LEON BOTSTEIN
199
the faith in democratic politics, in a myth of American political process
which includes a distaste for widespread citizen terror and violence, has
penetrated, even
to
the most dissident elements. This faith is symbolic
of the persistent ideal of a "nation of laws," the particularly Western
"Rechtstaat"
Justice Minister Vogel described as Germany's contem–
porary ideal.
This self-restraint among political radicals in America has its
roots in the fact that the outrage which Habermas sees as directed
against the "double standard of the older generation's morality" is
based on a clear understanding of that older generation and a corre–
sponding confidence among the .radicals in their own grasp of Ameri–
can history. The young American radical, the exemplar of the much
discussed "generation gap" and the subject of extensive psychological
and sociological inquiry in the 1960s, comprehended the older genera–
tion and was confident that the values of that generation were actually
those openly held by the older generation and genuinely adhered
to.
The older generation consequently was the subject of contempt, hate
and ridicule, but never serious doubt. The older generation, even at the
height of American radicalism, never wavered from its praise of the
compromise implicit in democracy, from its pragmatic if not phleg–
matic assertion that radical ideals are utopian and unrealistic, that
poverty and injustice are endemic and not subject to elimination, only
slow amelioration. The preaching to accept second bests, personal
prosperity, a less than perfect future, a persistent double standard
within democracy between potential and reality, outraged the young,
but cemented the young's confidence that their perception of the older
generation was accurate. The double standard and tolerant compro–
mise advocated by their elders was real and was part of a tradition
clearly within the national history of school textbooks, family lore,
and, most of all, verifiable fact and observable behavior.
American radicals, despite painful alienation from parents and an
older generation, were never
mystified,
in the political sense, by parents
and grandparents. They grew up without blank spots concerning the
past, without major mysterious political moments in personal family
history or national history. Their elders, whether politicians or private
citizens, were proud precisely of those values which the younger
generation despised. The acknowledgement of a commonly understood
tradition kept the difference between the radical young and the older
generation from possessing a true revolutionary character. Political
dissent, despite its violence, remained a matter of degree for the
American radicals. They absorbed and reflected in their action the
