Jules Feiffer's new memoir, Backing Into Forward, contains some surprising and illuminating insight on this mindset, which actually dates back to the 1950s. The white middle class gained a modicum of success and is now terrified that anyone who is not them is going to take it away. They'll do anything to keep it, even if (especially if?) it compromises the values they once espoused. Everyone else is now the "other" and is therefore the enemy -- especially if some liberal is trying to "give" someone something "for nothing" that came out of the "right's" pocket.