The Knotheads and the LEFTPAPASANE's in Paradise Estates

Pasadena Sub Rosa ^ | March 28, 2009 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

Excerpt from the book by Scott H. Moore, The Limits of Liberal Democracy, 2009

Walker Percy's 1971 novel Love in the Ruins is set "in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A..." Narrator Dr. Tom More begins with his delightfully disturbing description of life in the Paradise Estates suburb, just before the "end of the world." More tells us that:

[start quote}...the scientists, who are mostly liberal and unbelievers, and the businessmen, who are mostly conservative and Christian, live side by side in Paradise Estates. Though the two make much of their differences -- one speaking of "outworn dogmas and creeds," the other of "atheism and immorality," etcetera, etcerera -- to tell the truth, I do not notice a great deal of difference between the two [end quote].

Here, according to More, "everyone gets along well." It is a "paradise indeed, an oasis of concord in a troubled land. For our beloved old U.S.A. is in a bad way. Americans have turned against each other; race against race, right against left, believer against heathen."

In More's account, the Republicans, who had changed their name to the Christian Conservative Constitutional Party and even printed campaign buttons in support of their new CCCP,** became the "Knothead Party" for the "most knotheaded political bungle of the century -- which the conservatives, in the best tradition, turned to their own advantage, printing a million more buttons reading 'Knotheads for America.'"

The Democrats became the new Left Party and also accepted a nickname, "LEFTPAPASANE," an acronym which stood for what the Left believed in: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, The Pill, Atheism, Pot, Anti-Pollution, Sex, Abortion Now, Euthanasia."

Novelist Percy has his fictional character Dr. More observe: "The center did not hold. However, the Gross National Product continues to rise."

** Союз Советских Социалистических Республик or CCCP = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Blog Note: Walker Percy's prophetic novel was apparently only wrong with one detail: the Gross Domestic Product (as it is now called) presently continues to fall.

[Nateman]

The Republicans should be known as the MILKSOP party: Must Ignore Linking Koran's Support Of Problems.

The RATS of course are the USSR: United States Socialist Representitives.