My Side of the Sixties.
John Andrew's The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics is part of an academic series called Perspectives on the Sixties, and that series and this book might be unusual in that it's not part of the usual Celebration of the Counterculture that one often sees among academic writers, particularly those holding so-called progressive views, nor is it easily classified as Internal Conservative Contemplation, another line of writing that has featured in these book reviews.
Indeed, the easiest way to introduce Book Review No. 5 for 2023 is that I didn't engage much with this book at all, judging by the lack of marginal notes or page references in the flyleaf. Perhaps a 1997 book that I finally got around to reading in the past few years didn't have much effect, not with Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan giving way to Donald Trump, or John Kennedy (who used the taxman to investigate his political adversaries) giving way to Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama. Or, perhaps, because the story covered the years from the Eisenhower regency to the defeat of Barry Goldwater, it's stuff that I at best remembered dimly.
Let's commend Professor Andrew for attempting to take that "other side" emphasis seriously. Consider how Other Side opens.The 1960s have become an almost mythic decade, attracting the attention of historians, politicians, and sociologists. Some have come to document, some to celebrate, and others to condemn. But most chroniclers of the sixties, regardless of their politics, share two characteristics: they focus on the latter years of the decade and they emphasize the importance of movements and causes on the Left to the exclusion of almost everything else. This study is an effort to shift that focus, to examine the first half of the sixties and to emphasize developments on the Right, developments that outlasted the decade.
Although the sixties ended almost three decades ago, they remain an integral part of American politics and culture. The struggle to define the sixties has become a contest not only to write the "proper" history of that decade, but to control the public's memory of it. Publication of memoirs by various sixties activists have helped a Left perspective endure, but the most active propagators of sixties "leftism" have been conservatives, from Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich. They have repeatedly used the decade as a whipping post for liberals and liberal programs, blaming everything they do no tlike about about contemporary American society and culture on what they charge were radical changes promulgated in the sixties. Teenage pregnancies, welfare costs, government social programs, urban disorder, educational problems, declining high school test scores -- the list is virtually endless. They attempt to trace the roots o almost all current problems to the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson or to the social movements of the sixties.
Let the record show, before I continue, that no contemporary conservative is hailing the salutary effect of puberty blockers on teenage pregnancies. The book, however, dates to 1997 and the story begins during the Eisenhower presidency, during which, recall, the Republican pledge was to continue the New Deal, only more prudently. We see where that leads: fewer "racist roads" pushed through city centers; Social Security running out of money in ninety years rather than eighty; possibly some work requirements accompanying public assistance; and the caution about undue influence from the rent-seekers of the military-industrial complex respected, but not the concurrent cautions about the rent-seekers of the technocratic-academic complex. Put another way, what we now understand as Republicans in Name Only began during the Eisenhower presidency, and "Young Americans for Freedom emerged to offer an ideological and structural critique of the reigning liberalism. They sought to reject, not reform, the consensus liberalism." (Other Side: 5). That consensus liberalism too often pandered to angry voices on the left only helped the cause. "Bleak as the future looked in 1964, events during the next four years not only eroded the liberal consensus, but triggered a backlash that turned the country increasingly conservative. Little more than a decade later conservatism had apparently moved to the center of American political life." (Other Side: 205.) It's not a backlash, it's restoring a state of good repair, and that becomes necessary whenever the crazies, whether they be do-your-own-thing anarchists, or race hustlers, or the sexual underground, mau-mau the consensus liberalism into untenable positions. Nothing changes: there are populist conservatives and corporatist conservatives: they mostly argue with but vote for Republicans; there are technocratic liberals and communists: they argue among themselves but vote for Democrats.
Why, then, do I refer to "my side" of the Sixties, when most of the main events took place while I was in elementary school? In the closing years of that decade, I was in high school, and the counterculture types were common, although whether that was the faddishness of the day, or attempting to give respectability to what we would otherwise understand as delinquency and burnout behavior, or a political statement, recognizing that it was kids from neighborhoods like mine who were most likely to be called to Vietnam, or who were being tracked into industrial jobs that at the time looked solid: but ten years later, once the developing countries figured Fordism out, many of those kids were last hired and first let go. For the most part, the counterculture as I experienced it in high school had nothing to do with politics. I can't help but wonder, though, if the Adults in Authority had pushed back harder against long hair in the middle 1960s, whether youngsters seeking to push the boundaries today might not be as prone to eating disorders or claims of gender confusion.
The quest to maintain or to restore a state of good repair in our civilization and its institutions never ends.
Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.
Indeed, the easiest way to introduce Book Review No. 5 for 2023 is that I didn't engage much with this book at all, judging by the lack of marginal notes or page references in the flyleaf. Perhaps a 1997 book that I finally got around to reading in the past few years didn't have much effect, not with Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan giving way to Donald Trump, or John Kennedy (who used the taxman to investigate his political adversaries) giving way to Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama. Or, perhaps, because the story covered the years from the Eisenhower regency to the defeat of Barry Goldwater, it's stuff that I at best remembered dimly.
Let's commend Professor Andrew for attempting to take that "other side" emphasis seriously. Consider how Other Side opens.The 1960s have become an almost mythic decade, attracting the attention of historians, politicians, and sociologists. Some have come to document, some to celebrate, and others to condemn. But most chroniclers of the sixties, regardless of their politics, share two characteristics: they focus on the latter years of the decade and they emphasize the importance of movements and causes on the Left to the exclusion of almost everything else. This study is an effort to shift that focus, to examine the first half of the sixties and to emphasize developments on the Right, developments that outlasted the decade.
Although the sixties ended almost three decades ago, they remain an integral part of American politics and culture. The struggle to define the sixties has become a contest not only to write the "proper" history of that decade, but to control the public's memory of it. Publication of memoirs by various sixties activists have helped a Left perspective endure, but the most active propagators of sixties "leftism" have been conservatives, from Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich. They have repeatedly used the decade as a whipping post for liberals and liberal programs, blaming everything they do no tlike about about contemporary American society and culture on what they charge were radical changes promulgated in the sixties. Teenage pregnancies, welfare costs, government social programs, urban disorder, educational problems, declining high school test scores -- the list is virtually endless. They attempt to trace the roots o almost all current problems to the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson or to the social movements of the sixties.
Let the record show, before I continue, that no contemporary conservative is hailing the salutary effect of puberty blockers on teenage pregnancies. The book, however, dates to 1997 and the story begins during the Eisenhower presidency, during which, recall, the Republican pledge was to continue the New Deal, only more prudently. We see where that leads: fewer "racist roads" pushed through city centers; Social Security running out of money in ninety years rather than eighty; possibly some work requirements accompanying public assistance; and the caution about undue influence from the rent-seekers of the military-industrial complex respected, but not the concurrent cautions about the rent-seekers of the technocratic-academic complex. Put another way, what we now understand as Republicans in Name Only began during the Eisenhower presidency, and "Young Americans for Freedom emerged to offer an ideological and structural critique of the reigning liberalism. They sought to reject, not reform, the consensus liberalism." (Other Side: 5). That consensus liberalism too often pandered to angry voices on the left only helped the cause. "Bleak as the future looked in 1964, events during the next four years not only eroded the liberal consensus, but triggered a backlash that turned the country increasingly conservative. Little more than a decade later conservatism had apparently moved to the center of American political life." (Other Side: 205.) It's not a backlash, it's restoring a state of good repair, and that becomes necessary whenever the crazies, whether they be do-your-own-thing anarchists, or race hustlers, or the sexual underground, mau-mau the consensus liberalism into untenable positions. Nothing changes: there are populist conservatives and corporatist conservatives: they mostly argue with but vote for Republicans; there are technocratic liberals and communists: they argue among themselves but vote for Democrats.
Why, then, do I refer to "my side" of the Sixties, when most of the main events took place while I was in elementary school? In the closing years of that decade, I was in high school, and the counterculture types were common, although whether that was the faddishness of the day, or attempting to give respectability to what we would otherwise understand as delinquency and burnout behavior, or a political statement, recognizing that it was kids from neighborhoods like mine who were most likely to be called to Vietnam, or who were being tracked into industrial jobs that at the time looked solid: but ten years later, once the developing countries figured Fordism out, many of those kids were last hired and first let go. For the most part, the counterculture as I experienced it in high school had nothing to do with politics. I can't help but wonder, though, if the Adults in Authority had pushed back harder against long hair in the middle 1960s, whether youngsters seeking to push the boundaries today might not be as prone to eating disorders or claims of gender confusion.
The quest to maintain or to restore a state of good repair in our civilization and its institutions never ends.
Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.