Norman Birnbaum
A NEW POLITICS FOR THE 80s?
Nothing makes many American political commentators
quite so anxious as the view that in the next decade our politics will
sharpen into an explicit conflict of left and right. Observers whose only
methon is extrapolation, historians whose notion of the past is the
Eisenhower epoch, thinkers not quite able to grasp new ideas, most
who presume to instruct us are themselves desperately seeking reassur–
ance. They seem unable to stand the thought that the only way to
preserve our society may be to change it. They do not tire of telling us
what we already know, that matters are complex. They affirm com–
plexity in principle, and in practice they deny it. Their determination
to keep up with events prevents them from getting beneath them.
It
is
surprising that persons who claim to disdain utopian thinking should
be so resolute in pursuit of a utopia devoid of hope and passion alike–
the view that things being what they are, they are unlikely to become
much different.
In
any event, the view that the United States has
entered an epoch of conservative consensus-however defined - is
sustained by no coherent and large body of evidence. The very insis–
tence with which the view is promulgated, indeed, suggests that
political description of this sort is intended to promote the very
condition it purports to describe.
No doubt, change in our society can be dangerous. The response to
the Equal Rights Amendment suggests that large areas of our culture
are brittle.
If
to these cultural conflicts we add an open effort to curb
the power of large-scale capital, we can expect a general counter-attack,
compounding and confusing issues.
If
enough anxiety is released, our
ample national reserves of anger, avarice and murderous self–
righteousness can be mobilized. The conservative argument for lower–
ing expectations, for moving slowly, is plausible enough. Compared
with many other peoples, we should be grateful that terror does not
stalk all of our streets, that our strife is contained. One difficulty,
however, is that our problems are not solved by either the consolations
or the techniques of conservatism. A realistic pessimism about human-
