The Anti-War GOP

Via Rod Dreher, this 1956 Eisenhower campaign ad aimed at positioning Ike's credentials as the candidate of peace, the guy who ended the Korean War and who won't get the country into a new one:

It's an interesting counterpoint to the widespread idea that the more hawkish candidate always wins or that the United States is just an inherently militaristic country. On pretty much any metric you can imagine, the country is more culturally liberal than it was in 1956, and the objective threat level today is way lower than it was 50 years ago. For whatever reason, though, political debate is stuck in a really cramped kind of nationalism.

Comments

an interesting counterpoint to the widespread idea that the more hawkish candidate always wins or that the United States is just an inherently militaristic country

Note that the last Republican to pull off this "candidate of peace" thing was a successfull 5-star general . . .

Posted by rea | May 17, 2007 11:39 AM

The h/t link to Dreher is broken.

Posted by Mike | May 17, 2007 11:40 AM

Obligatory: IOKIYAR

Posted by jhupp | May 17, 2007 11:42 AM

It's an interesting counterpoint to the widespread idea that the more hawkish candidate always wins or that the United States is just an inherently militaristic country.

Exactly rea. It's not as though any candidate could out-military Ike. Seems to me as though he was merely trying to shore up marginal votes from the non-hawk (or military or center or whathaveyou) electorate.

(Although it is still somewhat astounding how easily Commander Bunnypants was able to be successfully positioned as more military-savvy than a well-decorated war hero with 20 confirmed kills.)

Posted by ed | May 17, 2007 11:48 AM

You gots to consider the times too. Post WWDeuce and Korea vs. post 9/11.

Heck, Clenis won in part because of non-hawkishness in the wake of the Cold War and Gulf War (one of many bogus reasons why Administration invaded Iraq--make sure they were still at war during an election. Had Bush I still been fighting Iraq in November '92, he'd prob'ly have won.)

Posted by ed | May 17, 2007 11:53 AM

Eisenhower had made a white peace to end the Korean War, so it may have been difficult for the militarists to blame the "defeat" on the usual suspects like leftists, moral turpitude, or whatever.

Only 4 years later, Kennedy won the presidential election, at least in part, by claiming the US had a missile gap with the Soviet Union.

The country was ripe to try another war in Asia, as it did during the 60s with the Vietnam War. Of course, that war was lost as well, but this time the militarists blamed the leftists, hippies, and newsmedia for losing the war. It was remarkably effective and led to the Yglesia's so called Green Lantern theory of foreign policy.

In Christian thought, there is a theological debate between good deeds vs. faith. With the rise of the evangelicals, is it any wonder that the Green Lantern theory of will power is so prevalent as well?

If faith alone is the key to heaven, success on earth must be driven by faith in your leaders and the willpower to endure.

(apologizing in advance for my poor grammar)

Posted by scott | May 17, 2007 11:53 AM

When Ike was running the US still remembered World War 2, when hundreds of thousands of people died and the country genuinely seemed to be at risk. That was what war meant then, and it was worth going to great lengths to avoid it. It's precisely because the stakes are so low now that there's little cost in running as the pro-war candidate.

Posted by william | May 17, 2007 11:56 AM

Speaking of Ike -- can y'all imagine a Republican today warning us about the military-industrial complex?

*

As for the question -- three reasons:

(1) (a) the sharp right turn in post-millenialist thought.
(b) the filtering of dispensationalism into more mainstream discourse

(2) Three letters -- J.F.K. Two words, Ronald Reagan

(3) Baby boomers dealing with their aging parents and a sense of loss as they die.

(1) as post-millenialism becomes more about "establishing a theocracy" than about "making this world a peaceful place for 1000 years so Jesus won't be afraid of getting crucified again if he comes back", activist Christians attuned to post-millenialist thinking care less about making peace and more about, shall we say, crusading. Meanwhile, while true Darbyites are as politically dispassionate as any other pre-millenialism, in giving a blueprint for establishing a second coming, Darby made it possible for pre-millenialism to be as activist as post-millenialism. So we see a one/two punch from more militarized versions of Christianity which simply weren't so prominant even 40 years ago.

(2) JFK and Ronald Reagan changed our view of what a President should do -- e.g., be a fearless leader. The mindset engendered, of following the fearless leader, is, at the risk of a Godwin's law violation, well, fascist rather than peaceful and democratic. And it's not for nothin' that Ike warned us of a military-industrial complex as JFK was waiting in the wings ...

(3) Baby boomers by their numbers have a disproportionate influence on our body politic. And as their parents get old and die, their personal issues with such become national political concerns -- e.g. their desire for closure becomes hero-worship of "the greatest generation who fought the greatest war(TM)". Which worship of warriors leads to militarism.

Anyway -- (at $0.01 a reason) that's my $0.03 worth.

Posted by DAS | May 17, 2007 12:01 PM

"On pretty much any metric you can imagine, the country is more culturally liberal than it was in 1956, and the objective threat level today is way lower than it was 50 years ago. For whatever reason, though, political debate is stuck in a really cramped kind of nationalism."

Part of the reason, I would guess, is that the country had recently been involved in World War 2 and a grim little war in Korea, a powerful nuclear-armed enemy was staring at us, and there was a draft. There was a genuine understanding of the risk, sacrifice, and horrors involved in war and no great desire to repeat those experiences.

There was definitely a market for rabid nationalism and righteous ass-kicking in 1956, too. It's a recurring theme in American politics that occasionally goes underground but never really goes away. As William points out, it tends to resurface whenever the stakes are low.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 17, 2007 12:01 PM

In 1956, the public had very recent memories of two wars, one especially that actually cost the wider public. A degree of dovishness held cache at the time because peace couldn't be dismissed as an abstract luxury for wussies.

Posted by brian | May 17, 2007 12:04 PM

the objective threat level today is way lower than it was 50 years ago.

It is indeed amazing that the "terrorists" are perceived by many ( if not most? ) as a threat equivalent to the Soviet Union.

And the Cold War was not that long ago. Many, if not most of us were eighteen or older by 1989. In any event, the memory still should be distinct.

Yes, during that period we had McCarthy, the Hiss trial, J. Edgar Hoover, Watergate, and related problems. Nevertheless, some workable semblance of a democratic republic prevailed during that era. Remember, Eisenhower ( of whom I nevertheless generally am critical ) also enforced the civil rights rulings.

Yet nowadays there has been a rush to assert "9/11 has changed everything," "the Constitution is not a suicide pact," open discussions of torture, and so forth.

One thing about the Bush advocates' agenda that s remarkable is that, on the one hand, they assert that terrorism is this new, unprecedented threat and, on the other, they advocate all these radical, drastic responses.

Look, if "terrorism" (however defined) actually is this new, unprecedented thing then nobody, not you, not me, and certainly not them, can have any good idea what to do about it. By definition there could be no such thing as a terrorism expert. It shouldn't matter what Churchill would have done in Munich because, if terrorism is unprecedented, Hitler would have no more to do with the matter than H. G. Wells and The War of the Worlds. ( And, if WWII were a template, then wouldn't that suggest the United States should have responded as FDR did and not as Bush has? ).

So why so drastic an agenda? And why, given the terra infirma they say we now are on, are they so adamantly opposed to differing viewpoints?

Posted by Duncan Kinder | May 17, 2007 12:12 PM

I think people are forgetting the main difference here -- the draft. The USA had a peace time draft in the 1950s. So there were millions of young men in the army who would be sent into combat immediately -- men who weren't career soldiers and came from all walks of life. So issues of war had a personal salience and it was important to be seen as the candidate of peace. And of course, as the people have mentioned and the ad makes clear, memories of WWII and the Korean War were strong.

Posted by Jeet Heer | May 17, 2007 12:13 PM

Eisenhower could get away with running as a peace candidate because his warrior credentials were firmly established. He had already proven himself capable of winning a war. He didn't have to prove his toughness.

Posted by DonB | May 17, 2007 12:13 PM

Re: Baby boomers dealing with their aging parents and a sense of loss as they die.

People have always been dealing with aging parents and with the losses caused by death. Good grief, let's not pretnmd the Boomers have even cornered the market on grief.

Re: the sharp right turn in post-millenialist thought.

Post-millennialsm is a fairly small player in American Christianity, found mainly in a handful of theologically conservative Calvinist churches (e.g., the Orthodox Presbyterian Church). Most evangelical churches, many Pentacostals, and also the Baptists, are pre-millennialist (hence that stuff about the Rapture). Catholics, mainline Protestants and smaller Christian groups like the Orthodox and (correct me if I'm wrong) the LDS are a-millennialist, meaning that their theology doesn't treat with this one way or the other.

Posted by JonF | May 17, 2007 12:17 PM

Eisenhower famously said, "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can."

I wonder if Dick Cheney will be remembered for loving war as only a man with five deferments can.

Posted by Steve | May 17, 2007 12:17 PM

Don't forget Woodrow Wilson, who ran for reelection in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of war". Once reelected, he promptly got us into World War I, although admittedly his hand was forced by the Zimmermann Telegram.

Posted by wahoofive | May 17, 2007 12:33 PM

America is naturally imperialist because it is a world empire; and it's naturally militarist because it depends mainly on military power to preserve its empire, especially now that the rest of the world is increasingly more attracted to the W European economic model than the much harsher and less equal American model.

The American people agree to all this mainly because they believe their own propaganda - heroes of WW2, beloved by everyone worldwide, best standard of living anywhere, the best at everything, capable of winning wars without even trying very hard. I doubt that losing in Iraq will have a more lasting sobering effect than losing in Korea or losing in Vietnam.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 17, 2007 12:37 PM

Have to remember some additional context of the times - it wasn't just that WWII and Korea were fresh in our memories, but Democrats had been successfully painted as the "war party" (you still sometimes hear today how Democrats get us into wars) and Ike had specifically campaigned in 1952 on ending the war ("I will go to Korea") which was ended less than 6 months into Ike's first term. So 3+ years later, the public needed to be reminded of these things - much as the GOP in 2004 needed to remind us of 9/11.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | May 17, 2007 12:42 PM

THis provides another reason why 08 Democratic nominee has to be Gen. Petraeus. I know K-Lo speculated about how he should be the '12 GOP nominee and Eli Lake said that if he says the surge isn't working in September, he could be the Demo nominee, I think Eli's been the only to speculate this, and he's an out of this world crazy neocon, so take for what you will.

Posted by matt z | May 17, 2007 12:43 PM

People have always been dealing with aging parents and with the losses caused by death. Good grief, let's not pretnmd the Boomers have even cornered the market on grief.

Of course people have been dealing with grief since the dawn of humanity. Of course, Boomers have not cornered the market. But they are a big enough and self-important enough group that their attitudes really can shape attitudes of the society at large.

Post-millennialsm is a fairly small player in American Christianity, found mainly in a handful of theologically conservative Calvinist churches (e.g., the Orthodox Presbyterian Church). Most evangelical churches, many Pentacostals, and also the Baptists, are pre-millennialist (hence that stuff about the Rapture). - JonF

Perhaps I overstated part (a) and understated part (b) -- btw, post-millennialism used to be a bigger influence in American Christianity ... which came first, its loss of influence or its right-ward shift? could be an interesting question to consider -- do remember, though, that pre-millenialism, while almost necessarily opposed to social change and progressivism, used to not have the political influence it does today, because pre-millennialists tended to view any sort of political involvement as futile.

Why and how did pre-millennialists become involved, e.g., in trying to actively bring on the rapture? The implimentability of Darby's vision is one aspect. I would suspect the development of reactionary post-millenialist views (e.g. Christian Reconstructionism and Dominionism) also provided a template for the political activism of pre-millenialist Christians: look at the connections between post-millenialist Christians and the largely pre-millenialist religious right.

correct me if I'm wrong

AFAIK, you're right! :)

Posted by DAS | May 17, 2007 12:44 PM

"the objective threat level today is way lower than it was 50 years ago."

I think that's exactly why we have a more militaristic and nationalist viewpoint. It's our comparative strength today, in a way it was not in the past. So leaders turn to military solutions more readily.

Posted by MDtoMN | May 17, 2007 12:44 PM

Eisenhower was more hawkish. Which translated into LESS likely to get into a war.

A smart hawk is more likely to stay out of war than a smart dove anyday.

Now a dumb hawk, like the current President, that's just dangerous.

Posted by Adam Herman | May 17, 2007 12:51 PM

I saw a similar-themed ad for Nixon from 1968. He was the candidate who promised to get us out of the Democrat's war. "This time, vote as if your life depended on it" was the tagline, after quick cuts between boisterous parades and football games against violent scenes from the war.

Going back to WW1, Republicans were the party of isolationism. Wilkie interventionist stance in 1940 was a fluke -- the other Republican candidates and GOP congressmen opposed getting involved against Hitler.

It wasn't until the cultural upheavals of the 50s and 60s and especially the anti-Vietnam protesting that the tables turned. The civil rights movement pushed segregationists to the GOP. By the beginning of the 1970s Nixon had invented the "silent majority" to capture the backlash of hippie-haters. If the hippies hadn't opposed the war I'm not sure it would have happened like that. But the upshot is that Republicans since have been bellicose and Democrats have been sensitive to being called sissies. Anyway that's the answer in Frank-Perlstein type thinking.

Posted by Ezra 1 | May 17, 2007 1:00 PM

A smart hawk is more likely to stay out of war than a smart dove anyday.

Can you... define your terms?

Posted by Steve | May 17, 2007 1:04 PM

I don't think its clear that the country is more liberal now than in the 1950s with respect to issues relevant to militarism and nationalism. Off the top of my head I think its relevant that: (1) WWII did not just show that war itself was hell but that aggressive nationalism was evil, (2) the US was a key player in establishing the UN and international human rights law (hard to imagine that these days), (3) for white males (who, of course, dominated the political process), America was a much more egalitarian society---there was the draft, a much stronger labor movement, and less economic inequality, (4) Americans were generally anti-colonial, and (5) Americans were far more distrustful of the military (perhaps from personal experience).

Posted by Finn | May 17, 2007 1:22 PM

I think part of the explanation is that there's been a deliberate campaign to distract people from economic stagnation and rising inequality with aggressive nationalism (and thinly disguised racist appeals). This has been particularly marked among white males with less than a college education, who not coincidentally have been the biggest economic losers in the past 30-40 years. Nobody likes feeling like a loser, and so it's easy to rile up this group and make them feel more powerful by talking about invading somebody. It's all part of the GOP mass distraction campaign, along with racism, gay-hating, anti-abortionism/feminism, etc. Eisenhower didn't feel the need to engage in this kind of rhetoric, as the economy was booming in that era, white males were privileged, and inequality, at least among whites, was much less than it is now.

Posted by beckya57 | May 17, 2007 1:39 PM

"Nixon had invented the "silent majority" to capture the backlash of hippie-haters. If the hippies hadn't opposed the war I'm not sure it would have happened like that."

Jeez. I am not even sure the hippies were the most visible symbol of the cultural revolution that included the Pill, Stonewall, bra-burning, nudity and sex and extreme violence in movies(rating system).

Jerry Falwell didn't build his career by attacking bell-bottoms & body-paint but Ezra isn't about to blame the Republican ascendancy on the pro-choice movement.

The hippies weren't important to anything or anybody. The Hell's Angels, as blue-collar and redneck as they get, were smoking pot with the freaks by 68, as was much of rural America by the mid-70s.

It is only a certain kind of liberal that thinks the Grateful Dead and Ramparts were the decisive
factors in late 20th Century American politics.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 17, 2007 1:58 PM

Per some comments above, in 1956 the Democrats were the party of muscular foriegn intervantionism and the Republicans, though not isolationists anymore, thought a non isolationist foriegn policy as a necessary evil.

The split was also motivated by the difference in views concerning the efficacy of govt 'social engineering', it carried over into foriegn policy.

We're a bit schizoid about that now, aren't we?

Posted by j mct | May 17, 2007 2:01 PM

"If the hippies hadn't opposed the war I'm not sure it would have happened like that." ...Ezra

And that has to be the funniest line I have read in weeks. Pro-war flower children?

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 17, 2007 2:04 PM

"Per some comments above, in 1956 the Democrats were the party of muscular foriegn intervantionism and the Republicans, though not isolationists anymore, thought a non isolationist foriegn policy as a necessary evil."

Actually, Stevenson in 1956 was mildly dovish, more so than Ike--and certainly compared to Truman a few years earlier or JFK a few years later. For example, he advocated that the US suspend atmospheric nuclear tests. (The libertarian/isolationist Murray Rothbard supported Stevenson, because of the latter's dovishness.) It does say something, however, that in 1956 the two parties wrere in a competition to be the *most* "peace-loving."

Posted by David T | May 17, 2007 2:17 PM

The split was also motivated by the difference in views concerning the efficacy of govt 'social engineering', it carried over into foriegn policy. - j mct

And I guess then the neo-cons are perhaps important in changing the GOP's views on war then?

Posted by DAS | May 17, 2007 2:17 PM

I don't know where this mindset of Ezra's comes from, somebody is teaching bullshit in schools.

I was there.

Some of the most visible symbols of the anti-war movement were Robert Drinan and the Berrigan brothers. They got on TV to millions, not Peter Coyote and the dopers. This might have contributed to denominational religious splits in the following decades.

And even around 1970, America was not quaking in fear over domestic terrorism by the Weather Underground. They were a tiny movement that caused little damage and not much concern.

OTOH, George Wallace had two relatively successful Presidential campaigns based on forced school integration and busing.

It makes much more sense to say that feminism and race were the emergent polarizing and party defining issues of the sixties, and those are still the major differences between the parties. How those connect to militarism is a subject for someone who really wants to look at America, not seel scapegoats.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 17, 2007 2:20 PM

It makes much more sense to say that feminism and race were the emergent polarizing and party defining issues of the sixties, and those are still the major differences between the parties. - bob mcmanus

That is indeed, AFAIK, the history. But if you listen to those who are supposedly experts on politics (e.g. media pundits and commentators) and those who wish to explain their visceral hatred of Dems. without coming off as racist or sexist, they pretty much blame the dirty hippy contingent -- so cut Ezra some slack for doing the same ... some of us are too young to know first hand (even if we know in general not to trust them) that what the media, et al., tell us about the 60's just ain't right (insert "those who remember the 60's" joke here).

Posted by DAS | May 17, 2007 2:34 PM

ike ran in '52 on a hawkish platform of ending the korea war, incl keeping open the option of using nuclear weapons. this dovish ad is only for his re-election

Posted by pt | May 17, 2007 2:40 PM

1) It's all about money ,people.

2) In gearing up for a prolonged Cold War with the Soviet Union, the Pentagon's defense contractors desperately needed huge amounts of tungsten for steel alloys. Plus General Electric needed it for their light bulbs.

By a remarkable coincidence, the only significant sources of tungsten ore outside China and the Soviet Union were in ..ta da.. South Korea and Thailand --next door to Vietnam.
US tungsten imports were classified during the Truman/Eisenhower administration but have since been declassified and show a massive surge of extraction from Asia and stockpiling in the USA.

3) Grabbing Vietnam also provided several bonus points : (a) protecting the French rubber plantations of Michelin -- a quid pro quo demanded by the French for supporting NATO (b)
China is hemmed in by the Himalayas, the Pacific Ocean and the Soviet Union -- Vietnam was a cork in the bottle that blocked China's only route for expansion (c) Vietnam was a food source for Japan -- gave us a way to grab the Japanese by the short hairs and prevent any courtship by the Chinese. Important to reassure US investors like IBM who were pouring money into Japan to exploit the low wage rates.

4) The elites make their decisions for reason A and then justify their actions to the rabble with misleading reasons B and C.

Socrates pointed out 2500 years ago that the mob is led around by myths created by the elites -- that they see scary shadows projected on the cave wall and think it is reality -- never realizing that people behind them are moving objects to create those shadows.

5) Today, you see those same shadows on Fox News and on the pages of the Washington Post /New York Times.

6) Pigs will fly before you will ever see the mainstream news media acknowledge the commercial interests driving US and domestic policy --much less name names.

Posted by Don Williams | May 17, 2007 3:12 PM

Correction to last post: "US and domestic policy " should read "US foreign and domestic policy". sorry.

Posted by Don Williams | May 17, 2007 3:16 PM

"On pretty much any metric you can imagine, the country is more culturally liberal than it was in 1956"

I would challenge that assumption. We're only more liberal in terms of sex issues (gender norms, familial norms, sexual orientations)and, in theory (though nowhere near as much in practice as we'd like to believe), on racial ones. Those are very important, but that's not the end of the story either.

It's true that most of the criticism of that time was through the lens of white men, but there was far MORE criticism of society in that time in popular culture than there is today. For example, seeing a movie about how screwed up the American military is was a normal occurance (Attack!, Men in War, Crossfire, etc). You won't see that today (there's still not a single critical fictional movie about Iraq War II).

In 1952, Ben Appel published Plunder which revealed the post WWII American occupation of the Phillipines to be an absolute morass of corruption, gangsterism, theft, murders and so on - again, we've seen nothing yet from American culture which even begins to utilize Iraq War II (heck, Time magazine publishes stories where American contractors in Iraq around killing each other for hidden millions and we get not a peep out of American culture).

By the late Fifties, it was considered almost cliche to publish or film about how bad (conformist, stiffling, etc) the suburbs were. (No Down Payment, Act of Violence, Philip Roth, John Cheever, Updike, Richard Yates, etc etc etc). Everybody did it back then. Of course, we still hold the memories of all those critiques but no longer really produce our own critiques ourselves.

Posted by burritoboy | May 17, 2007 3:21 PM

Matthew, a couple of terms are being confused here. The country is definitely more post-modern than it was in 1956--meaning that a larger number of people support abortion-by-choice, racial integration, etc.--but 1956 was part of the golden era of liberalism, in which "liberals" dominated spy agencies, government bureaucracies, the news networks. There were still plenty of administration officials in high-ranking positions who'd come up during Roosevelt's initial New Deal program, and an "Eisenhower Republican" is clearly, based on the man's own words, a moderate/liberal Republican. Ward Cleaver and crew were probably Republicans, but they would also clearly have been what the 1950's would have believed were liberals. Conservatives were basically John Birch curmudgeons, who have never really owned much power in our society. We cycle through "conservative" politics occasionally, but mostly when we do, we wind up with the Republicans from the late 1860's, the Republicans of the 19-teens and 20's, the Republicans of late 60's-early 70's, and the Republicans of the 1990's-present. I exclude the Reagan years only because the other examples are so hideously corrupt that they actually give Reagan's administration a bit of legitimacy.

Posted by steve davis | May 17, 2007 3:42 PM

Burritoboy makes a good point. The Great Depression had left no one with any illusions about the nature of US capitalism and the Republican Party.

The atomic spy rings scared the shit out of the elites and convinced them to give a decent deal to the rabble in the 1950s and 1960s. After the fall of the Soviet Union, we went back to the humane policies of the Robber Barons.

Posted by Don Williams | May 17, 2007 3:43 PM

Ward Cleaver and crew were probably Republicans, but they would also clearly have been what the 1950's would have believed were liberals. Conservatives were basically John Birch curmudgeons - steve davis

Part of that isn't a matter of ideology but a matter of what people think of names of ideologies. One of the greatest victories of the GOP in the past half-century was making "liberal" into a bad word and "conservative" into a good word.

And the unwashed center is not ideologically sophisticated: which means they'll vote based on what they think are ideologies with good names. If the Dems. are viewed as the liberal party and people think a "liberal" is a good thing to be, they'll vote Dem. If the Dems. are viewed as the liberal party and people think "liberal" is a bad thing to be, they'll vote GOP.

Posted by DAS | May 17, 2007 4:07 PM

"so cut Ezra some slack for doing the same"

Nah. Because I think there is something happenin' here, tho I don't know what it is. So I just have facts and impressions, not arguments.

Lived with spittin distance of the Mississippi my whole life, factories and farmes. I am Red America.

In 1969 East Texas hosted a weekend dirt festival headlining Led Zeppelin. No hate & fear of hippies was in evidence. 2-3 years later East Oklahoma hosted a weekend dirt festival headlining Jerry Lee Lewis & Willie Nelson. To a very large degree, the audiences for the two were the same.

One of the most successful remnants of the 60s was the hippie ethos, especially, especially in Red America. Pot, beards, long hair, rebellion and non-conformity were at the heart of "Country" by the mid-70s. Cash & Haggard were never really all that far from Jerry Garcia. Country eventually moved to the suburbs but Trish Yearwood really belongs to the Celine Dion crowd more than the Dolly Parton crew (who made great friends with Ronstadt & Emmylou).

"Hippies" may have started in SF, the big cities, but the immigrants who fueled it were from Minnesota & Iowa, and took it back when the party ended. Even SF 68 music has much deeper roots in country & bluegrass than say, urban soul. The Dead played "Not Fade Away" but rarely blues. Hippies were country, from the start, and country accepted them overnight. There ain't much distance from Hare Krishna to a tent revival.

So where was the backlash? Ok Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol hated the hippies. And there was "Clean for Gene". So it appears to me that maybe certain coastal ascetic intellectuals and maybe Calvinist descendants had a problem.

Like I said, there is a political story not yet told here. Maybe something Thomas Frank could use.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 17, 2007 5:44 PM

Relax. I'm not blaming the got-damn hippies. I was just sketching briefly the timeline of the backlash theory -- which of course deals in caricatures and stereotypes. Hippies, of course, are a ideological stand-in for the sexual revolution, civil rights, women's lib, etc. -- and soldier-spitting Vietnam protesters. The fact that it's not accurate is beside the point.

How country music was co-opted by Nixon's "silent majority" is indeed another story. A fellow I know recently wrote his dissertation on that very subject.

Posted by Ezra 1 | May 17, 2007 6:29 PM

DonB,

Given your comment about Ike as military hero, what do we do with the swift-boating of John Kerry? Swift-boat tactics will likely continue to happen with any war hero candidate who does not come across as pathologically pro-war. And it's not like John Kerry even ran as a peace candidate, quite the opposite. It's true Kerry doesn't exactly have Eishenhower's military credentials, and the historical context is different. But I think the contrast illustrates how much more truly liberal the U.S. was in 1956. We've really devolved...

Posted by Warren | May 17, 2007 6:34 PM

"Note that the last Republican to pull off this "candidate of peace" thing was a successfull 5-star general . . ."

Nixon pulled it off too -- and was reelected in a landslide -- by promising to achieve "peace with honor" in the war entered into and escalated by the previous two Democratic Presidents.

Historically, Dem Presidents have been the interventionist hawks -- Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ -- the two Bushes have been aberrations.

Posted by Fred | May 17, 2007 7:13 PM

Re: Of course, we still hold the memories of all those critiques but no longer really produce our own critiques ourselves.

No anti-suburbia movies in our time? You are kidding, right? What was American Beauty then? Or (turning to TV) what do you make of Desperate Housewives? There's simply no shortage in pop culture of movies, shows etc. depicting suburbia as a sump of moral dry rot and frothing cultural corruption. As for anti-Iraq War movies, you'll have to wait until after it's over before those start to come out. It's not as if we had a lot of anti WWII movies in 1944, or even anti-Vietnam movies in 1970.

Posted by JonF | May 17, 2007 8:52 PM

"Hippies, of course, are a ideological stand-in for the sexual revolution, civil rights, women's lib, etc"

Wel, there has been a recent two-hour show on Haight-Ashbury on one of informtional that was pretty terrivle, even tho narrated by Coyote and other veterans. So I been thinking, and did get excited.

Because if the hippies were just the extreme manifestation of a new rural/grass roots/populist movement you can understand why both Trotskyite vanguardists like the neo-cons and process liberals would be offended and frightened.

"How country music was co-opted by Nixon's "silent majority" is indeed another story. A fellow I know recently wrote his dissertation on that very subject."

I am no expert on country music. But it is interesting, that very soon and directly influenced by the quick flash of the psych & the SF scenes, we had country-rock out of LA/Laurel Canyon, Progressive country out of Austin/Bakersfield, and the Southern Rock of Lynyrd Skynyrd/Charlie Daniels/Ozark Mountain Daredevils etc.

And effing disco in the cities.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 17, 2007 8:53 PM

I think Bob has a point.

One word:

Willie Nelson

Posted by Don Williams | May 17, 2007 10:54 PM

"As for anti-Iraq War movies, you'll have to wait until after it's over before those start to come out. It's not as if we had a lot of anti WWII movies in 1944"

Actually, movies critical about (or dubious about) the Korean war started coming out about a year after the war had begun (Samuel Fuller's The Steel Helmet being the most interesting). While no movie in 1944 was anti-WWII, they were often massively more critical than today's movies. Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) openly admits that soldiers were a bunch of drunken horndogs who use servicemen's clubs as an opportunity to screw as many women as possible. His Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) lampoons a small town's "war hero" worship. 1947's Crossfire shows returning WWII soldiers as a bunch of drunken, prostitute-hiring louts (some of whom are vicious anti-Semites).

The first fictional movie critical of Iraq War I, conversely, came out 8 years after the end of that war. The first movies critical about Vietnam came out towards the end of the 1970s (MASH is technically set in Korea and even MASH was only released 4 years after the start of Vietnam escalation).

"What was American Beauty then? Or (turning to TV) what do you make of Desperate Housewives?"

Retreads of better 1950s originals with more sex (read or watch No Down Payment, for instance). Has anyone managed to do anything to equal Goodbye Columbus, Revolutionary Road or John Cheever in the past 30 years?

Posted by burritoboy | May 18, 2007 10:48 AM

For some reason, youtube has removed the video for terms of use violations.

Posted by Lbd | May 18, 2007 11:24 AM