The reason Wilson was asked for his opinion on the Thurmond revelations, and the reason why he held such a strong view about Strom?s integrity, was that he was an aide to Thurmond in the 1980s. This is a fascinating example of how, the further we become removed as a nation from the often poisonous, noxious politics of Old Right (which saw little wrong in flirting with southern segregationists or supporting oppressive regimes such as South Africa?s apartheid government), the extent to which certain aspects of the rejected ideology have seeped into our political bloodstream becomes clearer. Wilson?s political roots, like those of many intractable critics of the Obama administration, have been fertilized in the same soil that gave birth to some of the more shameful episodes of U.S. history.
Last January, South Carolina Republican Chairman Katon Dawson came within votes of becoming the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Dawson, aside from having to deal with controversy concerning his past membership in an all-white country club, would publicly speak of how his ideology was formed and is still shaped by bitterness over school integration: ?I remember how blatant it was ... that government just thought they knew better what to do in my school.?
Sarah Palin is perhaps the politician today most emblematic of how the narrative of the Old Right still scars our national discourse. It?s forgotten now amid the cavalcade of ridiculous she?s released on the nation, but in 1992 Palin was an avid supporter of Pat Buchanan, the last great champion of the paleoconservative cause. And on the campaign trail, Palin would spout quotes from Westbrook Pegler, a conservative columnist from the middle of the century who, when he wasn?t waxing poetic about small town folksiness, was penning right-wing opinions so extreme even the John Birch Society wrote him off as a nut. ]