Monday, September 06, 2004

What's new with Al Gore?

The New Yorker has this long article about Al Gore, still an oddity of American history.

One interesting passage was this: "From his reading, online and elsewhere, he has grown more convinced that, in the wake of the Goldwater collapse, in 1964, and the anti-Vietnam War movement, American conservatives were determined to “play a long game” and organize themselves, ideologically, financially, and intellectually, to win national elections and carry out a conservative revolution. Gore is interested in a memorandum written at the request of a committee chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by a Virginia attorney named Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and dated August 23, 1971, just two months before Nixon nominated Powell to the Supreme Court. The Powell memorandum portrays the American economic system as “under broad attack” by well-funded leftists, who dominate the media, academia, and even some corners of the political world. The memo describes a battle for the survival of free enterprise, and calls for less “hesitation” and “a more aggressive attitude” on all fronts."

Well, I never heard of "the Powell manifesto," but I looked and found this wild article about it, and this wild article about it, and the text is here. I expect that if Justice Powell had not been put on the Supreme Court, the Powell manifesto would no doubt have remained in obscurity.

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