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. A conservative icon was bom. But it was not enough to save Barry Goldwater, who lost to Lyndon John­ son in the greatest landslide in American history. The scale of the Johnson’s victory was staggering. Johnson won 61 percent of the vote to Goldwater’s 38. Barry Goldwater, it seemed, was simply “too extreme” for the wide range of American voters. Goldwater’s “extremism” was widely blamed for hurting more moderate Republicans, including George Herbert Walker Bush, a young Yale graduate who had moved to Texas a decade before to form an oil company, who failed in his Senate bid in Texas. The Goldwater debacle convinced a number of commentators, including Walter Lippman, that the Republican Party was on the verge of extinction. Such views failed to look at some of the more subtle aspects of Johnson’s victory. Goldwater 47 meager electoral vote came from five states in the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Ala­ bama, Missisippi, and Louisiana). In addition, later analysis of local voting patterns revealed that on the core social issues, ranging from prayer in public schools to calls for reducing federal expenditures and cutting welfare spending, the American public was thinking much closer to Barry Goldwater than Lyndon Johnson.7 There was now a simmering civil war between the “conservative” and “moderate” wings of the Republican Party. “My defeat to some degree,” Goldwater insisted, “was occasioned by Republicans... who would not vote for the - or work, I should say - for the top of the ticket....I think if some governors and some senators and some con­ gressmen had more actively supported the ticket they would have been better off.”8 Goldwater’s supporters were angered at “country club” Republicans who seemed to favor Lyndon Johnson over Goldwater. One target of Goldwater’s suspicion was Con- necicutt Senator Prescott Bush [the blue-blooded father of George Herbert Walker Bush and prototypical of the hated “Eastern Establishment”] whom did not adequately campaign on behalf of Goldwater’s campaign.9 Yet the rise of Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan, was prompted mostly by the suicidal tendencies of the Democratic Party. By 1965 the early promise of the Civil Rights Movement seemed to have gone astray. Martin Luther King’s voice was now compet­ ing with outwardly militant elements, such as the Black Panthers, that mocked the methods of Ghandi-style civil disobedience. At the same time many young people began to grow their hair long, engage in recreational drug use, and, in the famous phrase, “stopped trusting anybody over thirty.” These “hippies” rebelled against any­ thing and everything to do the “Establishment.” They held a particular aversion to the Vietnam War that Lyndon Johnson had escalated in February of 1965. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party, supported by many radical voices of the “New Left,” tried to accommodate such views - and by 1972 would become enslaved by them. By 1967, more liberal voices took to the most extreme measures to show their distaste Lyndon Johnson. Young hippies, taking their views to absurd extremes, bran­

6 Where it All Began: Rendezvous with Destiny. “The Washington Post,” January 20, 1981. 7 See: S. Kirkpatrick, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Es­ tablishment. New York: Random House, 1975. 8 I'll Live with It. “Newsweek,” November 16, 1964, p. 28. 9 After the Fall: to the Mainstream. “Newsweek,” November 9, 1964, p. 32. The Balkanization ofAmerica 147 dished signs that read “Hitler is Alive - in the White House” or showed Lyndon John­ son adorned in a Nazi uniform. A familiar chant at antiwar protests asked “Lee Harvey Oswald — Where Are You Now That We Need You?” A rather tasteless gesture from a “love” generation supposedly devoted to “non-violence.” In 1967 Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy announced that he would challenge Johnson for the nomination on an antiwar plank. Henceforth McCarthy’s rallies were dotted with marijuana smoke, Vietcong flags, and cries that “Amerika” was a fascist state not unlike Nazi Germany. A few months later Robert Kennedy joined the race against Johnson with a decidedly more liberal plank than that of his slain older brother. In March of 1968 Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek the Democratic nomination. Zbigniew Brzeziński, then advising Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, warned that the emergence of the “New Left” was likely to result in disaster for the Democratic Party. Brzeziński castigated his fellow intellectuals that would not take a stand against violent acts of the Nee Left and repeated “campus seizures” replete with posters of Vla­ dimir Lenin and Fidel Castro. Brzeziński criticized American liberals, who feared being seen as “reactionary” under any circumstances, as failing in their duties. This craven fear of being “outflanked on the left” kept them from condemning even the most irresponsible and violent acts being perpetrated by the student “revolutionaries.”10 11 “Above all I just didn’t take them very seriously,” Brzeziński recalled years later. “They saw themselves as Trotsky and Paris Communards, and stuff like that. Anybody who has a European history and had seen what happened this century knew that there is a great difference between the real blood and guts of revolution that involves risk and personal sacrifice and this kind of posturing by rich liberal kids pretending to be something that we didn’t understand. Well, you know, they’ve all grown up and a lot of them are very sensible civil people, but it terms of their conduct and their slo­ ganeering, and their mannerisms, I thought they were a bunch of spoiled brats. And I still feel that way.”11 To Brzeziński the primary issue came down to whether the university was a place for dispassionate scholarship relevant to society and constructive activity - or an arena for “irrational expressions of personal bias.” He warned that if it is the latter, “higher education in America as we know it will come to an end.”12 Brzeziński saw dangers to more reasonable Democrats like Hubert Humphrey who had secured the nomination to run against Richard Nixon. “When old values no longer remain secure and when new values haven’t been defined, small groups and sects be­ come absolutely obsessive in their motivations. The short-range effect of violence could be to push the country toward the Right and to produce a far greater preoccupa­

10 Z. Brzeziński, Between Two Ages. America’s Role in the Technetronic Era. New York: Viking Press, 1970, p. 227. In 1970 Tom Wolfe referred to this phenomenon less politely. Wolfe coined the term “radical chic” to describe a party given by composer Leonard Bernstein for members of the Black Panthers. Wolfe’s article exposed the fashionable trend of the late 1960s of the rich and famous to endorse radical causes while they retained a rather posh lifestyle. Wolfe noted that there were two rules of “radical chic.” One rule is “that nostalgie de la boure - i.e., the styles of romantic, raw-vital Low Rent primitives - are good; and middle-class, whether black or white, is bad.” A second “rule” for “radical chic” was the conviction “that no matter what, one should always maintain a proper address, a proper scale of interior decoration, and servants.” T. Wolfe, Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s, “New York,” June 8, 1970. 11 “Interview,” Washington, D.C., March 29, 2000. 12 Protest and Authority. “Newsweek,” May 12, 1969, pp. 72-73. 148 Patrick Vaughan tion with what can be called «law and order» and that in effect can become repression. It seems to me that anyone who is interested in preserving liberal, democratic order in the United States ought to be particularly insistent right now on combining social change with orderly procedure. Unless we combine both we will have initially some change and violence and later on no change accompanied by repression. It seems to me you cannot be selective about violence. Violence, in most cases, is socially destructive. There is nothing easier in society than to be a revolutionary or a reactionary. Both are extremist Manicheans - those who see all of reality reduced to a confrontation between simple good and simple evil.”13 This radical swing to the Left manifested itself in the antiwar demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Pat Buchanan, a speechwriter for Nixon in 1968, argued the late 1960s marked a paradigm shift in American politics. “The values war started then. People thought drug-taking and the sexual revolution were wrong, but the liberals wouldn’t stand up for their own values. They could not say no when the dem­ onstrations got out of control....The American people saw it [in Chicago] and were re­ volted. And on the campuses, the liberals wouldn’t stand up to the academic thugs ... I can’t see Harry Truman ever condoning the riots, but the liberals had no backbone for standing up to them.”14 Nixon, benefiting from the perceived excesses of the antiwar Left, defeated Hum­ phrey in one of the closest elections in American history. It would only get worse for the Democrats. Over the next few years the party became controlled by the more ex­ treme liberal elements that had so eagerly sought Lyndon Johnson’s ouster in 1968. In 1972 the Democratic Party nominated George McGovern, a radical candidate, quickly dubbed by Nixon supporters as the candidate of “amnesty, acid, and abortion.” McGovern’s campaign called for a $30 billion reduction in defense spending, full am­ nesty for Vietnam war deserters, a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, and a promise to cut the U.S. military presence in Europe “to the bone.” McGovern, now wedded to the more radical voices in the Party, fully alienated old style Democrats. This included his overt support for Angela Davis, a black revolution­ ary academic who had stood trial for murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in a violent shoot out during an attempt to free a group of fellow black radicals standing trial in California. McGovern told a crowd gathered in a Los Angeles Watts ghetto that the Angela Davis acquittal was a “cause for rejoicing.” More moderate Democrats no wonder just what the party stood for. After all, Davis was an outspoken member of the American Communist Party and at the time being deified in a major propaganda cam­ paign from Moscow. A few weeks later Davis traveled to Moscow where she was met by thunderous cheers. She then thanked the Soviet Union for supporting her during her time in prison. She also received a Lenin Jubliee Medal that she described as “the greatest honor I’ve ever had.”15 The Democratic Party, which had dominated American politics since 1932, went to its 1972 convention in Miami dominated by a fractured minority of counter-culture fringe groups. The party platform took bold positions on the issues of abortion, busing,

13 Z. Brzezinski, Current, 1968, p. 33. N J. Witcover, The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America. New York: Wamer Books, 1997, p. 476. 15 S.J. Ungar, Angela Davis Acquitted ofAU Charges. “The Washington Post,” June 5, 1972. The Balkanization ofAmerica 149 and the war. Many old-line Democrats insisted that they would either vote for Nixon or refuse to endorse the ticket. The blue-collar ethnic voter that had propelled Franklin Roosevelt to four election victories was nowhere to be seen. On labor union leader lamented “We can’t hold our own rank and file with McGov­ ern - He’s surrounded by people who are more interested in amnesty and pot than in jobs.”16 “Where are the working people in this convention!?” snapped another old-style Democrat. “When the workingman sees this on TV, does he see his people on the floor? No sir - he sees a guy in a dashki raising a clenched fist and he says to himself, «Is that my party?»”17 The national press, already weary of overly rehearsed conventions, took joy in filming the bizarre surroundings outside the convention hall. One network news cam­ era focused on Flamingo Park, a 33-acre senior citizen’s refuge taken over by the “counter-culture.” There, among the shocked elderly residents, a group calling itself the “Zippies” staged a giant marijuana “smoke-in.” Another story reported on the poet Alan Ginsberg as he took part in a candlelight vigil for homosexual groups staging “kiss-ins” to support a minority platform plank barring discrimination on the basis of sexual inclination.18 Richard Nixon, in search for his “silent majority,” could not have been happier. While McGovern’s views appealed to an energetic New Left minority, they offended precisely those segments of the New Deal coalition that Nixon hoped to win to his cause. The GOP convention in Miami hinted at the “New Majority” based largely on Democrats jumping ship to the Republican Party. “We have become a three-party country,” mused California Governor Ronald Reagan in a speech at the GOP conven­ tion. “Republicans, Democrats and McGovern.” 9 This was especially true in the American South. “Philosophically the South ought to be Republican,” said one GOP strategist at the time. “It is still the Bible Belt, and people believe in strong defense, in patriotism, in the Protestant work ethic.”20 Nixon drove this point home by ridiculing McGovern’s view of the world, then praising the foreign policies of former Democratic Presidents Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. “To those millions of Americans,” Nixon said, “who have been driven out of their home in the Democratic Party, we say come home to the great principles we Americans believe in together.”21 They did. Nixon won 49 states. McGovern’s won only the state of Massachusetts. At the same time many more moderate Republicans feared their party was drifting to far the “racial right.” By the late 1970s the old moderate “Rockefeller” wing of the party was being eclipsed by the right of the “religious right.” In June of 1979 Jerry Falwell, the popular Baptist TV evangelist, founded the Moral Majority. The group became a formidable political force, campaigning for candidates against abortion, gay rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1980 the Moral Majority was instrumental in electing Ronald Reagan [ironically the first divorced man to hold that office.] But the Moral Majority began to target

16 Anybody But McGovern. “Newsweek,” July 17, 1972. 17 Is It an Era - Or Only an Hour? “Newsweek,” July 24, 1972, p. 17. The Outsiders on the Inside. “Newsweek,” July 24, 1972, p. 36. 19 The New Majority. “Newsweek,” September 4, 1972, p. 36. 20 The South Rises Again - For Nixon. “Newsweek,” October 23, 1972, p. 37. 21 The New Majority, op. cit.,p. 18. 150 Patrick Vaughan

Democrats it saw as too liberal. Falwell’s goal was to mobilize “pro-God, pro-family” governmental agendas, and in doing so he advised his legions to “get them saved, bap­ tized, and registered.” He saw the Reagan-Bush 1980 campaign as a “holy war.” In 1980 Ronald Reagan, once thought too “extreme” for national politics, won a landslide election. Much of Reagan’s strength came from so-called “Reagan Democrats” who contin­ ued to view their party as out of touch with mainstream American values. In 1984 Reagan won a still larger victory, largely on his ability to move America beyond the crisis years of the 1960s. By the mid-1980s Reagan was among the most popular Presi­ dents in American history, having garnered much support for his conservative social agenda and tough stance on the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Cold War came to an end. American politics, bereft of the unifying presence of the Cold War, moved toward an intensification of the “cultural war.” This debate sharpened when Bill Clinton became the first “baby-boomer” to win the White House. Clinton made conscious efforts to fashion himself as a more conservative “New Democrat.” He sharply criticized a female hip-hop star for her violent lyrics. In Febru­ ary of 1992 he made a widely publicized trip during the New Hampshire primary to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded convict on death row. All of this seemed an admission that the Democratic Party had lost the nation’s “Silent Majority” in the revolutionary era of the 1960s. Yet the Clinton era only rejoined the old battles of the Vietnam era. Clinton became a lightning rod on the resurgent right wing in America. In the late 1980s Rush Lim­ baugh, a former small town radio host from Sacramento, developed a cult following with his conservative three hour talk show that was now carried nationwide. Limbaugh and his conservative listeners castigated Clinton for his alleged extra-marital affairs, [a product, implied conservatives of the “sexual revolution”], whether he smoked mari­ juana, accusations that he visited the Soviet Union as a student in 1970, and, whether he used influential contacts to avoid service in Vietnam. Clinton’s victory only increased Limbaugh’s status as the most influential conser­ vative voice in America. Limbaugh, and his million of “ditto-head” listeners, saw no room for compromise with the Democratic enemy. Politics, which for decades in America had been based on the art of compromise, was now reduced to a zero-sum game. Limbaugh opened his show on January 20, 1993, with the declaration, “Welcome to Day One, of American Held Hostage.” Many credited Limbaugh with the rise of the “Angry White Man” that led to the Republican majority in the House of Representatives in 1994. In the late 1990s Lim­ baugh’s influence was perhaps surpassed by new conservative voices on television. This was seen most overtly with the wide popularity of FOX news, a flamboyant new news outlet that carried Limbaugh’s conservative message to millions of television viewers each night. The culture wars heated up as the nation moved into the 21st century. The disputed election of 2000, and the attacks of September 11, 2001 only strengthened this divide. In 2004 John Kerry faced new questions, not about war in Iraq, but about Vietnam, his affiliations with Jane Fonda and the radical anti-war left in the early 1970s. There was no let up in the cultural wars by mid-decade. The GOP seemed united behind George Bush and his deeply conservative agenda. Meanwhile the Democrats seemed intent on The Balkanization of America 151 nominating Hillary Clinton. A hate figure on the right wing even more than her hus­ band, for their candidate in 2008. In the cultural realm the divisions seemed only to widen. Democrats and Republi­ cans continued to shout at each other on the ubiquitous shout shows that have come to dominate American television. The breach was perhaps best symbolized by two of the most talked about films of 2005. Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ” released in 2005 became a huge hit among religious groups and widely criticized by voices on the left. Later that year “Brokeback Mountain,” a rather unconventional American story about two gay cowboys, became an early favorite to win an Academy Award and widely hailed by the Hollywood establishment. It doesn’t get any wider than that. On it goes.