Book Review

Mónica Verea Campos and Silvia Núñez Garcia have edited two collections of essays on the political drift to the right in both the United States and Canada. Americans and Canadians, academics and journalists, wrote the first set (fourteen essays), Mexicans the second (eleven). Given Mexico's location and the fact that Mexico is now a partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is understandable that Mexican intellectuals would want to understand developments in those two countries. At the same time, it is useful for Americans and Canadians to know what impressions they may be making upon Mexicans.	1
Successive articles state the obvious: that there has been a drift to the right since 1980. United States authors describe such phenomena as family values and the impact of the religious right in the United States. Jon P. Alston, a sociologist from Texas A&M University, notes that religious enthusiasm in the United States has been cyclical, with revivals that began around 1730, 1800, 1890, and the 1970s. Despite the constitutional separation of church and state, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, highly telegenic personalities, have mobilized their enthusiastic supporters behind specific Republican candidates. Social justice, for them, is a low priority. Much more important is individual salvation. Good individuals, they believe, will create a better United States—one with little or no divorce, abortion, premarital sex, homosexuality, or pornography, an America without crime, drugs, or alcohol. Although the televangelists and their followers constitute only 15 percent of the American population, their enthusiasm and organization, predicts Alston, will probably give them disproportionate influence for decades to come.	2
Trevor W. Harrison from the University of Alberta, located in Canada's most right-wing province, explains that what is happening in Canada is part of a larger context. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the United States changed course. The Republicans subsequently offered such personalities as Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, and Newt Gingrich. As for the Democrats, Bill Clinton repudiated much that was dear to Franklin D. Roosevelt and therefore sacred.	3
Changes in Canada were of comparable proportions. Brian Mulroney (who served as prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993), says Harrison, called himself a Progressive Conservative (PC), but his values were at variance with those of John Diefenbaker (national PC leader from 1956 to 1967 and prime minister from 1957 to 1963) and Robert Stanfield (national PC leader from 1967 to 1976). Until Mulroney, Canadian Conservatives had a sense of noblesse oblige, a sense of responsibility toward the less fortunate. Mulroney was a proponent of laissez-faire, one who believed in rugged individualism and the marketplace as principal determinants. Despite the PC party's near annihilation in the federal election of 1993, Mulroney's ideals continue to dominate Canadian society. Politicians of all of Canada's political parties are now less willing to vote funds for public programs than they were before 1983. The Alberta-based Reform Party (renamed the Canadian Alliance early in 2000) would americanize Canada through laissez-faire economic policies and the moral values of Jerry Falwell.	. . .