Criticism and America
GeoffP said:
Was the US really above all criticism in those periods?
No, but the Cold War brought a growing Straussian myth, a sociopolitical mix of Machiavelli and Mani. In terms of Hype's assertion, that we don't know where we're going at the moment, we're just now focusing on a new opposite according to the Straussian myth. Terrorism is the new foe, and we're still fine-tuning the outlook. It's new; it's going to take a while to accustom ourselves to the perspective. In ten years, it will feel much more natural.
In the former period, when Communism was the foe, the liberal objection was marginalized as Communist, and the conservative objection marginalized itself. The Reagan era marked a split in the Republican Party (e.g., conservative movement) when the religious conservative movement was invited to the table in order to advance an essentially neoconservative foreign policy. It is evident in the curious mix of Christianity and capitalism about the GOP that would even confound
Weber.
That makes an interesting backdrop to the state of the party today, but that's a separate issue altogether.
The religious conservatives often chose non-participation in a governmental establishment they considered corrupt. Whatever criticisms they offered fell on deaf ears.
The left, of course, was easily denounced as Communist. The sensible thing to do, then, was follow the yellow brick road.
And you'll find this is still true in many contemporary American recollections of the Cold War. There is this presumption that we were nearly infallible. It's not that we weren't above criticism during those periods. It's just that it wasn't, according to domestic conventional wisdom, sensible to care.
Consider the beginning of the War on Terror. It was the same thing all over again. If you objected you were anti-American, or a terrorist sympathizer. I actually started to miss being called a commie. And I'm furious that I'm now blue on the map. At any rate, some Republicans are doing a sound check on the idea of saying we should get out of Afghanistan. They're going to catch hell for all that "cut-and-run" disdain sewn through the Bush years, but that doesn't mean the question isn't valid. We need to get the fuck out of there. Somehow.
Sure, it's been almost sixty years since people were arrested, deported, and even hauled before Congress for being too liberal, but we hear in the early War on Terror the echoes of McCarthy, and therein an example of why the United States was "above criticism".
It wasn't. But it just wasn't proper to criticize. Really. You're supposed to be thankful to God that you get to live in the greatest country in the world.
Honestly. I'm not kidding. A lot of my generation were raised on that sort of stuff.
