The Remnant

In response to my comments about the nature of Bush's mandate, a very conservative friend responded with a comment noting the numerical achievement of Bush's victory -- 60 million votes, an actual majority, and improved his standing in most states. That isn't really related to my point -- which was simply that, numbers aside, you can't really claim a mandate to privatize social security when you accused your opponent of lying when he charged that you intended to privatize Social Security -- but I'm prepared to concede that the numbers are the numbers.

Then I looked at my friend's own blog, and noticed that he is promoting a bumper sticker with the initials "TGWW" -- a special discreet code that stands for, "Thank God W Won," a subtle indicator like the Skull and Bones handshake, so fellow supporters can notice each other without calling undue attention to themselves in hostile environments. ("It's a big 'hell yeah!' that will impress your friends and confound your enemies.") How is it that, if Bush's mandate is so clear, his supporters still feel the need to operate as if they were early Christians in the catacombs? Yes, it's true that my friend lives in a "blue state," but it's not exactly the East Village. He is represented by a reelected Republican member of Congress, his state has a Republican governor, and he lives in a municipality where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 2:1, the kind of place where Robert Lowell's lines seem fitting: "even the man scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,/ has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,/ and is 'a young Republican.'" So why the secret handshake?

The ability to simultaneously maintain the triumphalism of a mandate, and the sense of being an embattled minority has much to do with the continued political success of the far right. It allows them to maintain the energy and righteousness of opposition even while they claim the most autocratic control of American political institutions since the 1920s. It is also a defensive shield that made it very difficult for Democrats in the past election to treat the Republican right as what it is: the ruling party, and a particularly corrupt one.

The pose of being an embattled minority in a statist and secular culture also helps bring together the economic libertarian and religious right elements of the conservative coalition. Several of the canonical histories of conservatism, such as George Nash's fascinating and sympathetic, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, begin with the bizarrely compelling figure of Albert Jay Nock, a dour well-read libertarian (actually, closer to an anarchist or anarcho-capitalist), iconoclast and cultural elitist who influenced William F. Buckley and others. Nock's memorable idea is that of "the remnant" -- the handful of people who were enlightened about the true nature of the state and who would be misunderstood by the mass of people manipulated by government. Nock's Remnant was an entirely secular concept, but it has an analogue on the religious right which has its own version of the Remnant, its own mythology that depends on the illusion of being a persecuted minority in a decadent, godless culture. (See, for example, Bob Jones letter to Bush: "In your re-election, God has graciously granted America?though she doesn't deserve it?a reprieve from the agenda of paganism."

Democrats lose elections and comfort ourselves that our views represent a majority and we just have to convey them better. Republicans win elections and comfort themselves that they are still an embattled minority and need to keep fighting like hell -- ends justify the means and all that -- against the entrenched liberal power. We're both a little crazy.