the gratification of certain human appetites (the desire tonhave unhmited sexual fun without any of the responsibihtiesnnature has imposed). Bernhard Goetz, whatever hisnlawyers may tell us, was probably less mohvated by fear fornhis wallet or dread of the pain of being beaten up again thannby a desire to reassert his own dignity by standing up fornhimself Certainly the anecdotes told about his efforts tonrescue other victims of crime on earlier occasions reinforcenthe belief that he was not acting purely out of self-interest,nand that is undoubtedly one reason why so many Americansnexpress admiration for him. Nor is the Silent Brotherhoodnconcerned about balancing the budget, human rights innAfghanistan, or the other abstractions that seem to titillatenmainstream conservatives these days. In the home of one ofnthe alleged members of this group, the FBI discovered anmanifesto entitied a “Declaration of War”:nBy the millions, those not of our blood violate ournborders and mock our claim to sovereignty.n. . . Our heroes and our culture have been insultednand degraded. The mongrel hordes clamor to severnus from our inheritance. . . . All about us the landnis dying. Our cities swarm with dusky hordes. Thenwater is rancid and the air is rank. Our farms arenbeing seized by usurious leeches and our people arenbeing forced off the land. . . . They close thenfactories, the mills, the mines, and ship our jobsnoerseas. Yet the people do not awaken.nAlthough there is some economics (and no small amountnof bigotry) in this declaration, its central message—“wenhave become a people dispossessed”—has nothing to donwith OSHA regulations and bloated bureaucracies. It isnhard to unravel fully the tangled passions that go into such anmanifesto. But it may be assumed -that here—in frenziedncaricature—-are some of the frustrations felt by middlenAmericans when their cherished symbols are threatened.nSan Antonio, for instance, used to be known as the “AlamonCity,” after the famous monastery nearby where Americannvolunteers faced death from the bayonets of Mexicanninvaders. Present day Mexican invaders, armed with ballots,nfound the appellation degrading, and so the Texasnmetropolis is now known as the “River City.” Similarly, inn1979 Atlanta, under the pressure of local Black politicians,nchanged the name of its “Forrest Avenue,” named after onenof America’s greatest warriors. Confederate General NathannBedford Forrest, to “Ralph McGill Boulevard,” after one ofnAmerica’s most swinish verbalists.nAnd every time a local government sets up a mangernscene at Christmas or makes some other small publicnaffirmation of the Christian identity and heritage of America,nit is besieged by the ACLU to take it down. It is nownalmost impossible to have prayers on public occasionsnunless there are at least three clergymen of different faiths tonmake clear that we are not really a Christian nation butnmerely a conglomerate engaged in public relations.nAll of these phenomefia are instances of what thenmanifesto of the Silent Brotherhood prefers to call “dispossession,”nthe chipping and stripping away at the traditionalnidentity of America by militant minorities and specialninterests aided by spineless and hypocritical elements of then28/CHRONICLES OF CULTUREnnnmajority. What the homicidal crackpots of the SilentnBrotherhood have perceived, and what is utterly lost onnsome pundits, fund-raisers, and politicians who claim tonspeak for the mainstream right, is that, denuded of itsnhistoric, national, and religious idenhty, a people dies andnbecomes a populahon, a demographic and economic statisticnwhose character and identity are then defined in terms ofnexit polls and consumption patterns; that unless the realnidentity of a nation is conserved, the issues of budgets,nbombs, and bureaucrats are irrelevant to its survival.nWhat may be evolving in the subway cars of New Yorknand the basement laboratories of bomb-happy pro-lifers is annativist and largely underground right-wing movementnmotivated by something other than getting and spending.nTo be sure, what became known as the “New Right” in thenlate 1970’s was also moved by nonmaterial goals, but by thenend of 1984 it was surely clear that parts of the Republicannestablishment. Northeastern academic neoconservatives,nand Mr. Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet had co-opted the NewnRight and channeled its energies into support for thenestablishment framework of politics and policymaking. Thenconventional explanation was that economic issues tooknprecedence over social issues. By opting for political violence,nthe new militants have ensured that they will nevernenter that framework. They or their successors may engagenin politics, but it is likely to be a politics far more bitter,nconfrontational, and even violent than anything yet contemplatednby any of us on the mainstream right, old or new.nNor is the establishment capable of absorbing the militancynof the far right. The political framework of thenestablishment is essentially bourgeois in its design andnfunctioning; it is able to assimilate and gratify privatenaspirations for material gain, whether of the left or the right,nas long as left and right are based on constituencies withnsuch aspirations. The bourgeois framework cannot absorbnor respond to political forces that lack economic ambitions,nare willing to kill people merely in defense of a national ornreligious or cultural identity, and reject and contradict thenvery nature of the bourgeois order. Irving Kristol has writtennthat bourgeois society “roots itself in the most worldly andncommon of human motivations: self-interest,” that it is “thenmost prosaic of all possible societies” and has littie use fornthe heroic, the transcendent, and the romantic-utopian;nand Kristol is correct that mainstream conservative politicsnin America is characteristically bourgeois.nThe new militants, unlike the mainstream right, rejectnthe old bourgeois order and, unlike the militants of the left,nequally reject what is superseding the bourgeois system, thenmanagerial regime of salaried technocrats and bureaucratsnwho promote a humanist and cosmopolitan myth. Althoughnthe militants of the right are themselves from thenlower or middle income strata, they lack the economic andnsocial autonomy that characterizes bourgeois businessmennand farmers, and one source of their frustration is that theynare economically and socially dependent on the anonymousnand impervious managerial system. Conservative rebelsnagainst the managerial establishment have generally soughtna base in the bourgeois remnants of American society andnhave often succeeded in modifying or slowing down thenliberal-managerial agenda. It has been possible to do so bynappealing to bourgeois self-interest and common sense, butn