In short, we're back to the days of the "Know Nothings." Only this time, instead of the 1850s fear that Irish Catholic immigrants might overwhelm American values, and then claim to "know nothing" about their movement, today's Know Nothings take pride in providing simplistic and ill-thought out approaches to modern problems (you know, kind of like the Know Nothings of the 1850s). Krugman writes:
Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts ... What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”On the positive side at least Know-Nothingism has evolved. Today there is pride in providing simpleton solutions to complex problems ... We don't like you? Let's go to war ... I'm afraid of terrorist monsters! Let's strip the Constitution ... I don't understand your energy policy references? Have a gas gauge.
This explains John McCain's "drill here, drill now" mantra. By pressing to drill for oil here and now, when every expert in the field says doing so will do nothing to solve our energy problems (and may even make it worse by providing a false sense of hope), McCain is demonstrating that he has not moved far from the foolish solutions provided by the Know Nothings of yore.
No wonder many of the Know Nothings of the 1850s gravitated to the Republican Party by the 1860s. Their narrow nativism and religious hostility fit right in with the party that freely embraces fear-mongering and banality as campaign cornerstones.
- Mark
P.S. FYI, here's a copy of political propoganda from the Know Nothing period. Click on the piece if the letters are too small to read.
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