I was 16 in 1970 when Tom Wolfe's impactful book, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, was published. My dad, an FDR liberal to the core, loved it. It was about how the affluent liberal elites were adopting revolutionary politics (Radical Chic) as part of their performative activism, and minority activists were utilizing intimidation to extract concessions from bureaucrats (Mau-Mauing).
The leftists, like leftists today who adore Hamas and the Palestinians, embraced the radicals because it was hip and it was a way to demonstrate their radicalism to their fellow leftists.
The Mau-Mau were an ultra-violent Kenyan anti-colonialist revolutionary group that Western media were fascinated by. They were all about killing whites and black collaborators with the British. While they only existed in the late 1950s to early 1960s, in the 1970s, the New Left latched onto their anti-colonialist, anti-white agenda to protest the Vietnam War.
Wolfe, writing in the late 1960s, could see where the "New Left" and the radicals were going. Their fear of associating with anyone or any idea that wasn't "authentically" leftist led them to embrace characters like the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Bill Ayers and The Weathermen, and other violent radicals looking to destroy America.
Tim Wolfe got his idea for Radical Chic from a party for the Black Panthers held on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a famous liberal enclave then and today. The party's host, famous composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, and his wife invited anyone and everyone who was anybody in New York City's radical-left clique.
It was an extraordinary event.
Matt Taibbi's Racket News:
Party attendees gushed as Don Cox, Panther Field Marshal, demanded “an education system that exposes the true nature of this decadent society,” along with “all black men who are in jail to be set free,” and no peace as long as “society is racist and engages in systematic oppression.” Incidentally, the Panthers didn’t say “bail” anymore, they said “ransom” (the modern equivalent, effortlessly absorbed by media, has been to replace “arrest” with “kidnap”). Radical Chic parties ended with appeals for donations to defense funds and other causes, along with denunciations of black churches who closed their kitchens to The Movement because black preachers were descended from the ones who met slaves on the docs along with “the cat with the whip and the gun.”
Taibbi's purpose in rehashing that party and Wolfe's hilarious description of it was to highlight a very troubling phenomenon as we near the 250th anniversary of America's founding: The left doesn't see anything to celebrate. Their view of America has been so skewed by their hatred of Donald Trump and the Republicans that they have lost sight of what America 250 is all about.
We are not a perfect nation. No one on the right that I know has ever made that argument. But loving America and celebrating the 250th anniversary of its founding does not blind us to our imperfections. For many of us, America 250 is a call to do better, to try to understand the opposition, and to live our lives with faith, hope, and charity.
Especially "hope." America has always been about hope. We were founded on the hope that humanity could do better, that we could create a society where "everyone" could live in freedom. Over the next 250 years, each generation has tried to make that dream a reality. We've fallen short, but we rarely go backward. The "Promise of Joy," as author Allen Drury described America, can be achieved as long as we, right and left, can find a way forward.
The simple-minded would say, "Well, all leftists hate America." If that were true, Arlington Cemetery would have only conservatives buried there. That's not true and never has been. Many leftists have dedicated their lives to making America a better place. From labor leaders who fought for the modern American workplace (8-hour days, paid vacation, safety rules), to civil rights workers who gave their lives to make the words in the Declaration of Independence that we're honoring in a few weeks come to life, to the women who gave hope to their sisters and bravely manned the barricades to fight for equality. Not all of them were liberals. But all of them loved America as much or more than any of us. And they had the courage to do something about what they saw as injustice.
Ted Kennedy's words about his brother Robert at his funeral could be said about many activists and reformers throughout American history: He wanted Bobby to be "remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
It is right to separate historical liberalism and liberals from the performance artists, charlatans, hypocrites, and gimlet-eyed radicals who pass themselves off as "liberals" today. They are about power and privilege. They give nothing and take everything. They, along with their right-wing counterparts, are in the process of destroying our country by ripping, tearing, shredding, and mutilating those "mystic chords of memory" that Lincoln tried to invoke in his second inaugural. He was suggesting that shared history, sacrifices, and patriotism are like musical strings that, when plucked by "the better angels of our nature," vibrate together to create a harmonious chorus of national unity.
I am as sick to death of my friends and colleagues on the right claiming that the left is out to "destroy America" as I am of the left hysterically claiming the same thing about the right. It is a lazy, cynical brand of politics born out of a total lack of faith in our neighbors and our institutions.
The performative radicals of today don't speak for the millions of Americans who quietly do the hard work of keeping this country great. If America 250 proves anything, it’s that our history is a long, stubborn march forward — one fueled by genuine faith, earnest hope, and a refusal to let the arsonists on either side burn down the house we all built together.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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