favor assertiveness in government's traditional role as the 'night-watchman state.' Many go further, seeing the government as a protector of decency and cultural norms.
In short, the argument about the
Historically, for many liberals the role of the state has been a matter less of size than of function. Progressivism shared with fascism a deep and abiding conviction that in a truly modern society, the state must take the place of religion. For some, this conviction was born of the belief that God was dead. As Eugen Weber writes, 'The Fascist leader, now that God is dead, cannot conceive of himself as the elect of God. He believes he is elect, but does not quite know of what — presumably of history or obscure historical forces.' This is the fascism that leads to the
We've already touched on statolatry as a progressive doctrine; later we will examine how this worldview manifests itself in what is commonly called the culture war. The hinge of that story is the 1960s, specifically the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
While not a modern liberal himself, JFK was turned after his death into a martyr to the religion of government. This was due partly to the manipulations of the Kennedy circle and partly to the (much more cynical) machinations of LBJ, who hijacked the Kennedy myth and harnessed it to his own purposes. Those purposes, consistent with the 'nice' totalitarian impulse of the progressive movement in which Johnson had cut his political teeth, were nominally secular, but on a deeper, and perhaps unconscious, level fundamentally religious.
On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. As if on cue, Dallas was christened 'the city of hate.' A young TV reporter named Dan Rather heard a rumor that some Dallas schoolchildren had cheered when they heard the news of Kennedy's death. The rumor wasn't true, and the local Dallas CBS affiliate refused to run the story. Rather made an end run around the network and reported the story anyway.
Rather wasn't the only one eager to point fingers at the right. Within minutes Kennedy's aides blamed deranged and unnamed right-wingers. One headline proclaimed the assassination had taken place 'deep in the hate of Texas.' But when it became clear that a deranged Marxist had done the deed, Kennedy's defenders were dismayed. 'He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights,' Jackie lamented to Bobby Kennedy when he told her the news. 'It's — it had to be some silly little Communist.'1
Or maybe not, the Kennedy mythmakers calculated. They set about creating the fable that Kennedy died battling 'hate' — established code, then and now, for the political right. The story became legend because liberals were desperate to imbue Kennedy's assassination with a more exalted and politically useful meaning. Over and over again, the entire liberal establishment, led by the
The fact that Oswald was a communist quickly changed from an inconvenience to proof of something even more sinister. How, liberals asked, could a card-carrying Marxist murder a liberal titan on the side of social progress? The fact that Kennedy was a raging anti-communist seemed not to register, perhaps because liberals had convinced themselves, in the wake of the McCarthy era, that the real threat to liberty must always come from the right. Oswald's Marxism sent liberals into even deeper denial, their only choice other than to abandon anti-anti- communism. And so, over the course of the 1960s, the conspiracy theories metastasized, and the Marxist gunman became a patsy.
Amid the fog of denial, remorse, and confusion over the Kennedy assassination, an informal strategic response developed that would serve the purposes of the burgeoning New Left as well as assuage the consciences of liberals generally: transform Kennedy into an all-purpose martyr for causes he didn't take up and for a politics he didn't subscribe to.
Indeed, over the course of the 1960s and beyond, a legend grew up around the idea that if only Kennedy had lived, we would never have gotten bogged down in Vietnam. It is a central conceit of Arthur Schlesinger's
The Kennedy myth also veers sharply from reality when it comes to the issue of race. The flattering legend is that Kennedy was an unalloyed champion of civil rights. Supposedly, if he had lived, the racial turmoil of the 1960s could have been avoided. The truth is far more prosaic. Yes, Kennedy pushed for civil rights legislation, and he deserves credit for it. But he was hardly breaking with the past. In the supposedly reactionary 1950s, Republicans had carried most of the burden of fulfilling the American promise of equality to blacks. Eisenhower had pushed through two civil rights measures over strong opposition from southern Democrats, and in particular Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who fought hard to dilute the legislation. Again, Kennedy was on the right side of history, but his efforts were mostly reactive. 'I did not lie awake worrying about the problems of Negroes,' he confessed.5
There is considerable irony in the fact that in the first election to replace Kennedy, Barry Goldwater was roundly hailed as the 'fascist' in the race. The bespectacled small-government conservative in funereal suits was about as far from a fascist as one can get in American politics. Meanwhile, the intellectuals denouncing Goldwater as a crypto-Nazi failed to grasp that it was John F. Kennedy who was advancing fascist themes and aesthetics in American politics. FDR had been the first president to use modern technology to construct a mythological narrative about himself, but it was Kennedy who transformed that technique into an art. 'Camelot,' a phrase never used to describe Kennedy's tenure when he was alive, has become a catchall for every gauzy memory and unfulfilled wish of the Kennedy presidency. In 1964 James Reston summarized the newly minted liberal nostalgia for America's Greek god of a president. 'He was a story-book President, younger and more handsome than mortal politicians, remote even from his friends, graceful, almost elegant with poetry on his tongue and a radiant young woman at his side.'6
Many elements of the Kennedy myth are as obvious now as they were then. He was the youngest man ever elected president (Teddy Roosevelt had been the youngest to serve). He was the first president born in the twentieth century. He was a man of action — a bona fide war hero. He was also an intellectual — the author of a best-selling book on political courage — who made liberalism cool and glamorous, but at the same time a pragmatist who would never let the pointy-headed Ivy Leaguers with whom he surrounded himself get in the way of the right course of action. He represented a national yearning for 'renewal' and 'rebirth,' appealing to American idealism and calling for common sacrifice.
Recall the key themes to Mussolini's cult of personality: youth, action, expertise, vigor, glamour, military service. Mussolini cast himself as the leader of a youth movement, a new generation empowered through intellect and expertise to break with the old categories of left and right. JFK's stirring inaugural spoke of 'a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient
