The two stages of the Revolution

Bruce B. writes:

I recently had a conversation with my dad about Sixties music. He was talking about how all the hippie and revolutionary types became respectable types. For example: Alice Cooper now plays golf and Sonny Bono became a Republican Congressman. He said something like, “Boy, you know the revolution’s over when….” What doesn’t occur to people is that the revolution didn’t need to go on high-intensity for very long. Once the traditional social institutions were torn down, perpetual, low-intensity “revolution” would naturally follow, with only minimal effort to make sure that we hold our course on our journey towards emptiness and eventual extinction. This is the sort of insight I wouldn’t have picked up on if I hadn’t started reading you and Jim Kalb.

LA replies:

That’s good insight, that the “radical mainstream” I often refer to required an openly radical period to get itself started, but that the openly radical period did not need to last very long. Once it had delegitimized the basic beliefs and norms of society, and the mainstream had become radical, then open, disruptive radicalism was no longer needed. My favorite example of this is N. Podhoretz’s argument in 1996 that the demand for homosexual marriage represented a victory for conservatism, because the homosexuals were no longer acting out in the streets and being disruptive. The revolution had become invisible to its one-time opponents. A more dramatic and alarming example is the regime of “human rights” that is being imposed by unelected bureaucrats and judges in Europe. As Melanie Phillips chillingly tells it in chapter two of Londonistan, “The Human Rights Jhad,” the most radical notions of individual and cultural rights, blatantly cancelling out the moral norms and national identities of Britain and Europe, are being steadily imposed by the British and European establishments themselves, virtually without debate or opposition. This is not new information, of course, but she tells it in a way that brings an urgent clarity to what is happening.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 21, 2006 06:27 PM | Send