Here’s an excerpt from an article on the Sixties of mine in THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW. It supports the Tocquevillian thought that things are mainly getting better and worse, as well as the thought that the aggressive nationalizing of the civil rights movement was in response to a state and local failure of self-government:
If memory serves, the only real political issue that inspired passion in the early Sixties was civil rights—meaning desegregation. The first and only political event I remember attending (with my parents, of course) in the early Sixties was a very classy picnic at the Alexandria, Virginia estate of a very devout Episcopalian gentleman-lawyer from an old Southern family. This man, Armistead Boothe, was widely admired as the heroic leader of those who opposed “massive resistance” to desegregation in the Virginia legislature. Running for lieutenant governor, he was narrowly defeated by the “Byrd Machine” candidate.
To us, the Byrd Machine seemed to be a corrupt alliance of business interests and segregationist fanatics. Opposition to it seemed noble, even aristocratic, a cause worthy of a dignified Christian gentleman. If Virginia didn’t slowly desegregate on its own, Boothe warned, the national government and its courts would eventually make them do it in a ham-fisted way. The Sixties’ “second Reconstruction” of the South was, in fact, caused by a Southern failure of self-government. It could have been avoided had astute gentleman like Boothe prevailed over demagogic populists—such as the George Wallace of the Sixties.
Maybe the worst feature of the Sixties as a whole was the pointless violence. One persistent piece of evidence of the basic health of American society, even during the Sixties, is that the violence always aroused the politically effective anger of a silent majority. That was true of what happened on our campuses, in our cities, and at the 1968 Democratic convention. But it was first true about the segregationist violence in the South, especially in 1963. Until 1963, the truth is, the nonviolent “direct action” of the civil rights movement had not had much effect. But by mid-1964, Americans, tutored by newly-expanded TV nightly news, were convinced that something had to be done to end southern lawlessness. That was the year, of course, that Congress finally passed civil rights legislation with real teeth, and the Democratic president who pushed it through won a huge victory over the Republican candidate who opposed it (and who only carried states in the Deep South). All Americans, as our Constitution has always intended, were finally recognized as free, equal, dignified, and politically participating citizens.
The second Reconstruction was, of course, not only good for justice, but for prosperity, in the South. Air-conditioning and integration combined to produce the Sunbelt—the most “livable,” entrepreneurial, and Republican part of our country. The Sixties’ transformation of the South, like almost all social change, was both good and bad. What was left of agrarianism and localism and the distinctively southern or aristocratic criticism of the excesses of American commercialism atrophied, and men like Boothe are virtually extinct. There are certainly good reasons to be repulsed by the wasteland of the McMansions, megachurches, and superstores that flourishes better than anywhere else in southern suburbs, even while admitting that the South–even more now than then–remains the most genuinely religious and patriotic part of our country
The first and least controversial of the liberation movements of the Sixties was good for both justice and business broadly understood, but in some ways not so good for love, for community, for enduring personal significance.
Now let me add something to the article: The most edifying and popular movie I remember from around the same time was TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. The small southern town was full of memorable places and people, but also with a redneck racism–based on a grinding poverty–that wasn’t resisted by those who ran the place. Atticus, the father/lawyer, was as noble a Stoic as there’s ever been, and he courageously stood up for the natural aristocrat’s understanding of justice and basic decency. But justice wasn’t served in the local court, and poor Atticus spent plenty of time alone with his books, with no one to talk to.
July 6th, 2009 | 7:26 pm
Peter, I’m not sure how southern air conditioning was the result of the 60’s civil rights movement however let me ask this: if gummint should intervene in race relations, how about for sexual orientation reasons e.g. churches and/or synagogues required to hire homosexual choir directors,organists, ect? And, finally should gummint, through the threat of fines or criminal prosecution, force Christian doctors against their moral beliefs to do abortions?
And, really finally, Is there such a thing as the right of association?
Nice blog!
July 6th, 2009 | 10:13 pm
Bob, To begin with, what I describe above is mainly about removing race as a legal category–desegregation–and so getting govt. out of the race relations business. And surely you don’t agree with those believe that LOVING makes sense as the precedent for same-sex marriage as a const. right–that overturning laws that prohibited interracial marriage is the same, for civil rights reasons, as overturning laws that prohibit same-sex marriage. I sort of agree that it’s the fault of ROE that someone could think that not performing an abortion is anything like not hiring a black person. But I do have the controversial opinion that removing race from the law through the real enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment was in accord with the deep intention of our Founders and their color-blind Constitution, as so the civil rights movement, despite some unintended consequences I might discuss later, on balance produced progress.
July 6th, 2009 | 10:16 pm
Although, I personally am so far to the left that even the democrats appear to me to be “right-wing,” I consider myself to be a strict constitutionalist. It is my opinion that since its inception there has been an organized and systematic assault by the conservatives in the United States on the civil liberties written into the US Constitution. The “War on Drugs”; “War on Terror”; “War on Communism” and a host of other wars waged by the right wing are really nothing more than a War on People–an excuse to erode civil rights to the point of non-existence. I invite you to my website devoted to raising awareness on this puritan attack on freedom: http://pltcldscsn.blogspot.com/
July 7th, 2009 | 5:51 am
Great reflections on the ’60s south, but I’d like to hear more about how justice and good business in the south broadly construed is bad for love, community and personal significance.
Are you obliquely speaking of race? How do the “whites” and “blacks” live together in “justice” and “prosperity”?
The contemporary south–with its megachurches–seems not to be the problem. Shopping at Wal-Mart is no big deal. But there seems to be something lacking. A flattening out of existence.
Confederate nastiness would say that Jim Crow was first invented by the north (a la Vann Woodward), and that the just cause against that heinous arrangement left a vacuous liberalism which inevitably became vicious identity politics. In other words blame it on the north.
I won’t go there, but I will say that I think the way things stand today in the south are in some ways worse than they were before–even with all of our compassion and understanding of the other. I’m glad I had to read BT Washington, WEB DuBois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, et al. Nonetheless, that education has not changed things much apart from my own mind.
I agree with your statements regarding the way the Constitution was always intended to be–but the way the Constitution was intended to be seems not to be the Constitution we live under. Justice Sotomayor will only contribute to this problem, if one is to believe her statements to La Raza in California.
So what led to the lack of love and community–and what led to such bad constitutionalism (even if John C. Calhoun already prefigured that problem)?
Stoicism is a fine stance. It’s where I’m at in my most optimistic mood. When I’m in the opposite mood, I just say it doesn’t matter. Politics is inevitably governed by madmen.
The prosperity of the US, of which the civil rights movement helped introduce to the south, has led to the childish privilege to not give a damn. One can live one’s whole life in quiet desperation or without principle (to quote that inveterate Yankee radical of metastatic radicalism–to use Voegelinian terms since he is so popular here).
With the pleasures and comforts of modern technological life, what’s the difference between desperation and unprincipledness (to borrow from William James on what is the difference–BTW James is a writer whom Voegelin oddly relies on in his account of “Americanism”)?
I recognize a difference between the two, but I want to know why you think life has less love, community, and personal significance as a result of justice and prosperity–and I guess even further I want to know why that matters.
July 8th, 2009 | 9:00 am
Bob, Yours is wisest post by far so far, and one I’m going to have to deal with at length soon. You’re third paragraph is on the money: There is a curious flatterning of existence that some experience, but the cause is not Wal-Mart or the megachurch or even “capitalism.” The great book on this is Walker Percy’s THE LAST GENTLEMAN.
July 8th, 2009 | 9:01 am
On the above post I meant John, not that Bob isn’t pretty wise too.
July 8th, 2009 | 2:25 pm
Peter, you’re aces, dude!
I, too, get lost among the ‘comments.’ And, now I’ve taken to reading brother Faulkner, ere long it’ll be Walker Percy, and BTW my two year old grandson’s name is….Atticus.
Enjoying your ‘comments’ over at FPR.
July 9th, 2009 | 12:36 pm
[...] Pomocon. The first and only political event I remember attending (with my parents, of course) in the early [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact