FIRST PRINCIPLES FOUNDATIONAL CONCEPTS TO GUIDE POLITICS AND POLICY NO. 46 | AUGUST 27, 2013 Liberalism Radicalized: The Sexual Revolution, Multiculturalism, and the Rise of Identity Politics Kevin Slack Abstract Beginning in the 1950s, a more radical form of liberalism emerged in the academy that sowed the seeds for the sexual revolution and multiculturalism. Neo-progressivism mobilized the New Left of the 1960s, transformed American politics, and continues to dominate the cultural and political conversation today. It combines what neo-progressives call personal politics (the idea that American citizens have a right to all forms of self- expression) and cultural politics (the idea that cultural groups are entitled to special status) together as the twin pillars of a new identity politics. As a result, citizens today have more, not less, freedom from government in the realm of sexual expression, and the American electorate has been fractured into various groups. n the past two decades, a new, more radical form ■■ President Barack Obama, labeled the “First Gay Iof progressivism has taken over American social President” by Newsweek for his support of gay and political life, even finding its way into the White rights, has instructed the Attorney General of House. Fresh instances of this new progressivism the United States not to defend the Defense of appear every day. For example: Marriage Act; and ■■ At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, ■■ Vice President Joe Biden has said that discrimi- progressives officially supported same-sex mar- nation against transgendered persons is the “civil riage as a civil right and unofficially rejected the rights issue of our time.”1 word God in their platform; The new progressivism divides Americans into categories of race, class, and gender. It renews the specter of race conflict by rejecting the goal of civil This paper, in its entirety, can be found at rights, in which individuals achieve equality under http://report.heritage.org/fp46 the law; instead, the goal is political racial solidar- Produced by the B. Kenneth Simon Center ity against what is viewed as an inherently racist for Principles and Politics American system. The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE As a former law professor, Obama has been associ- Washington, DC 20002 ated with the movement called Critical Race Theory, (202) 546-4400 | heritage.org which—according to a proponent—“seeks to high- Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of light the ways in which the law is not neutral and any bill before Congress. objective, but designed to support White supremacy FIRST PRINCIPLES | NO. 46 AUGUST 27, 2013 and the subordination of people of color.”2 Race poli- These liberals of the center were an intense- tics has taken center stage, with both political par- ly patriotic group. They supported the Cold War ties vying for the loyalty of the growing number of because they thought Communism was just as bad Hispanic Americans. Obama attributed his recent as fascism. Truman fired Secretary of Commerce presidential victory to the “Latino community,” Wallace for his sympathy toward the Soviet while the Republican Party, admitting that it is “too Union, purged the new progressives from the old, too white,” scrambles to court the Latino vote.3 Democratic Party, and made bureaucrats swear loy- Finally, the politics of gender has grown as 55 per- alty oaths. These liberals found common ground cent of women voted for Obama in 2012.4 Rallying with Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, around the Affordable Care Act, progressives accused who called his platform “dynamic conservatism” those who opposed the new right to taxpayer-funded because it combined fiscal conservatism and anti- contraception of waging a “war on women.” Communism with an acceptance of the New Deal programs. Given their progressive roots, these liber- als embraced big government. The New Left, the political movement Liberals were also socially and morally conser- that grew out of neo-progressivism, vative: Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants with big families, bigger cars, and, increasingly, transformed American politics. homes in the suburbs, where they watched Father Knows Best, I Love Lucy, and Gunsmoke. Culturally, This is not the old progressivism of 1910, nor is the difference between liberals and old progres- it the self-styled “liberalism” of the 1940s and ’50s. sives, on the one hand, and neo-progressives, on the The term “liberals” here refers to what many in other, is obvious at a visceral level: One can’t imag- the Democratic Party and American society called ine Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, or Lyndon themselves between 1948 and 1969. These were Johnson chanting “om” with Allen Ginsberg at the the heirs to the early 20th century Progressives. 1967 Human Be-In, dropping acid with Timothy Economically, these are the liberals of the genera- Leary, or inviting Jay-Z to the White House. tion that came of age during World War II: unionized These old liberals did not disappear—in fact, blue-collar laborers and farmers. they are today’s neoconservatives. Irving Kristol, In 1949, historian Arthur Schlesinger,Jr., defined Michael Novak, David Horowitz, Richard Perle, and economic liberalism as “democratic, regulated capi- Norman Podhoretz briefly supported the radical- talism—the mixed society.”5 He believed that liberals ism of the 1960s, and when they forsook their Leftist were the pragmatic “vital center” between the oppos- radicalism to return to the fold of 1950s liberalism, ing dogmatisms of conservatives like Robert Taft, who they called themselves “paleo-liberals.” Progressive wished to repeal the programs of the New Deal, and Michael Harrington derisively called them “neo- the new progressives, who challenged Harry Truman conservatives” in 1973. In Kristol’s famous formula- within the Democrat Party and ran Henry Wallace as tion, a neoconservative was “a liberal who has been a third-party presidential candidate in 1948. mugged by reality”6—but a liberal nevertheless. This 1. Matea Gold and Michael Memoli, “Democrats Put God, Jerusalem Back in Platform over Objections,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/05/news/la-pn-dnc-platform-god-jerusalem-20120905 (accessed April 26, 2013); “The First Gay President,” Newsweek, May 21, 2012; Andrew Sullivan, “Biden Says Transgender Discrimination ‘Civil Rights Issue of Our Time’,” Politico, October 30, 2012, http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/10/biden-says-transgender-discrimination-civil-rights-147761.html (accessed April 26, 2013). 2. Dorothy A. Brown, “Fighting Racism in the Twenty-First Century,” 61 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1485 (2004), 1486. 3. CNN, “Republicans Want to End Perception as ‘Stuffy Old Men,’” March 18, 2013, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/18/ republicans-want-to-end-perception-as-stuffy-old-men/ (accessed May 13, 2013). 4. Halimah Abdullah, “How Women Ruled the 2012 Election and Where the GOP Went Wrong,” CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/08/ politics/women-election (accessed May 13, 2013). 5. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1962), p. xiii. 6. Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 75. 2 FIRST PRINCIPLES | NO. 46 AUGUST 27, 2013 is why today’s neo-progressives, when they doubt the 1 percent, the 99 percent, the African American Obama’s radical credentials, frequently call him a “community,” the Hispanic “community,” the white “neo-liberal.”7 male vote, the white female vote, etc. These insular The New Left, the political movement that grew groups were no longer to be assimilated into a com- out of neo-progressivism, transformed American mon American culture; they were to be given special politics. That transformation was a partial rejection status as oppressed or oppressor groups in a larger, in practice and a total rejection in theory of the prin- more hostile view of the Western tradition. This ciples and policies on which the 1950s self-styled view, commonly narrated in school textbooks, plac- liberals had risen to power and claimed victory in es America, Christianity, and capitalism at the van- World War II. guard of a colonial, exploitative, racist, sexist, homo- That is not to say, however, that there was no con- phobic imperialism. nection between neo-progressivism and the earlier The clear goal of the sexual revolution and the progressive and liberal movements in America. Neo- politics of race, class, and gender was to oppose the progressivism was a continuation of progressiv- American liberal establishment and bring about a ism and liberalism in that it rejected the Founders’ new kind of society founded upon a new standard teachings on natural rights, limited government, of right. The personal politics of the New Left was and constitutionalism.8 And while there was a vast intended to deconstruct the old liberal, progres- difference of both ends and means between the goals sive order to allow for a return to nature that would of LBJ’s Great Society and the neo-progressive rad- promote happiness and personal fulfillment in con- icals, the early Progressives to a certain extent did temporary America. This, of course, meant some- pave the way for both through their withering cri- thing wholly different from the earlier conception tique of the old order inherited from the Founding of nature in which the Declaration of Independence, and their embrace of “progress” in both political and with its appeal to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s cultural terms. God,” was grounded. This essay will return to the origins of neo-pro- gressivism, which emerged in the 1950s as a revolt Freudo–Marxist thinkers posited against liberalism across almost all academic fields. that American capitalism was akin to Two of those fields, psychology and sociology, provid- ed the theories for sexual revolution and multicultur- a disease and that the destruction of alism that would mobilize the New Left and so domi- capitalism required the destruction of nate and motivate liberal theory and politics today.