Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T05:53:43.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Fighting Liberalism’s Excesses: Moral Crusades During the Reagan Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2013

Jon A. Shields*
Affiliation:
Claremont McKenna College

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Critical Perspectives
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Tanenhaus, Sam, “The Right: Down, but Maybe Not Out,” New York Times, 20 May 2007.Google Scholar

2. Bell, Jeffrey, “What Falwell Wrought,” Weekly Standard, 28 May 2007.Google Scholar

3. For an influential articulation of this perspective, see Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

4. Wolfe, Tom, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” New York Magazine, 23 August 1976.Google Scholar

5. See, for example, Henretta, James A. and others, America’s History, Volume 2: Since 1865, 4th ed. (Boston, 2000), 996, 10001001Google Scholar; Gillon, Steven M. and Matson, Cathy D., The American Experiment: A History of the United States, Volume II: Since 1865 (Boston, 2002), 1221–23.Google Scholar

6. Risen, James and Thomas, Judy L., Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (New York, 1998), 126–30Google Scholar; Allitt, Patrick, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (New Haven, 2009), 1, 220Google Scholar; Stewart, Katherine, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children (New York, 2012), 7980.Google Scholar

7. Ault, James M. Jr., Spirit and Flesh: Life Inside a Fundamentalist Baptist Church (New York, 2004), 117–19.Google Scholar

8. Hadden, Jeffrey and others, “Why Jerry Falwell Killed the Moral Majority, ” in The God Bumpers: Religion in the Electronic Age, ed. Fishwik, Marshall W. and Browne, Ray B. (Bowling Green, Ohio, 1987), 102.Google Scholar

9. Rothenberg, Stuart and Newport, Frank, The Evangelical Voter (Washington, D.C., 1984), 10, 8190, 103.Google Scholar

10. On the growth of evangelical churches in the 1970s and ‘80s, see Putnam, Robert and Campbell, David E., American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York, 2010), 91133.Google Scholar

11. Lerner, Barron H., One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1990 (Baltimore, 2011), 78, 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Downs, Donald Alexander, The New Politics of Pornography (Chicago, 1989), 100106.Google Scholar

13. Bronstein, Carolyn, Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976–1986 (New York, 2011), 320–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Jasper, James M. and Nelkin, Dorothy, The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of Moral Protest (New York, 1992), 31, 3738, 177.Google Scholar

15. National Abortion Federation, “NAF Violence and Disruption Statistics,” at www.prochoice.org/pubs_research/publications/downloads/about_abortion/stats_table2011.pdf stats (accessed 12 December 2012).

16. “About Us,” March for Life, at http://www.marchforlife.org/content/view/13/26/ (accessed 18 November 2012).

17. Lerner, One for the Road, 4–5, 76–77.

18. For historical data, see Rorabaugh, William J., The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York, 1981), 89.Google Scholar

19. Lerner, One for the Road, 104–5.

20. Downs, The New Politics of Pornography, 16, 22.

21. Finsen, Lawrence and Finsen, Susan, The Animal Rights Movement in America: From Compassion to Respect (New York, 1994), 5, 21, 53.Google Scholar

22. Mukerjee, Madhusree, “Trends in Animal Research,” Scientific American 276(2): 1997CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Singer, Peter, Animal Liberation, updated edition (New York, 2009), 79.Google Scholar

23. Guttmacher Institute, “Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States,” at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.pdf (accessed 26 November 2012).

24. Glendon, Mary Ann, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York, 1991), 5860Google Scholar; Levine, Phillip B., Sex and Consequences: Abortion, Public Policy, and the Economics of Fertility (Princeton, 2004), 134–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Steinbock, Bonnie, “Drunk Driving,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3 (1985): 278–95.Google Scholar

26. Lerner, One for the Road, 9, 83–85, 90–92.

27. Downs, The New Politics of Pornography, 54–55.

28. Strub, Whitney, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (New York, 2012), 230–33.Google Scholar

29. Downs, The New Politics of Pornography, 41.

30. Fahrenthold, David A., “Statistics Show Drop in U.S. Rape Cases,” Washington Post, 19 June 2006.Google Scholar

31. Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 41, 51.

32. Downs, The New Politics of Pornography, 36–37, 102, 108, 127.

33. Strub, Perversion for Profit, 216, 234, 249–50.

34. Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 193–95, 320–21.

35. Quotations found in Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 133, 183.

36. Singer, Animal Liberation, 213.

37. Jasper and Nelkin, The Animal Rights Crusade, 5–6, 11, 27–29, 43, 53, 75, 100–101, 119, 152.

38. Jasper and Nelkin, The Animal Rights Crusade, 40–41, 43, 54, 134.

39. Guither, Harold D., Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement (Carbondale, Ill., 1998), 148–49.Google Scholar

40. Scully, Matthew, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York, 2003).Google Scholar

41. Risen and Thomas, The Wrath of Angels, 43–77, 134–35, 138–39, 171, 188–92.

42. On Jesse Jackson’s political development, see Hertzke, Allen D., Echoes of Discontent: Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson, and the Resurgence of Populism (Washington, D.C., 1993).Google Scholar

43. Williams, Daniel K., God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York, 2010), 153–58, 167–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Munson, Ziad W., The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Movement Mobilization Works (Chicago, 2008), 47, 25–27, 132–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Hunter, James Davison, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture Wars (New York, 1994), 1516.Google Scholar

46. Jasper and Nelkin, The Animal Rights Crusade, 40, 94–96, 145.

47. Regan, Tom, The Case for Animal Rights: Updated with a New Preface (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2004), 319–20.Google Scholar

48. For a sample of this literature, see Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1982)Google Scholar; West, Robin, “The Difference in Women’s Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique of Feminist Legal Theory,” Wisconsin Women’s Legal Journal 81 (1987)Google Scholar; Ruddick, Sara, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston, 1989).Google Scholar

49. Karlan, Pamela S. and Ortiz, Daniel R., “In a Different Voice: Relational Feminism, Abortion Rights, and the Feminist Legal Agenda, ” Northwestern University Law Review 87 (1993): 858–62Google Scholar, 871, 892. See also Shields, Jon A. and Serna, Steven, “The Demise of Feminist Communitarianism,” Perspectives on Political Science 40, no. 1 (2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. Sherry, Clifford J., Animal Rights: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, 2009), 102–4.Google Scholar

51. Lerner, One for the Road, 78–79.

52. Ibid., 10–11, 73, 136–37, 141–45.

53. Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 140–41, 307–8.

54. LeMoncheck, Linda, Loose Women, Lecherous Men: A Feminist Philosophy of Sex (New York, 1997), 116, 134–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. Finsen and Finsen, The Animal Rights Movement in America, 161–71. On the common use of “antis” rhetoric in the abortion rights movement, see Simmonds, Wendy, Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, N.J., 1996), 103–36.Google Scholar

56. Wilson, James Q., On Character, expanded edition (Washington, D.C., 1995), 4, 37.Google Scholar

57. Ault, Spirit and Flesh, 344–46.

58. Wilson, On Character, 19–21, 25–39.

59. Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 329.

60. Glendon, Rights Talk, 1–17.

61. Wilson, On Character, 28.

62. In fact, elsewhere I have argued that liberal passions within the pro-life movement have been understated by social scientists. See Shields, Jon A., “The Politics of Motherhood Revisited,” Contemporary Sociology 41, no. 1 (2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. On the missing dimension of responsibility and sociality in contemporary rights discourse, see Glendon, Rights Talk, 76–144.

64. Smith, Janet Farrell, “Rights-Conflict, Pregnancy, and Abortion,” in Beyond Domination: New Perspectives on Women and Philosophy, ed. Gould, Carol C. (Totowa, N.J., 1983), 270Google Scholar. For a deeper philosophical defense of Smith’s critique of abortion rights, see Thompson, Judith Jarvis, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 1 (1971).Google Scholar

65. Jasper and Nelkin, The Animal Rights Crusade, 67.

66. On the decline of the cultural authority of American Protestantism, see Marsden, George, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2d ed. (New York, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. Heclo, Hugh, “The Sixties’ False Dawn: Awakenings, Movements, and Postmodern Policymaking,” Journal of Policy History 8, no. 1 (1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68. Jo Plant, Rebecca, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America (Chicago, 2010), 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. See, for example, Lerner, One for the Road, 145.

70. Laura Hussey, “The Pro-Life Pregnancy Help Movement,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2012.

71. Lerner, One for the Road, 163–64.