World in the Grip of an Idea 22.: The United States: A Bemused People

The process by which this transformation occurs should be familiar, for the pattern has been established by constant repetition and by expansive application into more and more areas. The change is advanced by relativistic arguments. In its bluntest formulation the argument goes something like this. What is normal? Who can say what is normal? At the ordinary level of discourse, these are unanswerable questions. They are difficult to answer, in the first place, because we are unprepared to defend our concepts of normality. We may be convinced that we know what is normal, but proof is quite another matter.

There is good reason for this. Inquisitive children usually learn at a fairly early age that questioning the norms is a fruitless and unrewarding undertaking. Far from being commended for being brilliant, they are apt to be maligned for their stupidity. After all, what kinds of questions can be raised about norms? Why do we walk on our feet instead of our hands? Why do we drive on the right instead of the left? Why do women have babies and men have hair on their chests? In most cases, no satisfactory answers can be given. Hence, children are discouraged from raising such questions. The best answer we can make in many cases is simply, "That is just the way things are." And what we are apt to think after saying it a few times is: "If you weren’t so stupid, you would have figured it out for yourself."

There is yet another reason for our usual inability to make an apology for our norms. One of the primary concerns of society is to maintain the norms. All social function depends upon norms and their general acceptance. Take them away, or abandon them, and society disintegrates. All acts lose their meaning, and everything is unexpected and strange. To debate the validity of norms is to debate the validity of society. That is, of necessity, a debate for which there are no rules, and one which society cannot tolerate. Society’s business is to discover, preserve, and maintain the norms, not to challenge them.

That is not to say that norms are not well grounded. On the contrary, many of them are grounded in nature. Where that is not the case—where they arose as custom, for example—they have been instilled by nurture and have become second nature by usage and veneration. Our very social existence is grounded in norms. Their reason for being, if there is no other reason, is the smooth functioning of society. It is a sound instinct that resists discarding a norm because we do not perceive its reason for being, for experience teaches that if we probe deep enough we may discover reasons we did not even suspect.

None of this is acceptable to socialists, of course. The received norms stand athwart the path which both revolutionary and evolutionary socialism must tread. Socialism requires that all efforts be concerted toward the achievement of human felicity on this earth. The great strength of the idea that has the world in its grip lies in that very conception. Its weakness lies in the conception, too, as well as elsewhere. The irony of it is that the achievement of human felicity, so far as is practicable, is a social norm. More, the purpose of society is to provide the framework for achieving such felicity as is possible for man. But society does not define human felicity. That is left, in the main, to individual decision. In the same manner, individuals are left to a great variety of devices and means for achieving their own ends. This is anathema to socialists. They would transform society from a framework into the determinant of the content of felicity and the means by which it would be achieved. The individual would be confined and society politicized. Social norms would become whatever appeared to be useful in controlling the individual and politicizing society. Norms have to become what is decreed as normal by the political power. Gradualists, however, have no such absolute power as yet. In the United States, the communications industry has made forceful strides in determining what is normal.

The other line is to pose continual challenges to the established norms. Journalism is particularly well suited to this undertaking. There is an old saw to the effect that if a dog bites a man that is not news, but if a man bites a dog that is news. That is a way of saying that journalists focus on the odd, strange, curious, different, and unusual. But when journalism becomes pervasive, as it bids to do in America today, it becomes a continual assault on the norms. This is especially the case when the odd, strange, and curious are not presented as odd, strange, and curious but as commonplace and normal. It happens over and over again that radicals are interviewed in such a way as to make them appear normal.

The technique by which this is done is easy enough to discern. Let us suppose that an advocate of communal living arrangements is being interviewed. The act is cleaned up for television, for instance. There is no obscenity or profanity. The interviewee is likely to be well enough dressed, be clean, well brushed, and reasonably neat. The impression prevails that he is different in one respect only—that is, that he believes the "nuclear family" is outmoded and new and extended families are emerging. New norms are taking shape before our eyes, as it were, painlessly and with no apparent wrench to a whole body of belief and practice. The odd, strange, and curious—the shifting and unsettled relationships in some sort of communal arrangement—are presented as an emerging norm.

On the face of it, the socialist problem would be easy enough to solve. All that would have to be done would be to get people to abandon the individual pursuit of self-interest and devote themselves to the common good. Isolate self-interest, pillory it, make it unacceptable, and people will abandon it. There have been attempts to do this, of course. But the solution is not that easy. Self-interest is not a norm existing in splendid isolation from all other norms. Instead, it is intertwined in the warp and woof of the whole fabric of the received normality. Socialists have generally understood this well enough and have grasped at least some of the dimensions of the problem confronting them.

The whole system of private property buttresses and supports—even rewards—the pursuit of self-interest by individuals. Free enterprise invites individuals to prosper by laboring to advance themselves. The norm that a man should receive the fruits of his labor places a premium on the pursuit of self-interest. The family is an enclave of self-interest or at least limited interest seeking. Members of the family are bidden to look after the family interest primarily. The institution of private property is so developed and conceived that it is tied up with the limited family interest—with inheritance, with wills, with shares for members of the family, and so on.

Even religion has been generally entangled with individual self-interest. (Indeed, Marx believed that organized religion was at the apex of the whole structure of capitalism.) The individual is bidden to take care of his interest in eternal beatitude in the hereafter by getting right with his Maker. The Hope of Heaven is, after all, a Hope primarily for individual salvation.

On the socialist view, then, the received norms are honeycombed with supports for and enticements to the individual to pursue his own self-interest. The pursuit of self-interest is a norm, as they see it, because the whole fabric of normality makes it appear to be so. In order to cut away the pursuit of self-interest, the whole structure of normality must be replaced. Those under the sway of the idea differ about means and, perhaps, about how drastic the surgery must be, but they basically agree over the problems presented by the received norms.

The use of government power to redistribute the wealth was established as a principle during the decade of the 1930s. The Social Security enactment turned out to be the centerpiece of the distributionist legislation. By means of it money was taxed from earners and distributed after retirement to those who had paid into it. It was, and is, redistributionist because benefits do not depend upon amount paid in; they are determined by Congress according to formulas which have been revised over the years.

Redistribution was also the operative principle in many other New Deal programs. The farm subsidy programs redistributed wealth. The government put its weight behind labor unions, and hence the use of coercion by unions to get higher wages and shorter hours. Subsidized houses and government supported loans were also redistributionist in character. The graduated income tax which, along with Social Security, under girds redistribution had already been used, but it was much extended under the New Deal. New distributionist programs have been enacted over the years. The most notable, and notorious, have been the welfare programs. Less well publicized, but more ubiquitous, are the numerous subsidies to everything from airports to local police to school lunch programs. The Federal hand is not only in every pocket but the Federal handout is extended in every direction.

The other major thrust to socialism came in the 1960s and has continued apace since. Although it, too, is political, the primary aim is not so much economic as social. This thrust is toward social transformation. It emerges as an effort to overturn the established norms as a means of changing the existing order. Legislation is mainly a framework only for this transformation.

Every norm is grist for the mill in this transformation. Indeed, it is not clear, in general, that overturning one norm is more important than another. Since all norms support the existing order, they must all be overturned or transformed. It hardly matters whether what is involved is sex, marriage, the family, the role and position of the husband, education, military authority, the authority of the President, ownership and control over property, or whatever. Every norm overturned weakens the authority of all norms.

In this sense, priority for destruction of norms may best be given to those most deeply entrenched. It is from this angle that the assault on sexual norms may be understood. Sexual norms have been long established, and would appear to be most difficult to alter. Indeed, many of the sexual norms are rooted in nature, and some of them have been surrounded by taboos. It is also the case that some of the most fundamental inequalities are sex related. It is reasonable to suppose that if the sexual norms could be destroyed, all other norms might fall in their wake.

The attack on sexual norms has been blatant in recent years. Male dominance and authority have been under consistent assault. The norm has been that the male is dominant in male-female relationships—that his opinion is deferred to, his decision final, and that he is the fiscally responsible partner in the household. This norm is supported by custom and tradition, and has been supported by religious authority. A portion, at least, of this norm has a natural basis. Normally, men are taller, heavier, and stronger than women. Women are the child-bearers by nature, and many of the skills and abilities which they have developed have been related to that role. The nuclear family, as monogamous marriage has been lately dubbed, is founded in the nature of parental responsibility, and-the desirable conditions of child bearing. The norms are threatened by what is called female liberation. Aggressive homosexuality threatens the whole concept of normality. If homosexuality is "normal" there are no norms in sexual relationships. The male dominance takes on only a symbolic, and entirely relative, significance. Parental responsibility has no foundation in homosexuality. The distinction between male and female is obliterated. Normal is cut loose from its foundation in nature. The whole framework of norms entailed in marriage, the family, property inheritance, loses its meaning when homosexuality is accepted as normal.

Every body must have a head. Every household must have a head. Every undertaking involving two or more people must have someone who is in charge. Constructive activity depends upon each person knowing what he is to do. When the norms are overturned, constructive activity declines and debates and contests over authority ensue. Force tends to replace voluntary cooperation, and the strongest or most determined assert what is often enough entirely arbitrary authority.

That is what is happening in large in the United States. The norms may not have been overturned in many instances, but they have been so seriously questioned that their validity is in doubt, and there is no longer universal agreement upon and acceptance of them. Those who insist upon traditional male-female roles are denounced as "male chauvinist pigs." Those who are affronted by open homosexuality are accused of being intolerant. Those who exercise firmly the authority of their positions are charged with being dictatorial. Students would determine the content of their courses and formally evaluate their teachers. Prison inmates attempt to organize politically in order to run the prisons. Unions negotiate and enforce work rules.

What a man may do with and on his property is in such doubt that experts must be called upon to set matters right. The courts are burdened down with litigation as civil suits burgeon. Court cases are increasing in length and complexity, and no decision ever seems final as appeal follows upon appeal from whatever decision has been rendered. Interminable hearings precede all sorts of undertakings. Debates and contests over who has the right and authority to do what supersede the constructive activity by which it might be accomplished.

And, whether lost in thought or not, the American people have been preoccupied. Better, they have increasingly occupied themselves with their own affairs and closed their eyes to what is going on with society. It is understandable that they should. The disintegration of society means that the individual can no longer rely on support in bringing reproach and discredit on those who flout the norms and proclaim their disdain for social prescription. The disintegration of society means, too, that the individual had best look to his own protection and well-being. But it also means that force will be brought to bear in more and more areas of life. The breakdown of authority is not the prelude to liberation, it is rather the precondition of the restoration of some sort of authority by the exercise of force.

The idea that has the world in its grip would replace the pursuit of self-interest by a pursuit of the common good. There is no evidence that this has resulted as yet. True, politicians and spokesmen in the communications industry speak a rhetoric of the common good. But the most obvious development thus far has been the disintegration of society and the decay of civilized behavior—the very instruments of the promotion of the common good. There is much verbal evidence that the American people have lost confidence in government as an instrument of the general welfare and for the promotion of the common good. But in their bemused state, they do not readily grasp or believe in an effective alternative.

Of course, the United States does not exist in a vacuum. The hold of the idea upon America is an integral part of its hold on the people and governments of the world. It is appropriate now to turn to an examination of it in that perspective.

Next: 23. The Cold War: Revolutionary versus Evolutionary Socialism.