The Complicated Legacy of 1960s Conservatism

Abstract

The Complicated Legacy of 1960s Conservatism Alexander Bloom (bio) Penny Lewis. Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornel University Press, 2013. xi + 255 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $81.95 (cloth); $22.95 (paper). Sandra Scanlon. The Pro-War Movement: Domestic Support for the Vietnam War and the Making of Modern American Conservatism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013. xiii + 424 pp. Notes and index. $80.00 (cloth); $28.95 (paper). One look at the calendar and anyone can see the obvious: chronologically, the 1960s have slipped well into the past, as has every other historical decade. Yet remarkably, the Sixties have held on to the American psyche well beyond that of other past decades. Many significant events of that decade have now celebrated their 50th anniversary—the Port Huron Statement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the march in Selma. Other fifty-year marks will occur within the next few years. And still, much of the 1960s remains alive in U.S. culture. Even after fifty years, 1960s’ realities still often exercise a strong influence over contemporary American life. In the 1990s, House Speaker Newt Gingrich labeled Bill and Hillary Clinton as “counterculture McGoverniks,” while evangelist Pat Robertson lamented that, with the Clintons, the office once occupied “by Washington and Jefferson” had become “the playpen for the sexual freedom of the poster child of the 1960s.” Every recent foreign policy engagement that the United States has entered has been immediately framed in terms of the Vietnam experience, as suggested by this small sampling of newspaper and magazine headlines and titles. “El Salvador—Reagan’s Vietnam” “Worrisome Echoes of Vietnam in Iraq” “Bush’s Vietnam-sized Credibility Gap” “Afghanistan is Beginning to Look Like Obama’s Vietnam” “U.S. Risking Another Vietnam War: Syria.” [End Page 710] The 1960s continue to exert a major influence over the contemporary United States, well in excess of any other recent decade. This fascination has led to both an enormous amount of serious scholarship about the era as well as a wide array of popular assessments. Sometimes these assessments are tinged with nostalgia. Sometimes bitter memories taint the viewpoint. And sometimes they repeat and perpetuate extreme stereotypic distortions, such as this paragraph from an 8th-grade school textbook, America, Land I Love (2006), which declares that it is written from “a Christian perspective” and has been adopted by Louisiana voucher schools, among others. Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles; these youth became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.1 What is clear is that the meaning of the decade, now fifty years gone, remains a subject of debate and disagreement. The Sixties hold us, alive in our politics and culture, even as the events and personalities who created that world slip into old age or away altogether. In the immediate wake of the decade, numerous general accounts were published, some personal, some sweeping. Prevailing narratives were established. Individual moments were elevated to mythic status, and particular groups were singled out as forces of progress or forces of retrogression. Some groups remained entirely invisible. Over the years, other scholars and analysts have attempted to right some of the inaccuracies, to revise elements of the standard narratives, to investigate individuals and groups left out of the initial sweep of Sixties scholarship. Both of the books under consideration here fall into this latter category. On the surface, especially within the context of the prevailing narrative, these books first appear as oppositional. The picture on the cover of Sandra Scanlon’s The Pro-War Movement is of workers in hard hats waving American flags while battling antiwar demonstrators. The image on the cover...