Culture and Values in the 1960s - Hoover Institution

1 TwoCulture andValues inthe 1960sstanley kurtzThe cultural revolution of the 1960s was both a fulfillment anda repudiation of the vision of America s founders. The Civil RightsMovement of the early 1960s extendingthe rights of fullcitizenshipto individuals regardless of race, sex, or creed was a culminatingand long overdue realization of the principle of human freedomand equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Thatstruggle, in turn, served as a prototype for movements of women sliberation, gay rights, protection of the natural environment, andactivities in sympathy with liberation movements in the ThirdWorld. Yet the legacies of these latter movements (and even of thepost- 1960s civil rights movement) are matters of active dispute incontemporary all Americans now agree that the end of legal segre-gation, the achievement of legal equality for women, increasedsocial tolerance for homosexuality, concern for the environment,and heightened respect for non-Western cultures are welcomeachievements of the 1960s .

2 Each of these achievements can legiti- Hoover Press : Berkowitz/VirtueDP0 HBERSV0200 rev1 page29mately be seen as an expression of the spirit of individual freedomand human equality at the heart of the founders it also is arguable (and many have made the argument)that important strands within each of these movements, howeverapparently liberal in form and intent, have gone well beyond thecharter of liberalism as understood by America s founders. Evengranting this, a mystery remains. If the movements that began inthe 1960s have in some significant measure departed from classicliberalism, how are we to understand their inner rationale? Whatconnects the ecology movement, for example, with movementsfor civil rights? And if classic liberalism no longer suffices for manyAmericans, what has prompted them to set it aside?It is difficult, if not impossible, to offer an answer to thesequestions without becoming an active disputant in this nation songoing and unresolved clash over the cultural legacy of the characterization or explanation of the sixties revolution tendseither to credit or to undermine the self-understanding of thecultural revolutionaries themselves.

3 Certainly the explanation andcharacterization of the sixties ethos that I offer here implies con-siderable skepticism about the self-understanding of the bearersof the sixties legacy. I argue that the sixties ethos, and the trans-formation of liberalism it has produced, is best understood as asecular religion, and in many respects an illiberal religion. Thatthe legacy of the 1960s may be in important respects illiberal is aprofoundly troubling fact for those who value the heritage ofAmerica s founders and the achievements of the struggle for civilrights in the there is an element of polemic in this attempt to make senseof the 1960s , therefore, I maintain that it is unavoidable. Perfectneutrality in the human sciences is neither possible nor the topic is the fundamental fissure in the Culture of thepresent, that truth is still more applicable, or at least more , it is important (and liberal) to note that the insightsHoover Press : Berkowitz/VirtueDP0 HBERSV0200 rev1 page3030stanley kurtzoffered here are available to the scrutiny and criticism of thosethey criticize.

4 In fact, it is in no way difficult to imagine partisansof the sixties ethos enthusiastically embracing my point that thelegacy of that era now functions as much as a religion as a politicaltheory. Indeed, as will become evident, insight into the religioussignificance of a transformed liberalism originates with one ofliberalism s great nineteenth-century proponents. Even my pointthat the sixties ethos disguises a deep illiberalism will be unsur-prising, and in some respects unobjectionable, to postmodernistswho have consciouslycriticizedand a perspective different from postmodernism, I shallargue that the liberalism of many children of the 1960s betrayeditself by becoming an illiberal religion. After describing the coresymbolic dynamic of this very modern religion, I shall trace thepolitical and intellectual roots of the quasi-religious ethos of the1960s and offer some thoughts about the sources of this importantcultural As ReligionSometime during the past thirty years, liberalism stopped being amere political perspective for many people and turned into a reli-gion.

5 I do not speak metaphorically. A certain form of liberalismnow functions for substantial numbers of its adherents as a reli-gion: an encompassing world-view that answers the big questionsabout life, dignifies daily exertions with higher significance, andprovides a rationale for meaningful collective wasn tsupposedto be that asolutionto the destructive religious wars of Europe s past and succeededbecause it allowed people of differing religious perspectives to livepeacefully and productively in the same society. Designed to makethe world safe for adherents of differing faiths, liberalism itself wasnever supposed tobea faith. But to a significant extent, that isHoover Press : Berkowitz/VirtueDP0 HBERSV0200 rev1 page3131culture and Values in the 1960swhat liberalism has become. In this new, transformed mode, it isperhaps more accurate to refer to left-liberalism than to liberalismper se, for classical liberalism the liberalism of Locke, Montes-quieu, Madison, and Mill remains an accessible and viable alter-native.

6 Nevertheless, the transformation of liberalism into a defacto religion for many explains the dynamics of something wehave come to call political correctness, that controversial culturalinheritance of the late central mechanism of political correctness is the stigma-tization of perspectives, many of them classically liberal, that runafoulofleft-liberalism acondemnationdisproportionatetowhatmight be expected in matters of mere policy disagreement. How-ever balanced, well-reasoned, or rooted in long-established prin-ciple objections may be to, say, affirmative action, traditional(indeed, classically liberal) viewpoints on these and other issuesare often stigmatized as racist, sexist, and homophobic that is,as bigotry unfit for reasoned debate. This shift to ostracism in placeof intellectual engagement in so many of our cultural debatescannot be explained as a mere conscious tactical maneuver. Thestigmatization of traditional perspectives can only be effectivebecause so many are primed to respond to it in the first , then, have so many classic objections to left-liberal per-spectives been demonized?

7 Possibly because liberalism has becomea religion in need of demons. Traditional liberalism emphasizedthe ground rules for reasoned debate and the peaceful adjudicationof political differences. One of the main reasons that politics in aliberal society could be peaceful was that people sought directionabout life s ultimate purpose outside of politics itself. But oncetraditional religion ceased to provide many moderns with eitheran ultimate life-purpose or a pattern of virtue, liberalism itself wasthe only belief system remaining that could supply these essentialelements of , then, does liberalism (transformed into post- 1960s left- Hoover Press : Berkowitz/VirtueDP0 HBERSV0200 rev1 page3232stanley kurtzliberalism) grant meaning to life? How does it do what religionused to do? So long as it serves as a mere set of ground rules foradjudicating day-to-day political differences, liberalism remainstoo boring to serve as a what if liberalswere engagedat every moment in a dire, almost revolutionary, struggle for thevery principles of liberalism itself?

8 What if liberals were at war ona daily basis with King George III? with Hitler? with Bull Connor?Thatwould supply a purpose to life a purpose capable of endow-ing even our daily exertionswith a larger significance,and certainlya purpose that would provide a rationale for meaningful two important features of contemporary left-liber-alism: the continual expansion in meaning of terms likeracism,sexism, andhomophobiaand the tendency to invent or exaggerateinstances of oppression. Whereasracismonce meant the hatred ofsomeone of another race, the term is now freely applied to anyonewho opposes affirmative action, or even to anyone who opposesreparations for slavery. Again, this stigmatization of what wereonce mainstream liberal positions makes a certain amount of tac-tical sense, but the tactics don t really explain the young students who now live in ethnic/ cultural themehouses or who join (or ally themselves with) ethnic/ cultural cam-pus political organizations are looking for a home, in the deepestsense of that word.

9 In an earlier time, the always difficult andisolatingtransitionfromhome to collegewas easedby membershipin a fraternityor by ,ethnic/culturaltheme houses, political action, and related course work supplywhat religion and fraternities once if the ethnic/ cultural venture is truly to take the place ofreligion, it must invite a student to insert himself into a battle ofprofound significance. The fight for slave reparations and theunceasing effort to ferret out examples of subtle racism in contem-porary society are techniques for sustaining a crusading spirit byHoover Press : Berkowitz/VirtueDP0 HBERSV0200 rev1 page3333culture and Values in the 1960screating the feeling that Simon Legree is lurking just around thecorner. Opponents of affirmative action or slave reparations sim-ply must be imagined as monsters. Otherwise the religious flavorof the multiculturalist enterprise falls flat, and the war of goodagainst evil is convertedinto difficultbalancingof competingpolit-ical principles and goods in which no one is a saint or a the tendency of contemporary cultural movementsto invent oppression as, for example, in ongoing (yet long sincedebunked) feminist statistical claims about campus rape, eco-nomic discrimination, and the alleged educational crisis of ado-lescent questionable statistics are not incidental, butare critical to the feminist cause.

10 So many of the young womenwho affiliate themselves with campus women s centers are lookingfor a world-view, a moral-social home, and a meaningful crusadein which to take part. That is why the horrifying (if often false)statistics of female oppression purveyed by these centers conjureup and are meant to conjure up images of slavery and Friedan sThe Feminine Mystiquewas a powerful bookbecause it characterized the suburban home as a comfortableconcentration camp for s repeated use of Holo-caust metaphors for the alleged oppression of women is of a piecewith the contemporary feminist practice of making exaggerated orfalse statistical claims. The Holocaust imagery and the frighteningstatistics are meant to endow the feminist crusade with an almostapocalyptic sense of urgency and significance. Statistical accuracy1. For critiques of these claims, see Diana Furchtgott-Roth and ChristineStolba,The Feminist Dilemma(Washington: The AEI Press, 2001); ChristinaHoff Sommers,Who Stole Feminism?