Camelot and the Cultural Revolution by James Piereson

Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, a splendid book by James Piereson, expounds on a remarkable historical insight. Along with President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald murdered American liberalism that horrible Friday in November, 1963.

The reason that liberalism, as it existed in 1963, died with Kennedy had much to do with the political leanings of Oswald and the cognitive dissonance it caused among liberal admirers of the dead President who sought to find meaning in the tragedy. Oswald was a Marxist, who had in fact at one time defected to the Soviet Union, and was a warm supporter of Fidel Castro. From a logical standpoint, this fact would lead to the reasonable conclusion that John F. Kennedy, a fervent Cold Warrior, died as a martyr in what he called, "the long, twilight struggle."

The problem is that the liberals, for reasons that can be better explained by a psychologist than a historian, didn't buy that narrative. The qualities of paranoia, the potential for violence, the opposition to progress and decency were those of the right, according to liberals. Ergo, in some fashion, John F. Kennedy had to have been a victim of the right.

How liberals explained this theory when Kennedy's assassin was a Marxist is a fascinating study in self delusion. Some spun airy theories of an "atmosphere of hatred", especially existing in Dallas, then as now a conservative city, caused by the right. Kennedy was a champion of civil rights, the liberals maintained. (Never mind that, unlike his Vice President, Kennedy was lukewarm at best on that subject, fearing alienated Southern Democrats.)

When that narrative proved to be unsatisfying, liberals descended into the fever swamps of conspiracy theories. Clearly Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the real assassin. President Kennedy had to have been killed by a shadowy cabal of right wingers. Anti Castro Cubans maybe, or perhaps conservative businessmen or the CIA. Thousands of books and movies have been written on the subject of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, including the film JFK, directed by Oliver Stone.

Ironically, by embracing the idea of conspiracy, the left spiraled into what was once called the "paranoid style" of politics, seeing conspiracies behind virtually everything. Watergate tended to buttress this world view. The attitude exists to this day, as MoveOn.Org denies certain positive facts on the ground of the Iraq War as it would be politically inconvenient to do so.

Even more ominous is the transfiguration of liberalism from the positive, progress oriented, optimistic political philosophy to something very ugly and even hateful. Liberals in 1963 believed that America and Americans were basically good and, through government action, could be made even better. The idea has flaws, but at the very least it was one that was uplifting and positive.

Not so today. Piereson postulates that liberalism has become something called "Punitive Liberalism." Instead of advocating policies that uplift and benefit people, liberals now want to punish. To them, Americans are basically racist, sexist, and homophobic and they need to be slapped down and kept from doing evil things by those wiser than them (i.e. the liberals.) Americans make too much money as well, so it would be better to raise taxes. Americans can't be trusted to make sound decisions, so government must make those decisions for them, especially in health care. After all, it makes a weird kind of sense if one believes that "we all killed Kennedy."

This "liberal crack up" as Bob Tyrrell called it has had remarkable effects on American political culture. Many liberals, who did not buy into the new liberalism, left and became neo conservatives or Reagan Democrats or even, after a while, conservatives. Those liberals who stayed, such as Joe Lieberman, have become increasingly alienated from the party that was once theirs.

Meanwhile the positive, optimistic, progress oriented style of politics has migrated to the right. Ronald Reagan personified this new style, speaking of a "morning in America" and dreaming of then bringing into reality the final defeat of communism, something no liberal as late as 1988 ever conceived possible. Conservatives such as Newt Gingrich have become the source of every new idea for public policy, including social security reform, school choice, the flat tax, and welfare and health care reform. Liberals have increasingly become reactionary, reduced to standing athwart the path of history (as William F. Buckley used to say), crying, "Halt!"

Even worse, the left has adopted the style of snarling, angry, hate filled rhetoric, accusing their opponents of not only being wrong, but evil. The demonization of conservative statesmen such as Reagan, Gingrich, and President George W. Bush are cases in point. It is a sad, deplorable development that we now have an adult party (with its occasional flaws) and the childish party (which is all flaws.) Political struggle has become cheap and rancorous as a result.