Dionne is mostly right. In most ways fairly obviously right in his assessment of what started to happen in 1968. He leaves out a couple things, however.

First, there is a difference between radical (no such thing as “radical” right, which is better described as reactionary right) and liberal. I think of King as a radical and not as a liberal, especially in later years, as were many others, including those remaining of the Old Left. Many members of the then New Left as well. Albeit, Johnson was a liberal. In retrospect, liberals could just about claim Nixon too.

Second, the economy didn’t start to head south until the mid- to late 70s. Meaning by “economy,” that for most folks, not that for the few who continued to do well through Reagan’s disastrous 80s and then Clinton’s equally disastrous 90s. Sure, a few more made some gains during brief booms (housing, dot-com, etc.), but not working class (including working poor, indeed largely constituted of people of color and women, also mostly of color). (As all know, the permanently unemployed don’t exist in America. Well, Except as a vague statistic that’s not accurate anyway.) Minimal gains, if those, were made by the largely white middle-class. The 50s, 60s and early 70s were comparatively prosperous times. “Prosperous” that is, within the context of a capitalist, racist, sexist “democracy.” Especially, compared to now, but compared to 80s and 90s too.

Dionne is right to blame liberals for their precipitous crash. He makes note of splintering of the Civil Rights movement. I’m not too sure about that being much of a reason. If that movement splintered, the left did so more generally. It’s worth contemplating whether or not it was the liberal left that started the Culture Wars, to which the right reacted, and then took power. As follows:

Splintering went and goes by the name: identity “politics,” which conflates culture and politics. The underlying assumption is that power can be impacted by working to change cultural attitudes. What really happens is that political movements become mere cultural movements that not only have little political impact but are easily co-opted by power. Indeed, power is glad for them as they are exploited as means by which power can disguise itself and/or justify (almost always selfish) ends by whatever (amoral) means necessary. The past 40 years are proof of this contention.

Into the political vacuum that resulted the right needed only to step. Not a lot of effort was required on their part. Being conservative or reactionary is fairly easy insofar as not much thought, never mind new thinking, is required. Really, really old ideas suit them just fine. Liberals are also mistaken when they give the right way too much credit.

Hard to believe it’s been 40 years since the Demos put all their ‘superdelegates’ in a room full of cigar smoke and decided, while beating anyone who didn’t like it-including seated delegates-to a bloody pulp, that VP Humphrey was gonna be the guy despite the will of the voters and the anti-war movement embodied by the droves of McCarthy and Kennedy supporters. The betrayal of McCarthy in Chicago (after winning the Illinois primary), the Dailey SS troops turning the streets into a war zone, then throwing away the general election and four more years of Vietnam/Cambodia is starting to look like a big deja vu. Obama is the McCarthy that will be Judased by the Demos this time. Don’t think for a minute that winning a few primaries or having a delegate lead going into the convention will get him through the nomination. Wrong answer. The superdelegates, the unseated delegates that are going to suddenly get counted, the deals struck, he is outta here. NO antiwar candidate gets elected in this country. EVER. There is no money in it, and the Democratic party is run by elitists who are every bit as sleazy and greedy as the GOP. Obama has NO CHANCE, and Clinton doesn’t either once they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by hijacking the nomination to this new Hubert Humphrey for the new millenium and run her against the warmonger fossil McCain. This is not rocket science people. Your votes mean NOTHING.

RE:  In “Tentacles of Rage,” Harper’s editor, Louis Lapham

Great post GaryA. As I read through all of the posts I was beginning to wonder if anyone would lay out what many historians are now saying about this period.

I had read the Louis Lapham Harper’s article before and found it to be probably the best analysis of the period and the changes it wrought I have read to date.

You write a great summary of it.

I remember when rading the article this part (as summarized by you really struck me.  - “Historians revisiting in tranquility the alarums and excursions of the Age of Aquarius know that Revolution Now was neither imminent nor likely.....”

Thank you for reminding me of this and for the links. It will be good to read again.

http://www.slate.com/id/2106548

Here’s the link for Jack Shafer’s take on “Tenacles of Rage”

Interesting to get the other side, flawed as it is.

P.S. Being relatively illiterate with a computer, can someone tell me how to get up those neat red colored links that you can just click.

Dear Felicity.I apologize for misreading your statements and the point you were trying to get to.I beleive your conclusion is wrong.Conservatism rose as the” me” generation took control.If you can call what took the place liberalism, conservatism.We should probably call it by its right name Fascism.Or if you find that term objectionable use Naomi Wolffe’s term corporationism.As America’s intelligence level went down corporationism flourished culminated in the last seven years of complete corporate control of the government.How is that workin for you?

Why should this be a societal goal? How about simply that those at the bottom (and there will always be a bottom) can lead comfortable lives and always have the opportunity to improve their lives?

Dear Felicity to use an a reference to fesces left on your property as an example of liberal rage is asinine.Liberal rage is generally directed at people like you who use these moronic examples directed at an entire movement directed at social fairness.Want to see conservative rage.Legislate regulations at derivatrives.Do me one favor and at least look up the dictionary definition of liberal before you make such ridiculous statements.I hope you are not one of the enraged conservatives who are getting booted out of your house.

The best explanation I’ve ever read for how America began its turn from hope to despair in 1968 came from Louis Lapham, the former august editor of Harper’s Magazine.

In an essay entitled, “Tentacles of Rage,” he lays out that the national restiveness in the mid 60s provoked a counterreaction from the seats of corporate power in the USA.

The entire, utterly brilliant essay is well worth a read and can be found at: http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propag anda1sep04.htm

But here’s a teaser.

Gary

In the summer of 1968 the misgivings were indistinguishable from panic. Martin Luther King had been assassinated; so had Robert Kennedy, and everywhere that anybody looked the country’s institutional infrastructure, also its laws, customs, best-loved truths, and fairy tales, seemed to be collapsing into anarchy and chaos—black people rioting in the streets of Los Angeles and Detroit, American soldiers killing their officers in Vietnam, longhaired hippies stoned on drugs or drowned in the bathtubs of Bel Air, shorthaired feminists playing with explosives instead of dolls, the Scottsdale and Pasadena sheriffs’ posses preparing their palomino ponies to stand firm in the face of an urban mob.

Historians revisiting in tranquility the alarums and excursions of the Age of Aquarius know that Revolution Now was neither imminent nor likely—the economy was too prosperous, the violent gestures of rebellion contained within too small a demographic, mostly rich kids who could afford the flowers and the go-go hoots—hut in the hearts of the corporate chieftains wandering among the redwood trees in the Bohemian Grove in July 1968, the fear was palpable and genuine. The croquet lawn seemed to be sliding away beneath their feet, and although they knew they were in trouble, they didn’t know why. Ideas apparently mattered, and words were maybe more important than they had guessed; unfortunately, they didn’t have any. The American property-holding classes tend to be embarrassingly ill at ease with concepts that don’t translate promptly into money, and the beacons of conservative light shining through the liberal fog of the late 1960s didn’t come up to the number of clubs in Arnold Palmer’s golf bag. The company of the commercial faithful gathered on the banks of California’s Russian River could look for succor to Goldwater’s autobiography, The Conscience of a Conservative, to William F. Buckley’s editorials in National Review, to the novels of Ayn Rand. Otherwise they were as helpless as unarmed sheepherders surrounded by a Comanche war party on the old Oklahoma frontier before the coining of the railroad and the six-gun.

The hope of their salvation found its voice in a 5,000-word manifesto written by Lewis Powell, a Richmond corporation lawyer, and circulated in August 1971 by the United States Chamber of Commerce under the heading Confidential Memorandum; Attack on the American Free Enterprise System. Soon to be appointed to the Supreme Court, lawyer Powell was a man well-known and much respected by the country’s business community; within the legal profession he was regarded as a prophet ...

For the rest, go to http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propag anda1sep04.htm

A mean legacy of greed, glutonous privilige at the expense of the common good--and as I heard someone state last night, “cowboy capitalism resulting in socialism for the Wall Street class”. Combined this with the “dumbed-down” voting against their own economic interests, subsisting on patriotic entreaties wrapped in the flag while the country goes down the drain and the world hates us.
And thanks to the triangulating Democratic party DLC leadership that paralyzed party identity and effectiveness, the campaign against liberal ideas got a boost into NeoCon fascism.