Those Who Forget the Past
Ohio University history professor Kevin Mattson, writing in "The American Prospect," has some excellent advice for modern American liberals: Don't take the '60s as your model. Observe them with a cold eye, don't worship them as the Golden Age. Study the tactics and the evolution of attitudes, but do so to learn what worked than, or what might still work today, and ruthlessly reject the flops.
The trouble is, so much of what makes the '60s appealing to progressives, in a hazy, nostalgic way, were the flops.
Yep. I blame (though he doesn't) the tiresome hippie relics who still dominate the "progressive" factions in so many places. All their hope is of a return to the glory days of '68, and they vampirize the young blood in a bid to reclaim their failed idealism. I remember, when the U.S. attack on Saddam got underway in 2003, a couple of co-workers who fit that description, sitting at a party in my house, decrying the ineffectiveness of the few street protests that broke out in the U.S. They boasted about how much better their generation did it, and yearned to go into some big city and "shut it down." I couldn't help thinking, though I didn't say it, "what good would that do to anyone? Iraqi or American, soldier or civilian."
Like many another recent commentator on the left, Mattson notes that the conservatives spent their wilderness years of the 1960s building a real movement, developing and testing ideas and strategies, and tacking together a durable power base. When you went to a bookstore to find a book about "the Sixties" 20 years ago, you'd find only variations of Todd Gitlin's apotheosis of the Haight-Ashbury. But it's likely now that historians will remember the '60s not as the Age of Aquarius, but, as M. Stanton Evans wrote, “as the era in which conservatism, as a viable political force, finally came into its own.”
He sees an opportunity in the lead balloon of Bush's awkward bid to re-write Social Security. "We shouldn’t defend a program inherited from the New Deal in a rearguard fashion but should reiterate the idea of a shared national purpose based on collective sacrifice." But I'm not sure that the public's antipathy to Bush's plan was based on a sense of values as much as a suspicion about re-wiring something the average person didn't really understand, which seemed to be working pretty well so far. In other words, Bush's plan is faltering on the essential conservatism of the American voters (and the fact that we stink at math and economics).
Mattson does better in suggesting a liberal approach to foreign policy:
That looks like a winning formula. At least, it appeals to me, and if I represent something like the center in modern America, that might count.
The trouble is, so much of what makes the '60s appealing to progressives, in a hazy, nostalgic way, were the flops.
This is the ugly legacy of 1968: the authenticity of conscience pitted against the requirements of a pluralistic and conflicted society, the ethic of expression winning out against all other aims, including practicality. “Direct nonviolent action” no longer means what King believed it meant; it now means remaining pure by turning “Your Back on Bush,” as recent protesters did at the inauguration, even if the result wasn’t anything more than making them feel better. Expressive anti-politics is the last refuge of the powerless. Impulsive, it bursts like a flame and then burns out, to be felt only in the heart of the participant while the ruling class, unperturbed, goes on its merry way.
Yep. I blame (though he doesn't) the tiresome hippie relics who still dominate the "progressive" factions in so many places. All their hope is of a return to the glory days of '68, and they vampirize the young blood in a bid to reclaim their failed idealism. I remember, when the U.S. attack on Saddam got underway in 2003, a couple of co-workers who fit that description, sitting at a party in my house, decrying the ineffectiveness of the few street protests that broke out in the U.S. They boasted about how much better their generation did it, and yearned to go into some big city and "shut it down." I couldn't help thinking, though I didn't say it, "what good would that do to anyone? Iraqi or American, soldier or civilian."
Like many another recent commentator on the left, Mattson notes that the conservatives spent their wilderness years of the 1960s building a real movement, developing and testing ideas and strategies, and tacking together a durable power base. When you went to a bookstore to find a book about "the Sixties" 20 years ago, you'd find only variations of Todd Gitlin's apotheosis of the Haight-Ashbury. But it's likely now that historians will remember the '60s not as the Age of Aquarius, but, as M. Stanton Evans wrote, “as the era in which conservatism, as a viable political force, finally came into its own.”
This is especially true for ideas. Who now reads left-wing books from 1968? Just try Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of It or Woodstock Nation. Or try Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture, a puff piece about the “non-intellective” exploration of “visionary splendor” and “human communion.” Or read the prognostication of “revolution” of “consciousness” in Charles Reich’s The Greening of America. Read even the otherwise smart Susan Sontag, who praises the worst elements of Third World revolutions in Styles of Radical Will (she later stood down from many of those positions). All of these books reflect a utopian hallucination not dissimilar from the style of protests on the streets of Chicago in 1968.
He sees an opportunity in the lead balloon of Bush's awkward bid to re-write Social Security. "We shouldn’t defend a program inherited from the New Deal in a rearguard fashion but should reiterate the idea of a shared national purpose based on collective sacrifice." But I'm not sure that the public's antipathy to Bush's plan was based on a sense of values as much as a suspicion about re-wiring something the average person didn't really understand, which seemed to be working pretty well so far. In other words, Bush's plan is faltering on the essential conservatism of the American voters (and the fact that we stink at math and economics).
Mattson does better in suggesting a liberal approach to foreign policy:
It’s not good enough to protest the Iraq War. ... Today, we need to articulate this liberal foreign policy more forcefully. Its central message should be that American responsibility abroad shouldn’t rely on guns alone or a sense of superior moral virtue. Liberals should argue for nurturing civil society and democratic institutions throughout the world, envisioning an equivalent of the Marshall Plan for the Middle East and elsewhere. Liberals need to emphasize that the war against terrorism is a war of ideas as much as a war of military power and intelligence. ... We need not allow Bush to expropriate the rhetoric of democracy and freedom; we need to reshape these ideas in a more responsible and meaningful manner.
Liberals must also talk about shared sacrifice during wartime. This shouldn’t be about getting the military vote, even if that wouldn’t hurt. The tradition of national greatness expects shared sacrifice from all members of our society. As JFK quipped, “Ask what you can do for your country.” Only liberals will make it clear that the wealthiest elements of society should provide for the common good, so that we have enough to pay veterans’ benefits and provide other services. None of this will come from protest marches against the war, which to date have accomplished little more -- as unfair as this might seem -- than to permit the partisans of the right to raise questions about the left’s patriotism.
That looks like a winning formula. At least, it appeals to me, and if I represent something like the center in modern America, that might count.
Labels: Sixties
