderate left. Lind defines their vision as "a high-tech economy with a meritocratic society. If traditionalist Texas is symbolized by oil companies, ranches and farms, modernist Texas is symbolized by the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the computer industry that grew up in Austin's 'Silicon Hills.'" The modernists combined "populism and a military ethic in a synthesis that, although not unique to Texas, was particularly pronounced in the Lone Star State."
The traditionalists have generally held the upper hand. In the 19th century the Confederates envisioned America as 1) the British Empire's junior partner in the realm of international politics and as 2) a low-wage exporter of raw materials to industrialized Britain under the banner of free trade. This is what Lind derisively calls "Southernomics" -- a banana republic or Third World style of political economy in which it is taboo to use tariffs and high wages to foster domestic industry and technology. In 2004 George W. Bush's vision was remarkably similar. But this time Britain is America's junior partner in a self-defeating policy of military overextension, and this time America does the importing from low-wage countries in a system sacrificing the middle class on the altars of free trade and cheap labor.
The era in which Texas modernism rode high was when the New Deal brought the Industrial Revolution, rural electrification, and middle class prosperity to the South by way of "state capitalist" projects such as the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). This era peaked in the 1950s and '60s when Sam Rayburn (of Texas) was Speaker of the House and Lyndon Johnson (of Texas) was Senate Majority Leader and then President of the United States.
Back in the Goldwater, Nixon and early Reagan years, the Southwest (Arizona/Southern California) was the GOP's geographic homeland. That is no longer the case. The geographic core of the Republican coalition is now in the South. Lind writes: "[I]t is no exaggeration to speak of the 'Texanization' of the American right as a whole...conservative thinkers and politicians rooted in the old Texan commodity-exporting oligarchy have redefined what conservatism means in the United States. Even in the Northeast and Midwest, older, rival conservative traditions...have been replaced by a recognizably Texan (and broadly Southern) conservatism uniting belief in minimal government [in theory, but not in practice] at home and a bellicose foreign policy abroad with [Protestant] fundamentalism." There was ample evidence of this at the 2004 GOP convention. Witness Rudolph Giuliani shilling for the Bush Doctrine in all its bankrupting glory and Governor Ah-noldt mocking the manhood of anyone dissatisfied with the consequences of Southernomics.
Lind devotes the final chapters to the growing nexus between the New York neoconservatives and the Southern right. It is the neocons, mostly ex-socialists or ex-liberals and their progeny, who give today's GOP whatever intellectual credibility it has. However, it is precisely because of the neocons that most of what is today labeled "conservativism," in both foreign and domestic policy, bears no philosphical connection to the true conservatism of Edmund Burke and George Washingtion. It is basically Marxism turned inside-out. (Lind developed this rather amusing point at greater length in his 1996 book UP FROM CONSERVATISM.) Try this at home if you can. Throw together an outline of Maoist and Marxist-Leninist propaganda. Then substitute "permanent war" for "permanent revolution" and "culture" for "class." Presto! You have the 2004 Republican platform.
Lind makes a couple of factual errors. Ross Perot and Al Gore debated the NAFTA treaty on the Larry King Show in 1993, not 1992. He also misidentifies the date of a Weekly Standard editorial ("Axis of Appeasement") which was printed in 2002, not 2000 (it's listed correctly in the index). Also, in discussing the Middle East, the dissing reviewers have a point when they complain that he goes too easy on the terrorist/mass murderer Yasser Arafat. I would also deduct one star for style. Lind has a habit of overstating his case and making the same point in ten different ways. Nonetheless, his brand of iconoclasm is needed now more than ever.
Rating: 
Summary: Understanding America and Bush
Review: The book is about much more than Bush and what the author calls "Southern Takeover of American Politics." It allows one to better understand American's cultural history, especially that of the South. Lind is by no means an ultra-liberal trying to discredit Bush. On the contrary, some of his sternest criticism is reserved is reserved for extremist liberals and environmentalists with their rigid notions of race, ethnicity, and "green" politics that hurt ordinary Americans. The books is a valuable addition to a library of anyone trying to understand the politics of America, the most wonderful country in the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Intellectual exercises in bigotry
Review: Which is worse - pointing out the alleged prejudices of people or engaging in your own bigotry under the mask of "analysis"? That is the $64,000 question (an expression I am sure the author will find somehow offensive). The few times the book stops its incessant editorialing (reminiscent of NPR and FOX) it makes for interesting reading, particularly for those with no knowledge of the region. And guess what? Texas is not New York; it holds a host of views that appear strange to those of the intellectual, academic persuasion. Lind's writing has all the finesse of a sledge hammer as he blithely dismisses a whole region for its beliefs. The attempt to explain why only Southerners can be elected President falls short of the mark and sounds not only hollow but phony. In the ten elections since JFK, we've elected Southerners six times, Westerners four times - not one person from the Midwest or East. No amount of flim-flam explains this fact away. The inferences are also stretching...one is influenced by the environment but Anne Richards, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and LBJ hail from the same background as George Bush, Tom Delay and Trent Lott. True, they modify their stands (or as Gore did, reverse themselves entirely) when faced with a national audience but why knock the GOP when Democrats have sought this region for their own candidate? No, what I suspect is the REAL force behind this agitprop is the recognition and reaction of the loss of power from traditional locales - New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan. These areas are depopulating, losing political clout and with that theh ability to set a more liberal ideology. The same trend can be observed in the media with "traditional" outlets on a downhill slide to more conservative upstarts. I would like to perform a vivisection on each "bad" view that the author mentioned, but will suffice to mention that Bush's support for Mideast democracy and backing of the only free state in the region serves as the perfect counterpoint to the author's support for thugery, dictatorship and dismemberment of the Israeli state.
Rating:
Summary: What is a lying propagandist?
Review: Wm. Bennett is the quintessential lying propagandist. Michael Lind demonstrates his partisan Democratic bias, undiminished by morality, with his lies and distortions in nearly every sentence of his two-paragraph characterization of the Waco tragedy. First he lies by claiming the Branch Davidians murdered agents of the ATF. Neither the jury nor the judge found thenm guilty of that! In the same sentence he claims the ATF conducted a raid to confiscate illegal firearms, when in fact the ATF had sought an arrest warrant for Koresh and a search warrant. In his next sentence, Lind claims the fire was either an "accident" or "part of a suicidal plan by Koresh." He intentionally leaves out the possibility that the incendiary-using FBI might have intentionally torched the church/residence. In the next sentence, Lind claims "Koresh's followers had begun the conflict by gunning down law enforcement officers who were serving warrants." Big-time lies here. The militarily equipped and trained ATF, after alerting the media, attacked the Branch-Davidian pet dogs first, then gunfire broke out. The Branch Davidians had the full right to try to defend themselves. Furthermore, the ATF made no effort whatsoever to serve any warrants, almost certainly not even bringing them to the attack site. Lind's next clause labels opponents of the FBI as "conspiracy theorists," demonstrating his propagandistic terminology. Lind is no fool, and the facts about Waco are quite clear and well established. Other Democratic partisans have similarly lied about and diverted attention away from the Waco-tragedy facts, Democrats like Lantos of CA and Schumer of NY. Nothing Lind says can have any credibility for me, with his outrageous lies so easily identified and exposed. The important question seems to me to be, why would magazines with a good reputation like "Harpers" and the "The New Yorker" publish articles written by such a liar?
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