This is just a little story of one way in which the cultural movements of the 1960s were turned to the Republican Party's advantage. How's that, you say? Read on...
Setting the stage (not quite "all the world", but suburban America in the wake of the '60s)
A couple of years ago, I was invited to play bass as part of a local Rush tribute show in Atlanta. One of the two pieces I played (having been allowed to cherry-pick) was "2112", the "rock operetta" that serves as the title track of their studio album from 1976. It comes with a curious songwriting credit at the head of the lyrics:
Lyrics by Neil Peart
With acknowledgment to the genius of Ayn Rand
The story that "2112" tells is original with Peart, Rush's drummer, but it was inspired by Rand's Anthem and tells a somewhat similar story. A young man (of course, and probably white, too) in an apparently quasi-Utopian society of contented total conformity where all needs are satisfied (well, the ones people already know they have, anyway) finds a guitar while wandering alone one day. He teaches himself to play it, but when he presents it to the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx (the class that runs his society), one of them takes it and smashes it to bits; better not to have such individualistic distractions interfering with the smooth administration of The Perfect Society (from the Priests' viewpoint, at least). He goes off alone, has a vision in a dream of his own of his ideal society (involving "the elder race" that were somehow chased off decades before, but who "still learn and grow" elsewhere), and at least contemplates suicide. The ending is left somewhat ambiguous; the only words in the "Grand Finale" are someone intoning "Attention, all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control." (Each sentence is spoken three times as the piece comes to its thunderous conclusion.) Who are "we"? Has the "elder race" returned? Have the Priests put down a rebellion? Is it someone else entirely?
There are real, legitmate points to be made here: Security (and even a measure of happiness) isn't worth the loss of individuality, creativity, and a larger awareness, which are necessary for a truly healthy civilization. All creative people should have an honored, primary role in society. Utopia might have a blind spot.
This is a powerful message for any of us who ever imagined ourselves Creative Types; why not have a society where Creative Types are in charge instead of being shunted off to one side by the powers that be? I must admit, it even attracts me somewhat, though I can tell there's something about the reaction to it that's not quite right--the message was too often absorbed by people who hadn't yet learned to hold all values in balance and at the same time give each one its full due, still a perspective in short supply in these days of "prioritizing". It strikes me that a piece like "2112" was a part of many rock fans' political awakening, which underscores the importance of simply being the first to get to people.
A story that appeared in the 2112 tour program is also pertinent in illustrating the underlying issue:
2112 Tour Book Story
(I guess we know who's "assumed control", then, after all.)
Just a few years before, the word "revolution" was on the lips of millions throughout the Western world and beyond. Any rock listener, hippie or not (quite), would have had this in mind in 1976--and what with the emergence of new listeners in the half-decade or so since, here was a way of hooking into that revolutionary energy that they could claim for their own, in the service of values (so it seemed on the face of it) born of the movements of the '60s, or at least colored by those movements.
Most Rush listeners in 1976 would not, from what I know, have thought of themselves as conservatives or Republicans in any way; they probably would've considered themselves largely apolitical, which is kind of the point. But it helped plant the seed of a certain suspicion of the welfare state that might be nurtured by forces right of center, and as such they've felt it worth making common cause with the GOP in order to beat back the encroaching Stalinism they think they see in the Democratic push toward universal health care. (In fact, it's downright likely that many listeners were first made aware of Rand by "2112".) Now if you tell them they see liberal politics the way they do because some rock band back in 1976 made a great album (and it is a very good album, if a bit pleasantly quaint at times), they'll deny it up and down, but the trajectory of history seems to suggest as much.
People on either side may yell about Hitler or Stalin or whatever, but that's just a way of indicating their emotional investment--the importance they attach to whatever the issue is. But really, it's not Reds today's libertarians are looking for under the bed--it's Priests of the Temples of Syrinx. You can see that in the "politically correct" canard that developed in the '90s as well; people of a certain cultural background look at people invoking The Common Good and people wondering just what proper name to apply to such-and-such a social group and just see more Priests.
Meanwhile, the left side of center observes this sort of thing and decides the '60s (or, more accurately, the '70s) have somehow developed cooties. Cooties are a major social issue these days--and by that I mean the idea that some cultural scene or trajectory is somehow made irredeemably corrupt if some less benevolent force gets hold of it. I suppose it's appropriate that the words "cooties" and "coopt" are so similar--the delivery both words get seems similar as well. The standard reaction to all this left of center is to adopt what I might call a "neo-Beat" attitude, largely born of the punk/new wave explosion, with its recovery--"ironic" at first, then more in earnest--of the time before the Summer of Love: "Hippies thuck! What did they do? Beats came first!" But if the '60s and '70s have cooties, surely the '50s do, too? What doesn't? What sort of long-term, forward-looking solution is that? How in the world can you prevent such a thing happening?
So, what to do?
Beyond a certain point, we have to let people come forward on their own terms; if we deem them not pure enough because they've only embraced some things and not others, we deny them the opportunity to come the rest of the way. Some of them may never make it all the way, but even so, the forward movement they do manage to make helps create a socio-cultural atmosphere in which that movement can continue. Otherwise, we cut ourselves off from some of the forward momentum we need--and not only that, we ourselves help create an atmosphere conducive to reaction instead of progress.
I think it's possible to reach many of these voters--not all of them have swallowed the neo-con line whole. Most of them have fairly "liberal" attitudes about many other things; our first goal ought to be to help them overcome their hangups about the welfare state, because this is the linchpin. Point out to them how supporting the GOP hasn't led to much advancement elsewhere in their agenda (except for allowing the untrammelled movement of money--and how has that really helped them as a class? Is it worth giving up all the rest of it for that?) Show them the DIY strain on the left--all the community-owned businesses and cooperatives and such. Point out how the concentration of private power works against a libertarian agenda. (To be sure, many libertarians already know this, but again, they blame government for that situation and make no distinction among types of government action. Make the point that what government does counts at least as much as how much.) There's one possible problem, though...
It's worth noting that Neil Peart's outlook has become more obviously "liberal" through the years; on the other hand there hasn't really been anything in his later lyrics to contradict what he wrote in "2112". And for some reason it seems the libertarians Rush seems to have inspired haven't stopped to think that all three members of Rush are proud citizens of a country with a single-payer health care funding system. Still, Peart might not be quite so eager to endorse all of the sentiments he expressed on another song on 2112, "Something For Nothing":
You can't have something for nothing
You can't have freedom for free
You won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dreams might be
And then in the bridge, more pertinently here:
What you own is your own kingdom
What you do is your own glory
What you love is your own power
What you live is your own story
It's the sort of up-and-at-'em tune that means to be positive, but just winds up sounding a little too much like get-off-your-butt-and-grow-up-you damn-hippie. Still, it's a good song, and yes, it's something I need to hear occasionally, even if I feel a little insulted. Our lives may not be entirely our own, but taking responsibility for them as if they were seems a good idea. One can go too far with this with respect to others, however, and hold others to an unfair standard.
However, with Peart's more "liberal" attitude has come--here we go again--a fading, at least in part, of his old optimism, as he comes to realize that, yes, people can wind up in bad situations through no fault of their own and he doesn't have a solution that doesn't involve State intervention. Compare the bridge of "Something For Nothing" quoted above with that of "The Way The Wind Blows", from their latest album, Snakes And Arrows:
We can only grow the way the wind blows...
We can only bow to the here and now
Or be broken down blow by blow
They try to give the song a happy ending, but it doesn't quite work (which may yet be appropriate, given the lyrics); the lyrics on the album are printed along with a shot of two lone trees in a storm on a shore, growing at an angle--what little growing they've done is distorted and stunted. It all seems much too resigned--it sounds very much like the liberal predicament in the Age of Reagan, to be honest. And yet this is exactly the time to summon that do-what-you-can, help-yourself attitude embodied in a song like "Something For Nothing"--which may be what really resonated so much in Howard Dean's 2004 campaign. "Don't wait for the big guys--do it yourself" is very much a libertarian meme. Too often, the desire to be "realistic" leads to a sort of overcompensation, where any obstacles are necessarily insurmountable--something which, like romantic Utopianism, excuses us from having to work very hard.
For too long, "liberal" has meant "pessimistic". This needs to change; Clinton and Obama recognized this and that's why they won. People are attracted to Neil Peart's (and Ayn Rand's) message because they see a positive, optimistic character about it. (I'd say this is more true of Peart, who has always been his own man and whose vision is much more humane than Rand's--even if in one recent essay he does equate the makers of The China Syndrome with the GWB Administration, pouring equal scorn on both. Peart, it seems, is a supporter of nuclear power as a step forward, if not Utopia.)
In any event, it still seems odd that the movements of the '60s and '70s might have had a "right wing", so to speak; after all, it seems more a movement of the more "apolitical" '70s, which tend to be framed on the left as a sort of letdown from the '60s. (Personally, I tend to see it as more of a "Hellenistic" period, where advances of one culture spread out into the wider world amd transform it, even if not as much as we'd like at first--possibly an expression for our '60s-fed appetite for Instant Utopia and our disappoinment when that doesn't happen.) The task, even after so much time has passed, is to show the people in that "right wing"--or at least as many as can be reached--how left-of-center politics will move them closer than traditional, GOP conservatism can to the society they themselves ultimately want.