Consider the following account of the emergence of the New Left
If the Vietnam experience was the trigger, the liberal guilt was the psychological mechanism, and JFK's youthful and charismatic persona served as an example – the image. What’s missing from this account is the one quality which made it unlike any movement before or since. I’m referring to its idealism.
Indeed, because of its idealism, no other movement in the history of the world, no freedom or liberation movement, no single-issue movement, engineered as it may have been by the proponents of universal suffrage or the abolitionists, no peasant rebellion or religious revolt, not even the storming of the Bastille, compares to the little “hippie revolution,” the Haight-Ashbury, the free speech and counter-culture movement.
What is the trademark of idealism, you may ask. Well, it embraces all sins, past, present, and future. Nothing is overlooked. It’s akin to a God’s eye judging us all, the whole of humanity in fact, with an uncompromising and relentless standard. And the New Left, because of its idealism, has adopted that standard whereby everyone is held accountable and everything is subject to scrutiny. To think otherwise is to deny your creed. Such are the wages of idealism.
One can’t say enough about the extent to which idealism – with its focus on the concept of justice, the highest of all virtues – defined the New Left and shaped American politics since. For example,
The idealistic Left , with its eye on universal justice, views the Right as parochial and ethnocentric, standing in the way of progress by insisting on the most vulgar in selfishness; the Right, on the other hand, sees the Left as naïve and unpatriotic.
The Left, having the entire world under its watchful eye, insists on America’s leadership to spread prosperity, freedom and justice to all parts of the globe; the Right views all such policies as detrimental to America’s security and national interest.
The Left is adamant about restoring equality among competing individuals and leveling the playing field, both at home and abroad; the Right insists that all such efforts smack of socialism and it falls on the doctrine of personal responsibility, buttressed by social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest thesis, namely, the idea that individuals get what they deserve.
Article comments
1 - Irene Wagner
I don't know, Roger Nowosielski. Maybe the New Left and the Old Right (no neocons allowed, but that's just my own bias talking), will put their heads together and get things settled.
I hope everyone will still feel OK about enjoying a nice Bar-B-Q once all is said and done. After all, animals are sentient beings, not to mention the inequitable land food distribution issues involved in raising vegetables vs. lifestock. I might be ashamed of this comment fifty years from now.
2 - Ruvy
Roger, the Infantile Left, the bunch of stupid and loud mouthed hippies who never grew up that you talk about here, are a bunch of tyrannical bastards who have forgotten what free speech and freedom of thought is.
They have nothing to backslide to but the mud of fascism they crawled out of, and this they are proceeding to do apace. Problem is they have one of their own assholes in the White House dragging you all back with them. Have fun in the mud, Roger!
3 - roger nowosielski
We had better come together, Irene, as I argue for in Part III, coming out manana. As you know, divided we cannot stand.
4 - roger nowosielski
It would be a heckuva surprise, Ruvy, if you had something positive to say for a change. I'd eat my hat.
You make me think you never really had a childhood, just grew up into nasty adolescence. Try to think of happy days.