By Paul E. Gottfried, February 23rd, 2012 
As someone who for decades has been kept out of the media-manipulated political conversation and who has had none of his many books reviewed in the mainstream press, despite being published by Cambridge, Princeton and other prestigious presses, I regard my presence in this forum as the equivalent of gate-crashing. Having said that, I see no reason why those who ignore me should want to treat me any better in the future. I have shown my contempt for their orchestrated discussions on whom or what is “conservative.” For thirty years I have argued that the Left enjoys the prerogative of choosing its “conservative” debating partners in the US and in other Western “liberal democracies.” Those it dialogues with are more similar to the gatekeepers, sociologically and ideologically, than they are to those who, like me, have been relegated to the “extreme (read non-cooperative) Right.” At this point I have no objections to creating new categories for “gay conservatives,” “transvestite reactionaries” or any other group the New York Times or National Review decides to reach out to. I consider the terms “conservative” and “liberal” to be empty decoration. They adorn a trivial form of discussion, diverting attention from the most significant political development of our time, namely the replacement of the Marxist by the PC Left.
While the American Right was once geared to fight the “Communist” threat, today’s “conservatives” (yes I am inserting quotation marks for obvious reasons) have capitulated to the post-Communist Left (to which in this country an anachronistic nineteenth-century designation “liberal” has been arbitrarily ascribed). The “conservative movement” happily embraces the heroes and issues of yesterday’s Left, from the cult of Martin Luther King to the defense of “moderate feminism” and Irving Kristol’s confected concept of the “democratic capitalist welfare state” to David Frum’s and Ross Douthat’s praise for gay marriage as a “family value.” When our conservative journalists and talking heads are not engaging in such value-discourses, they do what comes even more naturally, shilling for the GOP. Conservatism and whatever the GOP may be doing at a particular moment to scare up votes have . . .
Read more: The Right vs. Conservatives vs. The Left
By Gary Alan Fine, July 15th, 2011 
It has now passed into the realm of political cliché that there are red states and blue states. Like so many commonplaces there is a certain truth to the analysis. We expect Mississippi to vote differently than Minnesota, Indiana differently than Illinois, and Vermont differently than New Hampshire (the last a point made elegantly by Jason Kaufman in describing the divergence of political cultures). States have different political cultures, which are based on their histories, their values, and their economies.
However, even in the most garishly red of states, Democrats often get 2/5 of the vote, and the same is true in the most azure domains for Republicans. But what are we to make of these divides and these common tendencies? A potentially more powerful way of understanding politics is to recognize that even more than geography, occupations have political cultures. It is very often true that you vote as you work. While this has been recognized by political consultants as they target their mailings and by sociologists who examine what produces individual-level voting decisions by studying broad occupational categories, the red job/blue job divide has not captured the public which thinks in terms of land.
Research from the General Social Survey run by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked respondents their political preferences and their occupations. Based on surveys from 1996 to 2008, sociologists David Grusky and Kim Weeden constructed occupational categories which can be compared in light of political affiliations. The surveys focus on the basic division between liberals and conservatives (and self-professed moderates, who typically comprise half to two-thirds of any occupational group). While even these categories are somewhat broader than are desired for the examination of the local cultures of work, they serve adequately for making this point.
The results demonstrate vividly that there are substantial differences between jobs. For example, fewer than 5% of all bartenders consider themselves to be conservatives, while 27% admit to being liberals. This is a ratio . . .
Read more: Red Jobs, Blue Jobs
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 3rd, 2011 
The weather has been absolutely spectacular this week in Paris. Clear, sunny skies, low humidity, moderate temperatures. Yesterday, Naomi and I enjoyed having lunch at the Palais-Royal and walking through the city with our friend Daniel Dayan. Each day, we have been spending time in a park with our grandson, Ludovic. Especially nice was a family excursion to the Arab Institute, where we had wonderful pastries and panoramic views of of the city from its rooftop café. Being in Paris, thinking with a European perspective about the Arab world has been my theme of the week, as I, with the help of the editorial team at Deliberately Considered, have been keeping the magazine going.
I observed in my first letter from Paris that the common action of Coptic Christians and Muslims at Tahrir Square created a new pluralistic reality in Egypt. These days, this new reality is challenged, to say the least. There are great fears that sectarian conflict will rule the day in Egypt and in the region, as was reported in Tuesday’s New York Times. According to this report, a clause in the constitution formally identifying Egypt as a Muslim country deriving its laws from Islam, passed during the era of Anwar Sadat, and laws dating back to the late colonial era that stipulate specific restrictions on and privileges for the Coptic church have inflamed tensions. There is a marked increase in sectarian violence, with wild stories about abduction of Muslims, even reported in a historically liberal newspaper. These are very serious matters.
Formal political measures to address these issues are urgently needed. An idea floating that a Bill of Rights ought to be established as a precondition of electoral politics, as advocated by Mohamed El Barade, makes considerable sense. But just as important are indications that the power of definition, what I call the politics of small things, is being marshaled to combat dangerous anti-democratic developments.
![]( "A Copt (left) and a Salafi Muslim (right) debate politics and the revolution in Tahrir Square during a break </i></strong></em></b>. . .
<p>Read more: <a href=") DC Week in Review: Letter from Paris II, Thinking about Egypt, Poland and China with “Skin in the Game”
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DC Week in Review: Letter from Paris II, Thinking about Egypt, Poland and China with “Skin in the Game”