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Blyth Lord's avatar

I am very much looking forward to reading this, and think it will be an excellent complement to Heather Cox Richardson’s work. We need such grounded, considered, studied historical perspective.

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Themon the Bard's avatar

I first encountered this theory in the book How Democracies Die. They talk about how the Electoral College failed relatively early-on, and how the "back-room deal," as it came to be known, was central to this gatekeeping role. They make a clear case that democracy depends less on putting the right people in power, than on barring the wrong people, and it's based on studies of the many (many) democracies that have failed in the last century or so.

The removal of the Fairness Doctrine was certainly a huge mistake. But it's not the whole story. Religion was always treated with kid gloves in the US, and demagoguery is rife in the religious world, going back to Herbert W. Armstrong starting on radio in 1933, or back to William Miller and the founding of the Adventist churches, or even the the Calvinists and Puritans who figured in early America. Religion is driven and dominated by demagogues. The Religious Right began taking over the political system in the 1960's and 1970's, and they were driven by the Evangelical Coalition, which was dominated by the Southern Baptist Convention, which was closely tied to Reconstruction government in the South, and the KKK.

The significance of Limbaugh, in my opinion, was that he secularized much of the worst of the old-school KKK/Baptist/Evangelical demagoguery, making the same old story much more palatable. And the dissolution of the Fairness Doctrine let him get away with it.

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