The basic argument of Jihad vs McWorld is very informative regarding the radical shift to the Right of many conservatives and much of the GOP. In it, Benjamin Barber basically argues that the challenges to tribalism posed by modernization cause the radicalization of traditional sentiments and a backlash against the modern world.
We see this process at work in the US, where modernization has forced societal shifts that challenge America's traditional myths of individuality and self-responsibility. Consider, for example, how globalization and technological change produced an army of people who no longer had access to good health insurance. By most accounts, the solution required intervention at the government level, a fact which obviously challenged and threatened, and apparently radicalized, those on the Right.
Of course there are more obvious manifestations of McWorld, including the browning of American society and the fact that our President is of international, inter-racial, and multi-religious origin. Barber's theory suggests the threat Obama symbolizes to the end of the the white, Christian, "American" way radicalized many members of that particular population. Of course outright racism played a key role for some people. But racism is not a necessary component to the theory. In fact, its resurgence--to the extent it did become more blatant in politics in certain parts of the country--is more of an output than an input in Barber's theory.
