The Balkanization of America

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The Balkanization of America Patrick Vaughan The Balkanization of America The United States has entered the 21st century as badly divided at any time since the American Civil War. There are many reasons for this “Balkanization.” These include political disputes over the war in Iraq, an unprecedented increase in illegal immigra­ tion, and the rise of partisan media outlets that express their political point of view rather than a more objective view of the world. All of these factors only amplified a cultural “civil war” that has divided America since the mid-1960s. America emerged from World War II as unified as at any time in its history. The isolation of the Republican Party in the 1930s was widely discredited by the attack on Pearl Harbor and both major parties came to agree on the wisdom of an internationalist policy of “containing” the Soviet Union. At the same time most American liberals moved away from the Marxist ideals that had been in vogue in the 1930s. The reason was simple. Dwight Eisenhower’s “New Republicanism” seemed to accept the basic pillars of the modem welfare state introduced by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal while millions of Americans, benefiting by the generosity of the G.I. Bill of Rights, moved to the suburbs and were enjoying the fruits of America’s remarkable postwar economic boom. 1960 marked the height of this “liberal consensus.” Indeed many analysts com­ mented that there was little difference between Democrat John Kennedy and Republi­ can Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. This “liberal consensus” was perpetuated by the unifying presence of television. By 1960 most Americans received their news of the world from the nightly news broad­ casts. There was very little overt editorializing on the evening newscasts in the 1960s. Walter Cronkite, signed off his evening broadcasts with a familiar “And that’s the way it was....” Most believed him and accepted these nightly presentations as “fair and balanced.” Walter Cronkite, after all, was widely known as the “must trusted man in America.” Yet there was always a sizable minority, mostly on the political right, who believed Cronkite and the rest of the national network news pervaded a “liberal bias.” Barry Goldwater, the iconoclastic senator from Arizona, was among the most vocal of these conservatives. Goldwater was a new face in American politics. He was a man of the 144 Patrick Vaughan West and deeply resented the influence of the “Eastern Establishment.” Goldwater suggested the national parties should now be listed under the more descriptive titles of “Liberal” and “Conservative.” Goldwater did not like Democrats, to be sure, but he seemed to resent the “country club” Republican “Eastern Establishment” even more. “Sometimes I think this country would be better off,” said Goldwater, “if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea.”1 Goldwater rejected the “liberal consensus” of the 1950s as a sell out to “real” conservative values. He was thus fiercely critical of moderate Re­ publicans, [personified by the liberal New York governor Nelson Rockefeller] whom he denounced as “so-called Republicans” and “Two bit New Dealers.” Goldwater had been planning to run for President against John Kennedy. Yet Ken­ nedy’s assassination, and the elevation of Lyndon Johnson to the White House, opened a cultural chasm in the United States that has yet to be healed. Johnson’s search for political legitimacy meant that that he assure the nation he was no “Texas reactionary.” This led him to a new determination to see the nascent Civil Rights Act through Con­ gress and introduce a “Great Society” based on racial equality and a substantial rise in federal assistance on behalf of America’s lower classes. Johnson’s “creeping socialism” met firm opposition from Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign. Goldwater went the 1964 GOP convention convinced that Republi­ cans needed to take a more conservative view and move away from their “Eastern Establishment” that seemed more in line with Lyndon Johnson that true conservative values. Richard Nixon, [now looking like a comparative moderate] introduced Goldwater at the convention, referred to himself “a simple solider in the ranks” of the Party urged the conventioneers to follow their “new and great American leader.” “Down this corri­ dor,” said Nixon, pointing to the catwalk draped with American flags leading to the speaker’s podium, “will walk a man into the pages of history.”1 2 He was right. When Barry Goldwater appeared, the arena exploded into thunderous applause. It was the first spark in a conservative revolution that would forever change American politics. Goldwater declared war on those who accused him of being an “extremist.” “Anyone who joins us in all sincerity we welcome,” Goldwater said in his acceptance speech. “Those - those who do not care for our cause, we don’t expect to enter our ranks in any case. And let our Republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels...I would remind you,” Goldwater thundered to his adoring legions, “that extremism in the defense of liberty is not vice! And let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”3 Goldwater used his Senate vote to oppose Johnson’s Civil Rights Act in 1964. He also began to talk about themes of “law and order” and the “violence in our streets” and the “growing menace... to the life, to limb, and property...particularly in our great cities.” The message was subtly clear to voters in northern cities like Chicago and New York where “crime in the streets” had become a code term for “Negro crime.” Thus were the roots in the GOP “Southern Strategy” that aimed to move segregationist Dixie into the ranks of the Republican Party. And it would work. 1 T. White, The Making of the President. New York: United Artists, 1964, p. 130. 2 Ibid., p. 259. 3 A Choice - Not an Echo. “Newsweek,” July 27, 1964, p. 18. The Balkanization ofAmerica 145 In September of 1964, two months before the presidential election, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond announced his “really basic decision” to become a Republi­ can. Thurmond had led the “Dixiecrat” revolt against Harry Truman in 1948 in protest of a civil rights plank being added to the Democratic Platform. This defection was more permanent. The Civil Rights Act, Thurmond said, amounted to “another Recon­ struction, [and] freedom as we have known it in this country is doomed.” “The Demo­ cratic Party has invaded the private lives of people,” said Thurmond. “The Democratic Party has succored and assisted our communist enemies,” “worships at the throne of power and materialism,” and “has protected the Supreme Court in a reign of judicial tyranny.”4 The day after his move to the Republican Party, Thurmond, brandishing a Republi­ can elephant gold tie clip, welcomed Barry Goldwater on his first campaign trip to South Carolina. This was a new chapter in American politics. No Republican presiden­ tial candidate had won South Carolina in the 20th century. But things were changing fast. Many Southern Democrats now felt closer to Goldwater’s brand of conservatism than Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” “My fellow extremists!” Thurmond jibed from the podium. “I did not leave the Democratic Party. It left me!” Thurmond then joined hands with Goldwater to a passionate greeting from 15 000 supporters.5 The polls showed that Barry Goldwater had a chance against the popular Lyndon Johnson. Yet American politics was undergoing a seismic shift. In 1962, Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor, formally switched his party affiliation from Re­ publican to Democrat. Reagan believed the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman had become too tolerant of crime, welfare cheats, a haven of “pointy-headed” intellectuals and “social engineers” plotting to achieve “equality” on the backs of the common worker. In the latter days of the 1964 campaign a group of California Republicans asked Reagan to deliver a televised speech in support of Goldwater. On October 27, 1964 Reagan appeared before a nationally televised audience to deliver a variation on the “Time for Choosing” speech Reagan had delivered for years traveling around the country for General Electric. “You and I have an rendezvous with destiny,” said Reagan said confidently to mil­ lions of television viewers. “We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy accommodation, and they say if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy he’ll forget his evil ways and leam to love us.” Reagan continued. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to com­ plex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer. Not an easy answer. But simple. If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb, by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now en­ 4 J. Margolis, The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964: the Beginning of the "Sixties". New York: William Morrow & Co., 1999. 5 Goldwater in the Old Confederacy. “Newsweek,” September 28, 1964, p. 26. 146 Patrick Vaughan slaved behind the Iron Curtain, give up your dreams of freedom, because to save our own skins we’re willing to make a deal with your slavemasters.6 Reagan’s speech brought in $1 million for Republican candidates.
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