Short and sweet, or maybe just short.  A recommendation of a book by the novelist,  Sinclair Lewis--some of you may have heard of him, or even been forced to read a novel or two of his--too bad it took forcing, but there you are.  You probably weren't forced to read It Can't Happen Here. It was published in 1935,  Lewis was a bit passe by then, after all he won the Nobel in 1930--rather the kiss of death to get that kind of cultural certification.
How many have heard of

• The Prodical Parents
• Bethel Merriday
• Gideon Planish
• Cass Timberlane: a Novel of Husbands and Wives
• Kingsblood Royal 
  
• The God-Seeker

much less read them?  (true confessions.  I haven't read any of them).

1935--sixth year of depression or I should perhaps capitalize it thus The Great Depression.  The natives (read Nativists) were getting restless.  Someone had to dooooooooo something.  Why wasn't the President taking charge?
 
Brigadier General Herbert Y. Edgeways, U.S.A. (ret.) speaks to the ladies of the Beulah Rotary:

...for these U-nited States, a-lone among the great powers, have no desire for foreign conquest. Our highest ambition is to be darned well let alone! Our only gen-uine relationship to Europe is in our arduous task of having to try and educate the crass and ignorant masses that Europe has wished onto us up to something like a semblance of American culture and good manners. But, as I explained to you, we must be prepared to defend our shores against all the alien gangs of international racketeers that call themselves 'governments,' and that with such feverish envy are always eyeing our inexhaustible mines, our towering forests, our titanic and luxurious cities, our fair and far-flung fields.

Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, not to be outdone, added these words of wisdom:

"You've been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General--just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns--'fess up! With your great experience, don't you honest, cross-your-heart, think that perhaps--just maybe--when a country has gone money-mad, like all our labor unions and workmen, with their propaganda to hoist income taxes, so that the thrifty and industrious have to pay for the shiftless ne'er-do-weels, then maybe, to save their lazy souls and get some iron into them, a war might be a good thing? Come on, now, tell your real middle name, Mong General!"

And thus it begins.  In the face of this cry from the right (anyone for a tea party), the voices of the left are, well, neutralized?  Is that a good word?

 Women, [Mrs. Gimmitch] pointed out, had done nothing with the vote. If the United States had only listened to her back in 1919 she could have saved them all this trouble. No. Certainly not. No votes. In fact, Woman must resume her place in the Home and: "As that great author and scientist, Mr. Arthur Brisbane, has pointed out, what every woman ought to do is to have six children."

At this second there was a shocking, an appalling interruption.

One Lorinda Pike, widow of a notorious Unitarian preacher, was the manager of a country super-boarding-house that called itself "The Beulah Valley Tavern." She was a deceptively Madonna-like, youngish woman, with calm eyes, smooth chestnut hair parted in the middle, and a soft voice often colored with laughter. But on a public platform her voice became brassy, her eyes filled with embarrassing fury. She was the village scold, the village crank. She was constantly poking into things that were none of her business, and at town meetings she criticized every substantial interest in the whole county: the electric company's rates, the salaries of the schoolteachers, the Ministerial Association's high-minded censorship of books for the public library. Now, at this moment when everything should have been all Service and Sunshine, Mrs. Lorinda Pike cracked the spell by jeering:

"Three cheers for Brisbane! But what if a poor gal can't hook a man? Have her six kids out of wedlock?"

But this is just fiction, isn't it? 


One can't substitute names like Palin for Gimmitch or Beck for Edgeways.  or the Rand Paul for the Reverend Bishop Prang and the "League of Forgotten Men". Can one?  We don't have to worry about the left tearing itself to bits in endless battles for ideological purity while Fox tells the Great American Middle what to think?  Or do we? 

It Can't Happen Here, or Can it?  If you haven't read Lewis, or haven't read him for awhile, there are less evil ways to spend your time.