Dec/Jan 2011  Right from the Start  The roots of the
conservative grievance industry  Kim Phillips-Fein  It would
surely trouble John Boehner to hear it, but Karl Marx's old
aphorism about history happening the first time as tragedy, the
second as farce has rarely applied with as much force as it does
to today's conservative movement. The GOP wave that swept
Boehner into the House speakership in November struck pundits as
a historic departure, but it's actually part of the broader
half-century conservative revolt against the idea of government.
Fifty years ago, when Ronald Reagan was jaunting around the
country giving speeches for General Electric, he denounced
progressive taxation as tantamount to socialism, while the
loyalists of the John Birch Society were sure Dwight D.
Eisenhower was a Communist. Of course, the ultras of the 1950s
were wrong; midcentury liberals were inveterate Red hunters, and
socialism was the furthest thing from their ambitions. But at
least when Reagan was whipping up local chambers