The Politics of Unreason

...By the end of the 1820's the Masons had actually become such a threat that certain men of vision organized a political party, the Anti-Masons, to protect America from imminent doom...

...The enemies of the Republic were now sending hordes of immigrant Catholics who prayed wrong, lived wrong and--by the way--voted wrong...

...This is not to say that I oppugn the authors' judgments but rather, given the present structure of its narrative, I found their judgments fogbound...

...Over and over I thought as I left the P.O...

...The history of our recent Ninety-First Congress suggests the tactic has survived to this day...

...Jerry W. Gerde...

...Appealing to Mr...

...Nonetheless I unhesitatingly recommend the first half of the book, for in our present era of teeming political exoticism even the intelligent observer must occasionally be reminded of those perimeters of political decorum that in civilized times circumscribe democratic process...

...Political campaigners were not above betaking of the extremists' conscientious citizenship and the authors assert that political parties characteristically pirated the more glamorous elements of an extremist group's program, leaving it to the administration of malefactors and incompetents...

...Weishaupt's deceased organization as a ferocious menace to their runt republic...

...with newly opened eyes, if a government official would attempt to mislead me, an idealistic young man, on such a small matter, to what comparatively greater magnitude am I being deceived by our Bureaucracy on matters of real importance...

...Adam Weishaupt, the Bavarian kook, who in 1776 had founded a kind of anti-clerical think-tank, the Illuminati, which by 1785 had disintegrated from both its own balminess and the inducements of the Elector of Bavaria...

...For years, I have matter-of-factly taken the Post Office somewhat for granted as a dependable island in the confusing sea of governmental chicanery whose deceiving temple has been increasing in recent years With this background, I walked into our local Post Office last week to mail a Third Class parcel of printed material, and was advised by the postman at the window that he could not accept my offering without a zip code number on it...

...These organizations naturally included members who were aware of the activities of the Illuminati and the Masons, but an even graver threat now arose...

...Upon challenge from me as to the authority, he brusquely directed the postal employee to read to me the rule from the Postal Handbook--and then Mr...

...My mounting anger was checked at that point by the apparently routine appearance of our local (and long time) postmaster in the cage area behind the impolite employee...

...Lipset and Raab's new study of right-wing excess will possibly astound and probably embarrass them, for I find the book instructive, useful and even amusing--in spite of the doleful truth that I am, according to Mr...

...With growing sheepishness and unable to meet my eyes, the employee fumbled for awhile through the Handbook and finally pushed it to me--as he also turned away--the Handbook opened to a page that read simply: "Zip code numbers are mandatory on 2nd and 4th Class mail, and are optional on 1st and 3rd Class mail...

...Help Our Republic To the Editor Is it possible for a young man who cares about his Country to find an institution more solid, an institution more dependable, an institution more symbolic of what is strong and good about our Nation than the U.S...

...Schmidt slipped out of view behind the stacks of shelves...

...My anger at this peice of personal fraud was exceeded only by my shock at the official deceitfulness practiced without apparent concern by the very postmaster himself, Mr...

...Apprehension over the fate of the American way of life continued to spread until by 1820 the anti-clerical Illuminati was recognized as the real power behind a clandestine alliance of the papist Society of United Irishmen and the Masons--an agglutination which for a certitude must have witnessed the liveliest doctrinal controversies...

...Another lingering characteristic originating with the Anti-Masons was their adherence to evanescing social and philosophical positions...

...What is more important, you will be able to cast a man like Justice Douglas in just the right perspective when next he is discussed at your encounter group...

...Ray Henry Schmidt...

...Opening with a closely reasoned, tightly written essay describing the lineaments of political extremism left and right, The Politics of Unreason bubbles on with some amusing and informative chapters chronicling moronic moments of extremism throughout the American pageantry Unfortunately after the first half of the book a wave of statistics and behavioral axioms begins to crest sweeping the last quarter of the book's narrative into a turgid and chaotic swash of nonsense about the Birch Society and the Wallace campaign that crashes ashore with a final chapter, "Extremists and Extremism," which I found positively unintelligible...

...The Anti-Masons featured several ingredients which consistently appeared in later extremist treats--most importantly the inevitable nexus between bossy, upperclass moralizers and the mob of lowerclass hinds who carry their posters...

...America's first fling at extremism occurred shortly after the raucous birth of the Republic...

...Lipset's past dissections, a right-wing extremist...

...After Dwight's pronunciamiento no moral man could remain deaf to the problem of the Illuminati, and concerned citizens began to organize...

...By meditating on the authors' standards of extremism and reading their chronicle of America's matchless heritage of kookery, you will prepare yourself for fuller enjoyment of such vestiges of vaudeville as today survive in evening news broadcasts...

...The whole incident could not have appeared more remote to 1798's Middle Americano until one Jedidiah Morse, D. D. stepped to the pulpit and identified Mr...

...In the 1840's and 1850's status anxiety combined with adventurism and ignorance to inspire organizations like the Native Americans and eventually launched the candidly named Know-Nothings...

...God help our Republic ! Very truly yours...

...After hearing my rapid explanation of the controversy, he solemnly assured me that I was mistaken and that a zip code was mandatory for Third Class mail...

...This time without courtesy, he rejected my offering and cavalierly waved me towards the zip "superbook" chained to the wall behind me...

...Some were ancient Federalists, others felt themselves vanishing beneath the avalanche of European immigration, and still others were ill-advised opportunists eagerly mounting the "wave of the future...

...Ray Henry Schmidt by name, I requested his assistance...

...The Alternative January, 1971 Slumming On The Rigbt The Politics of Unreason by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab Harper and Row $12.50 This review of Messrs...

...Morse's thesis was sanctified by the eastern intellectuals...

...In the 1820's the upper-class busybodies espoused a flyblown antielitism entrancing their 17 lower-class votaries and obsessing them with the most imbecilic notions...

...On the other side of the ledge I must enter my finding that the book is flawed by conceptual and grammatical slovenliness...

...In those days extremists did not see spectral figures lurking about the President's palace or fashioning concentration camps for pop patriots, rather they shivered over Mr...

...Now the fever set in, and on 4 July 1798 Dr...

...Troubled by the intrigues of the Illuminati, President Timothy Dwight of Yale College unbosomed himself with the passion, eloquence and credibility which has become a hallmark with Yale Presidents, seeping right down to our era in the semi-lucid utterances of the distinguished Kingman Brewster...

...Post Office...

...Based on my long held assumption that zip code numbers were mandatory only for Second and fourth Class mail, I verbalized that fact and reoffered my package to him...

...I cannot express my disappointment adequately upon discovering this deceit by an offical in a position of real responsibility on a matter of comparative unimportance...