Revolution in America
Attack on Liberalism
"In everything that exists, there is at work an imaginative force, which is determined by ideals" (Hayden). The 1960's and 1970's were a time when ideals and imagination, became synonymous with war and revolution. College students, African Americans, women, homosexuals, and a variety of other special interest groups, demanded from the American Government freedom from oppression. They claimed that America needed a political overhaul that threw out the elitist and the traditional ideas of what a government should be. Opposed to these special interest groups and antiauthoritarian revolutionaries was an organization who stood by the traditional values and morals in remembrance to the days of Eisenhower. This group claimed that America was in a directionless moral recession. To the left were a band of organized revolutionaries and to the right were a group of old democrats disillusioned with the current liberal government. This domestic war pitted these two sides directly and indirectly against each other for two decades. Each major issue repeatedly came back to the same controversy: who is right? Which ideology will lead America in a direction that represents all economic and social classes? A reform of political policies seemed inevitable, but in the minds of these groups, only the extreme changes petitioned could salvage America.
The New Left was instituted in the late 1950's by a group called SDS, Students for Democratic Societies. Robert Alan Harbor created this organization during his time as a student at the University of Michigan. The center of SDS's ideologies and political beliefs centered around "participatory democracy." The purpose of participatory democracy was to institute change in America by involving individuals to participate in political decisions and policies. This would allow America to be run by the individual and not through elected officials that skewed the issues that concerned the average American. James Miller, author of Democracy in the Streets, pointed out that the SDS wished to move "from legal action to direct action, from bureaucratic to an individual process"(qtd. in Hayden). In order to accomplish this goal, the students formed a manifesto that would be the basis of all suggested reform. This manifesto, The Port Huron Statement, contained a claim that promoted the discovery of the human potential and a close-knit community that focused on the participation of the individual in politics and social change. The ideological reforms in politics that the Port Huron Statement claimed were debated around and nonviolent protests centered around issues such as: the arms race, civil liberties, racism, and poverty. As SDS created this institute, tensions rose by the increase of civil rights riots and the dramatic increase of counter cultural ideas focused on the expansion of mind and body through drugs and sexual activities. In response to the loss of tradition and values that America once represented another organization formed.
Neoconservatives (or neo-cons) were a group of intellectuals that shared the skepticism of our current government with the New Left. The neo-cons originally rebelled against the term neoconservative because it misinformed the public of the character the organization represented, but once the name stuck the neo-cons took it as their own. A democratic socialist, Michael Harrington, invented the group and his intent was to make clear that this was a group of newly ex-liberals turned conservative and not an organization of radical conservatives. Greatly made up of Jewish immigrants that managed to earn an education through the American university systems, the neo-cons were privileged with a point of view that both linked them to the working class and an intelligent outlook that brought issues of the average American to the forefront. Neo-cons believed that what was lacking in liberalism was a government founded on moral higher ground. Their ideologies were thought of as "mugged by reality" (Gerson 73). Neo-cons were hardline anticommunists that feared mass society and mass politics. They believed in acknowledging the diversity of our country, but that our elected officials should exude a moral code as an example to society. The purpose of this thought, stated by an original neo-con Irving Kristol, is because "human nature cries out for something more than freedom ... this something is moral direction" (qtd. in Havers 2). Another key element of neoconservative policy was a realignment of what the American citizen saw as important. Citizens needed to exercise self-disciple, restraint and moral reflection in their daily activities. This would allow a reevaluation of the current sense drawn tendencies of America. Focus of the American culture was intertwined in each issue the neo-cons addressed and the trend American culture was taking fueled the support of a neoconservative outlook.
Comparing the values of these two groups reveals how they are in pure opposition. The New Left valued personal liberties, equality, and the citizens's right to have a direct effect on the government. Neo-cons placed the value of morals, culture, beliefs and the citizen's duty to "self-restraint, self-sacrifice and statesmanship" (Kesler 4) to the forefront. These values and a realist view of the natural condition of humans as imperfect, contrasting to the New Left's utopian beliefs, shaped the neo-con's need to realign America into a "proper" democratic society.
Both groups have opposing outlooks of the American condition, but both stances sought reform from the same system. Both sought to attack liberalism. The New Left attacked the paternalistic and authoritarian liberal state and the Neoconservatives rebelled on liberalism's right. History contexualizes the evolution of these two arguments and through the years of this controversy the neoconservative theories outlasted and effectively ended the prospect of participatory democracy with a strategy that built credibility to themselves and their movement.
Evolution of Ideologies
While these two stances argued between the issue of who was ideologically right, the validity and persuasiveness of these theories can only be analyzed by contextualizing the commentaries and conclusions that history made when these two groups put their theories into practice. The beginning of discontent started with Soviet expansion in the late 1940's. Harrington and his colleagues (neo-cons) saw the issue of communism and rise of The Soviet Empire as a direct threat to America and they had an unwavering anticommunist philosophy. That was a primary opposition of viewpoints between the New Left and neo-cons in the late 50's. Both groups agreed that severe anticommunist policies formed post WWII America, but the conclusions drawn went in opposite directions. The New Left did not support nor directly oppose communism. Although many of the early supporters of this following were procommunist, the New Left explored every possibility that would promote a revolution in the current thinking of how a government should be run. They saw the sectarianism of the procommunist and anticommunist thought as a form of McCarthyism. This rejection of dogmas and limitations of thought seemed as revolutionary as the society they planned to create.
Because of these philosophies, neo-cons began to be skeptical and wary of the New Left for their nonrestrictive morals and tendency to attract traditionally taboo forms of thought into their movement. Neo-cons saw the New Left's views as dangerous and childish, but since there were no intelligent "conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation," (quoted by the conservative Lionel Trilling) this lead neo-cons to conclude that if the New Left's lack of moral philosophies were left uncensored America would succumb to chaos. (qtd. in Dionne 56)
The New Left's ideologies became more legitimate in the early 60's with SDS's Port Huron Statement. This manifesto depicted in-depth the claims of policies that were needed in order for the government to reform to SDS's participatory democracy. The validity and support that the New Left sought for these claims were drawn from the cultural need to reform in this time period. SDS connected the beginning of race riots, liberalization of sexual and drug activities and an overall breakdown of tradition not only as support but a guarantee that an audience was willing to accept their beliefs. Neoconservatives responded by founding the first neoconservative journal, The Public Interest. The journal chronicled the obstacles that the New Left was creating for a professional reform of our political system. The intellectual revolt that neo-cons pursued involved degrading the New Left's undermining of authority by seeking the destroy the liberal system and suggesting conservative reforms on the liberal system. As the sixties progressed, these argument continued to evolve.
The signing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965 sent shock waves of response from the American people. And in 1966 Stokely Camichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, started a revolution inside the civil rights revolution with two words: "Black Power!" (qtd. in Dionne 83) The Black Panthers were born. This set a growing trend in the New Left. Frustrated with the lack of progress in Black Rights and Vietnam lead the New Left to become increasing "action oriented" in their pursuit of participatory democracy. The irritation also appeared by the increasing number of special interest groups joining the revolution against the government. Numerous other movements began to fall under the umbrella of the New Left. Some of these organizations such as The Black Panthers, women's rights activists, and the spawn of the SDS, The Weatherman Underground, did not serve a legitimate or structured philosophy. This lead to little control and legitimacy of these civil revolutions by the further broadening of organizations that were classified as: the New Left.
1968 was a year that brought monumental change in America. It was the height of the tet-offensive in Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy were both assassinated, students seized universities in rebellion and President Johnson withdrew his reelection campaign so as to focus all of his efforts on Vietnam without concern of politics. SDS began to tear itself apart with internal strife and the intellectual based protests and claims of reform started to turn hostile. Rising out of the wreckage of SDS, The Weatherman Organization took the reins and foundation of the movement: "Bring the War Home!" (The Weather) This movement was motivated to bring the violence of Vietnam to America in expression with the dissatisfaction of the lack of progress in converting the government. The Weather Underground organized violent protests in the late sixties and by 1970 the group had started bombing government buildings. In 1969 the New Left consisted of The Black Panthers, The Weather Underground, and numerous other organizations that cried out for change yet lack a concrete plan of action. In the early 70's, The loss of the SDS to its pugnacious counterpart, the Weatherman Underground, left revolutionaries isolated from mainstream America. This gave the neoconservatives a feeling of winning the ideological battle thus expanding their influence.
The support that some democrats held in the protests of Vietnam, the race riots, and the counterculture's turn on traditional values, all forced neo-cons to dispose of their left-wing allegiances. Looking to the right, neoconservatives viewed the republican party as reactive, unintelligent, and isolationist, but they saw the potential to pass on their ideologies and potentially save the traditional views that would once again bring America back to unity. Throughout the 70's, they evolved as a group that whispered ideologies and conversion to Republican Party until the 1990's.
The history of these rival arguments reveals each of the persuasive or objectionable elements. The SDS consisted of mostly upper-middle class students of substantial universities. The amount of intelligent reflection and advocacy received from their movement from other college students enabled SDS to rise as a significant movement with a seemly valid argument. Their claims of policy needed credibility from every class of society in order to facilitate the change they desired, but this credibility proved impossible as the New Left evolved. The claim that SDS had made did not continue throughout the life of the movement because they lacked proper evaluation of their entire audience. In comparison, neo-cons knew that their word needed to hold weight in order for their policies to be heard (Rottenberg, Winchell 469).
Neoconservatives did not want to abolish and rebuild our system. The establishment that the New Left fought against was the establishment that the neo-cons fought to safeguard. This group of intellectuals were disillusioned by the state that America and its two party system was in, parallel to the New Left, but instead of revolt the neo-cons instill institutions that would aid in spreading their ideologies. Building conservative research institutes, law centers and journals all legitimized their "conservative war." The neo-cons did not try and influence the American public with declarations of revolutionary ideas, but they established themselves in the system as a credible source of knowledge. The audience of these two organizations were the same, but the difference was that neo-cons established credibility by gaining a positive reputation.
As the 60's progressed, the reputation that both sides retained reflected the support that each gave to the American populace. The emotionally charged language and appeals to the need of revolution seem to gain importance with the New Left in each subsequent year of the 60's. Over time this degraded the claims of policy that the SDS made in their Port Huron Statement. The years proceeded with less organized thought while more fallacies invaded their uprising. The late 60's brought on more radical and revolutionary protesters, but the credibility of the New Left was seriously diminished in the eyes of the average American. The ties to credibility and the support that the New Left exploited in order to further their militant actions inevitability lead to the end of the movement shortly after Vietnam ended.
Neoconservatives preyed on the downfall of the New Left and their claims that America needed a cultural and moral overhaul were constantly supported with each violent action of the New Left. Although this was the Neoconservatives's use of emotional appeals to the public's need of a stable and secure country, their support consisted of a more professional reform and they sought allegiances in the government to execute that reform. Once their credibility had been raised by the support of the institutions and seemly "expert opinions," the neo-cons used the statistics, the facts and the opinions of other in prestigious offices to raise themselves to a position of great influence in the Republican Party (Rottenberg, Winchell 165).
History may have seemed to document the fall of the New Left and the rise of Neoconservatives from the late 50's to the mid 70's, but their longevity of does not equate them as "winners" of this ideological debate. The late 60's and early 70's saw sympathetic response of our two-party system to each warrant of the controversy. While the New Left's ideologies died as a mass movement, the ideas of helping disenfranchised and special interest groups were adopted by the democratic party. The new laws that barred prayer from school, legalized the sale of contraceptives, promoted school busing and introduced more interest groups at the political table all stemmed from the New Left's warrant (Dionne 46). The warrant (or major assumption) that the New Left carried through the course of its life was the assumption that the majority of Americans needed and were ready for a government directed by the people which was "rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, and creativity" (Miller 333). Although that warrant was not shared with the average American, and that may have been the New Left's downfall, Democrats recognized that warrant and instituted change based on America's disdain for the current system.
After seeing WWII, Korea and now Vietnam, the neo-cons did not believe that human nature was innately good and just, but that morals needed to be ingested, injected and ingrained into the government as well as its people. This jaded perspective lead to the neoconservative warrant of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Their warrant assumed that the breakdown of traditional America was a result of the New Left. It is a grave fallacy to assume the breakdown of morals in America was the cause of a small percentage of college students. The cultural and social circumstances of the world were in upheaval and to place that weight of change onto this group is deceitful (Rottenberg, Winchell 286).
In the end both groups would have benefit in learning what each other preached. The New Left withered away without knowing how to properly address the State and the American people to its crusade. The agressive nature of the revolution meant no more to the American people than terrorist acts being committed by radical gang. The neo-cons were right on insisting that the government and its citizens agree on exerting self-discipline and establishing a moral code by which to follow, but they could have listened to the participatory themes that SDS built itself on. The neoconservative were influential enough to establish longevity, but the morals and values that pitted these two sides against each other still plague the political system today. There is no agreed upon right or wrong and no ideology that is held between each American. That lack of cohesive quality guarantees that Americans continue to exercise their freedoms, but we as a society will continue to run in moral circles until there is no gray matter between right and wrong.
Works Cited
Dionne, E.J. Jr. Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
Gerson, Mark. The Neoconservative Vision: From the Cold War to the Culture Wars. London: Madison Books, 1996
Havers, Grant Dr. "Is U.S. Neoconservatism Dead?"Louisiana Stat University. 1 June. 2008
Hayden, Thomas. "Sit-In Struggle Demands Respect." The Michigan Daily
Kesler, R. Charles. "Iraq and Neoconservatives." The Claremont Institute. 5 July. 2007. 2 June. 2008
Miller, James. Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Rottenberg, T. Annette & Winchell, H. Donna. The Structure of Argument. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2006.
The Weather Underground. Dir. Sam Green & Bill Siegel. Narr. Lili Taylor. The Free History Project, 2003
Attack on Liberalism
"In everything that exists, there is at work an imaginative force, which is determined by ideals" (Hayden). The 1960's and 1970's were a time when ideals and imagination, became synonymous with war and revolution. College students, African Americans, women, homosexuals, and a variety of other special interest groups, demanded from the American Government freedom from oppression. They claimed that America needed a political overhaul that threw out the elitist and the traditional ideas of what a government should be. Opposed to these special interest groups and antiauthoritarian revolutionaries was an organization who stood by the traditional values and morals in remembrance to the days of Eisenhower. This group claimed that America was in a directionless moral recession. To the left were a band of organized revolutionaries and to the right were a group of old democrats disillusioned with the current liberal government. This domestic war pitted these two sides directly and indirectly against each other for two decades. Each major issue repeatedly came back to the same controversy: who is right? Which ideology will lead America in a direction that represents all economic and social classes? A reform of political policies seemed inevitable, but in the minds of these groups, only the extreme changes petitioned could salvage America.
The New Left was instituted in the late 1950's by a group called SDS, Students for Democratic Societies. Robert Alan Harbor created this organization during his time as a student at the University of Michigan. The center of SDS's ideologies and political beliefs centered around "participatory democracy." The purpose of participatory democracy was to institute change in America by involving individuals to participate in political decisions and policies. This would allow America to be run by the individual and not through elected officials that skewed the issues that concerned the average American. James Miller, author of Democracy in the Streets, pointed out that the SDS wished to move "from legal action to direct action, from bureaucratic to an individual process"(qtd. in Hayden). In order to accomplish this goal, the students formed a manifesto that would be the basis of all suggested reform. This manifesto, The Port Huron Statement, contained a claim that promoted the discovery of the human potential and a close-knit community that focused on the participation of the individual in politics and social change. The ideological reforms in politics that the Port Huron Statement claimed were debated around and nonviolent protests centered around issues such as: the arms race, civil liberties, racism, and poverty. As SDS created this institute, tensions rose by the increase of civil rights riots and the dramatic increase of counter cultural ideas focused on the expansion of mind and body through drugs and sexual activities. In response to the loss of tradition and values that America once represented another organization formed.
Neoconservatives (or neo-cons) were a group of intellectuals that shared the skepticism of our current government with the New Left. The neo-cons originally rebelled against the term neoconservative because it misinformed the public of the character the organization represented, but once the name stuck the neo-cons took it as their own. A democratic socialist, Michael Harrington, invented the group and his intent was to make clear that this was a group of newly ex-liberals turned conservative and not an organization of radical conservatives. Greatly made up of Jewish immigrants that managed to earn an education through the American university systems, the neo-cons were privileged with a point of view that both linked them to the working class and an intelligent outlook that brought issues of the average American to the forefront. Neo-cons believed that what was lacking in liberalism was a government founded on moral higher ground. Their ideologies were thought of as "mugged by reality" (Gerson 73). Neo-cons were hardline anticommunists that feared mass society and mass politics. They believed in acknowledging the diversity of our country, but that our elected officials should exude a moral code as an example to society. The purpose of this thought, stated by an original neo-con Irving Kristol, is because "human nature cries out for something more than freedom ... this something is moral direction" (qtd. in Havers 2). Another key element of neoconservative policy was a realignment of what the American citizen saw as important. Citizens needed to exercise self-disciple, restraint and moral reflection in their daily activities. This would allow a reevaluation of the current sense drawn tendencies of America. Focus of the American culture was intertwined in each issue the neo-cons addressed and the trend American culture was taking fueled the support of a neoconservative outlook.
Comparing the values of these two groups reveals how they are in pure opposition. The New Left valued personal liberties, equality, and the citizens's right to have a direct effect on the government. Neo-cons placed the value of morals, culture, beliefs and the citizen's duty to "self-restraint, self-sacrifice and statesmanship" (Kesler 4) to the forefront. These values and a realist view of the natural condition of humans as imperfect, contrasting to the New Left's utopian beliefs, shaped the neo-con's need to realign America into a "proper" democratic society.
Both groups have opposing outlooks of the American condition, but both stances sought reform from the same system. Both sought to attack liberalism. The New Left attacked the paternalistic and authoritarian liberal state and the Neoconservatives rebelled on liberalism's right. History contexualizes the evolution of these two arguments and through the years of this controversy the neoconservative theories outlasted and effectively ended the prospect of participatory democracy with a strategy that built credibility to themselves and their movement.
Evolution of Ideologies
While these two stances argued between the issue of who was ideologically right, the validity and persuasiveness of these theories can only be analyzed by contextualizing the commentaries and conclusions that history made when these two groups put their theories into practice. The beginning of discontent started with Soviet expansion in the late 1940's. Harrington and his colleagues (neo-cons) saw the issue of communism and rise of The Soviet Empire as a direct threat to America and they had an unwavering anticommunist philosophy. That was a primary opposition of viewpoints between the New Left and neo-cons in the late 50's. Both groups agreed that severe anticommunist policies formed post WWII America, but the conclusions drawn went in opposite directions. The New Left did not support nor directly oppose communism. Although many of the early supporters of this following were procommunist, the New Left explored every possibility that would promote a revolution in the current thinking of how a government should be run. They saw the sectarianism of the procommunist and anticommunist thought as a form of McCarthyism. This rejection of dogmas and limitations of thought seemed as revolutionary as the society they planned to create.
Because of these philosophies, neo-cons began to be skeptical and wary of the New Left for their nonrestrictive morals and tendency to attract traditionally taboo forms of thought into their movement. Neo-cons saw the New Left's views as dangerous and childish, but since there were no intelligent "conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation," (quoted by the conservative Lionel Trilling) this lead neo-cons to conclude that if the New Left's lack of moral philosophies were left uncensored America would succumb to chaos. (qtd. in Dionne 56)
The New Left's ideologies became more legitimate in the early 60's with SDS's Port Huron Statement. This manifesto depicted in-depth the claims of policies that were needed in order for the government to reform to SDS's participatory democracy. The validity and support that the New Left sought for these claims were drawn from the cultural need to reform in this time period. SDS connected the beginning of race riots, liberalization of sexual and drug activities and an overall breakdown of tradition not only as support but a guarantee that an audience was willing to accept their beliefs. Neoconservatives responded by founding the first neoconservative journal, The Public Interest. The journal chronicled the obstacles that the New Left was creating for a professional reform of our political system. The intellectual revolt that neo-cons pursued involved degrading the New Left's undermining of authority by seeking the destroy the liberal system and suggesting conservative reforms on the liberal system. As the sixties progressed, these argument continued to evolve.
The signing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and 1965 sent shock waves of response from the American people. And in 1966 Stokely Camichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, started a revolution inside the civil rights revolution with two words: "Black Power!" (qtd. in Dionne 83) The Black Panthers were born. This set a growing trend in the New Left. Frustrated with the lack of progress in Black Rights and Vietnam lead the New Left to become increasing "action oriented" in their pursuit of participatory democracy. The irritation also appeared by the increasing number of special interest groups joining the revolution against the government. Numerous other movements began to fall under the umbrella of the New Left. Some of these organizations such as The Black Panthers, women's rights activists, and the spawn of the SDS, The Weatherman Underground, did not serve a legitimate or structured philosophy. This lead to little control and legitimacy of these civil revolutions by the further broadening of organizations that were classified as: the New Left.
1968 was a year that brought monumental change in America. It was the height of the tet-offensive in Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy were both assassinated, students seized universities in rebellion and President Johnson withdrew his reelection campaign so as to focus all of his efforts on Vietnam without concern of politics. SDS began to tear itself apart with internal strife and the intellectual based protests and claims of reform started to turn hostile. Rising out of the wreckage of SDS, The Weatherman Organization took the reins and foundation of the movement: "Bring the War Home!" (The Weather) This movement was motivated to bring the violence of Vietnam to America in expression with the dissatisfaction of the lack of progress in converting the government. The Weather Underground organized violent protests in the late sixties and by 1970 the group had started bombing government buildings. In 1969 the New Left consisted of The Black Panthers, The Weather Underground, and numerous other organizations that cried out for change yet lack a concrete plan of action. In the early 70's, The loss of the SDS to its pugnacious counterpart, the Weatherman Underground, left revolutionaries isolated from mainstream America. This gave the neoconservatives a feeling of winning the ideological battle thus expanding their influence.
The support that some democrats held in the protests of Vietnam, the race riots, and the counterculture's turn on traditional values, all forced neo-cons to dispose of their left-wing allegiances. Looking to the right, neoconservatives viewed the republican party as reactive, unintelligent, and isolationist, but they saw the potential to pass on their ideologies and potentially save the traditional views that would once again bring America back to unity. Throughout the 70's, they evolved as a group that whispered ideologies and conversion to Republican Party until the 1990's.
The history of these rival arguments reveals each of the persuasive or objectionable elements. The SDS consisted of mostly upper-middle class students of substantial universities. The amount of intelligent reflection and advocacy received from their movement from other college students enabled SDS to rise as a significant movement with a seemly valid argument. Their claims of policy needed credibility from every class of society in order to facilitate the change they desired, but this credibility proved impossible as the New Left evolved. The claim that SDS had made did not continue throughout the life of the movement because they lacked proper evaluation of their entire audience. In comparison, neo-cons knew that their word needed to hold weight in order for their policies to be heard (Rottenberg, Winchell 469).
Neoconservatives did not want to abolish and rebuild our system. The establishment that the New Left fought against was the establishment that the neo-cons fought to safeguard. This group of intellectuals were disillusioned by the state that America and its two party system was in, parallel to the New Left, but instead of revolt the neo-cons instill institutions that would aid in spreading their ideologies. Building conservative research institutes, law centers and journals all legitimized their "conservative war." The neo-cons did not try and influence the American public with declarations of revolutionary ideas, but they established themselves in the system as a credible source of knowledge. The audience of these two organizations were the same, but the difference was that neo-cons established credibility by gaining a positive reputation.
As the 60's progressed, the reputation that both sides retained reflected the support that each gave to the American populace. The emotionally charged language and appeals to the need of revolution seem to gain importance with the New Left in each subsequent year of the 60's. Over time this degraded the claims of policy that the SDS made in their Port Huron Statement. The years proceeded with less organized thought while more fallacies invaded their uprising. The late 60's brought on more radical and revolutionary protesters, but the credibility of the New Left was seriously diminished in the eyes of the average American. The ties to credibility and the support that the New Left exploited in order to further their militant actions inevitability lead to the end of the movement shortly after Vietnam ended.
Neoconservatives preyed on the downfall of the New Left and their claims that America needed a cultural and moral overhaul were constantly supported with each violent action of the New Left. Although this was the Neoconservatives's use of emotional appeals to the public's need of a stable and secure country, their support consisted of a more professional reform and they sought allegiances in the government to execute that reform. Once their credibility had been raised by the support of the institutions and seemly "expert opinions," the neo-cons used the statistics, the facts and the opinions of other in prestigious offices to raise themselves to a position of great influence in the Republican Party (Rottenberg, Winchell 165).
History may have seemed to document the fall of the New Left and the rise of Neoconservatives from the late 50's to the mid 70's, but their longevity of does not equate them as "winners" of this ideological debate. The late 60's and early 70's saw sympathetic response of our two-party system to each warrant of the controversy. While the New Left's ideologies died as a mass movement, the ideas of helping disenfranchised and special interest groups were adopted by the democratic party. The new laws that barred prayer from school, legalized the sale of contraceptives, promoted school busing and introduced more interest groups at the political table all stemmed from the New Left's warrant (Dionne 46). The warrant (or major assumption) that the New Left carried through the course of its life was the assumption that the majority of Americans needed and were ready for a government directed by the people which was "rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, and creativity" (Miller 333). Although that warrant was not shared with the average American, and that may have been the New Left's downfall, Democrats recognized that warrant and instituted change based on America's disdain for the current system.
After seeing WWII, Korea and now Vietnam, the neo-cons did not believe that human nature was innately good and just, but that morals needed to be ingested, injected and ingrained into the government as well as its people. This jaded perspective lead to the neoconservative warrant of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Their warrant assumed that the breakdown of traditional America was a result of the New Left. It is a grave fallacy to assume the breakdown of morals in America was the cause of a small percentage of college students. The cultural and social circumstances of the world were in upheaval and to place that weight of change onto this group is deceitful (Rottenberg, Winchell 286).
In the end both groups would have benefit in learning what each other preached. The New Left withered away without knowing how to properly address the State and the American people to its crusade. The agressive nature of the revolution meant no more to the American people than terrorist acts being committed by radical gang. The neo-cons were right on insisting that the government and its citizens agree on exerting self-discipline and establishing a moral code by which to follow, but they could have listened to the participatory themes that SDS built itself on. The neoconservative were influential enough to establish longevity, but the morals and values that pitted these two sides against each other still plague the political system today. There is no agreed upon right or wrong and no ideology that is held between each American. That lack of cohesive quality guarantees that Americans continue to exercise their freedoms, but we as a society will continue to run in moral circles until there is no gray matter between right and wrong.
Works Cited
Dionne, E.J. Jr. Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
Gerson, Mark. The Neoconservative Vision: From the Cold War to the Culture Wars. London: Madison Books, 1996
Havers, Grant Dr. "Is U.S. Neoconservatism Dead?"Louisiana Stat University. 1 June. 2008
Hayden, Thomas. "Sit-In Struggle Demands Respect." The Michigan Daily
Kesler, R. Charles. "Iraq and Neoconservatives." The Claremont Institute. 5 July. 2007. 2 June. 2008
Miller, James. Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Rottenberg, T. Annette & Winchell, H. Donna. The Structure of Argument. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2006.
The Weather Underground. Dir. Sam Green & Bill Siegel. Narr. Lili Taylor. The Free History Project, 2003
uproot:
hey man i lived in rockville /gaithersburg area for many years and went to um-college park for a year as well , i know AU well, tons more women than men there eh?
sydni:
Hope to see you there.