Ronald Reagan, Jesse Unruh and the California Gubernatorial Race, 1970

This essay examines the 1970 gubernatorial race in California between incumbent Ronald Reagan and powerful California legislator Jesse Unruh. Most of the scholarship on this particular subject tends to revolve around Reagan\u27s first campaign for governor, but neglects his re-election campaign. Although Unruh would lose the campaign, he narrowed Reagan\u27s win significantly. This study examines the candidates themselves, the issues facing California at the time, strategies used by each camp, and possible reasons why voters strayed from Reagan to the Unruh camp, and the final outcome of the race

The Republican Spending Explosion

When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, they promised to eliminate the deficit and reduce wasteful spending. For several years, the GOP partly upheld its commitment by modestly curtailing spending growth and balancing the budget. Unfortunately, the balanced budgets of the late 1990s created an "easy money" mindset in Congress, which began a spending spree that continues unabated today. Total federal outlays will rise 29 percent between fiscal years 2001 and 2005 according to the president's fiscal year 2005 budget released in February. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004 are three of the five biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of the government's return to massive budget deficits. Although defense spending has increased in response to the war on terrorism, President Bush has made little attempt to restrain nondefense spending to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Nondefense discretionary outlays will increase about 36 percent during President Bush's first term in office. Congress has failed to contain the administration's overspending and has added new spending of its own. Republicans have clearly forfeited any claim of being the fiscally responsible party in Washington. Looking ahead, Republicans need to rediscover the reforming spirit that they brought to Washington after the landmark 1994 congressional elections. Fiscally conservative Democrats should challenge big-spending Republicans and work to cut unneeded programs from both the defense and nondefense parts of the budget. In command of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, Republicans are primarily responsible for the current budget mess, and it is Republicans who have the power to pare back spending to get the federal budget under control once again

The Write Stuff: U.S. Serial Print Culture from Conservatives out to Neo-Nazis

Insufficient scholarly attention has been devoted to alternative or "oppositional" serials from the political right, even though a number of scholars have used these materials as primary sources for studies in several academic disciplines. This overview reviews some of the terms used to describe these serials, explores the development of distinct post???WWII right-wing ideologies, and proposes that these serials usefully can be analyzed through a sociological lens as movement literature that both reflects and shapes different sectors through frames and narratives. How oppositional serials can play a role in constructing rhetorical pipelines and echo chambers to take movement grievances and push them into mainstream political policy initiatives is explored. The sectors defined and examined are the secular right, religious right, and xenophobic right. Examples from each sector are provided, with selected periodicals highlighted in detail.published or submitted for publicatio

Presidential ethos : leadership as goal and tool in the rhetoric of recent American presidents

This thesis discusses the role of leadership as an aspect of ethos in presidential rhetoric. In it, a terminology is established to deal with two original applications of leadership ethos in presidential rhetoric: accumulating, or building up leadership status as an independent goal, and wielding, or using the established ethos of the presidency to affect some other goal of persuasion. These terms provide the basis for an approach to analyzing presidential rhetoric. Support for this approach is drawn from the theoretical basis of authorities reaching as far back as Aristotle up to the much more U.S.-specific observations of David Zarefsky, Richard Neustadt, and others. Applications of this division are then applied to speeches from U.S. presidents from Reagan to Obama. Finally, suggestions for the usage and application of the established accumulating/ wielding dichotomy are summarized

Young Americans for Freedom and the Anti-War Movement: Pro-War Encounters with the New Left at the Height of the Vietnam War

While a vast amount of contemporary scholarship has been dedicated to student activism during the late 1960s and early 1970s, very little of it has focused on those who supported the war in Vietnam. The few authors who have written on the topic tend to present pro-war activists as a mild-mannered force that used conventional and congenial tactics to advocate for victory in southeast Asia. This paper will upend this characterization by examining how members of the conservative organization Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) saw themselves as a besieged minority at American universities and responded to the radicalism of the anti-war movement with inflammatory satire and physical confrontation. As their peers in the New Left burnt draft cards and occupied campus buildings, these young conservatives employed aggressive strategies of their own to advocate for the war. During this process, YAF members revealed an affinity for appropriating the rhetoric and tactics of their adversaries, exposing an intertwined relationship between two seemingly opposed political movements that most historians study in isolation Young Americans for Freedom helped to forge a distinct strain of conservative backlash politics that catapulted Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. This paper sheds light on radical undercurrents within the organization and its relationship to the New Left, complicating our understanding of both student activism in the 1960s and 1970s as well as the emergence of modern conservatism

Catholic Deaf Apostolate Newsletter, March 1979

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Portland, O

Deviant Knowledge

The ability to openly challenge and express criticism of governing authorities is a cornerstone of progressive democratic societies. To ‘speak truth to power’ generates accountability and transparency where elected and appointed officials, and their governing rationalities and ideologies, are questioned and held to account. However, critical voices of dissent are increasingly marginalized, suppressed and threatened. Recent international headlines, such as, ‘World press freedoms have deteriorated …warning of a new era of propaganda’ (Reporters Without Borders, 2016); ‘Art is under Threat: Oppression against Freedom of Expression is Dangerously High’ (Freemuse, 2016); ‘The demise of academic freedom. When politically correct “speech police” are given the upper hand’ (Walpin, 2015), all attest to the ways that democratic freedoms in speech and artistic expression are under attack and subjected to systematic censorship and erosion. Such attacks on thought and expression have been witnessed in various historical regimes underpinned by a politics of intolerance and fear. More recently, the post 9-11 period has observed how commentators critical of the ‘war on terror’ have been silenced, neutralized and ‘dismissed as traitorous acts of sedition’ (Walters, 2003:132-134). For some commentators the demise of civil liberties is associated with heightened terrorist threats and the perceived need to regulate and monitor ‘offensive speech’. For Schoenwald (2001) the ‘authoritarian ascendency’ or the ‘rise of modern American conservatism’ has had a pervasive influence on media, global economics, political party politics, and the production of knowledge. Therefore, to offend with words or creative expression is seen as a catalyst that may incite radical fundamentalism and disrupt the social order. This position is examined comprehensively in Mike Hume’s influential book Trigger Warning. Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?, where he argues that: ‘Everybody in Western public life claims to support free speech in principle. Yet in practice free speech is on the endangered list. Freedom of expression today is like one of those exotic animals that everybody says they love, but that still appear to be heading inexorably towards extinction. Everywhere from the internet to the universities, from football to the theatrical stage, from out on the streets to inside our own minds, we are allowing the hard-won right to freedom of expression to be reined in and undermined’ (Hume, 2015:12). If academics, journalists, artists and other critical commentators are prevented from openly challenging and critiquing governing authorities, then how are the ruling elites held accountable for their decisions, policies and actions? Along these lines, - how are notions of democracy, human rights, social justice and humanitarianism advanced and progressed for the global good? If, as Hume (2015) argues, free speech is becoming constructed as a form of ‘extremism’ - as a danger to social and political stability – then those who exercise democratic rights to critical free speech also become demarcated as ‘extremists’ or ‘deviants’ and the words and values they disseminate are indeed forms of ‘deviant knowledge’