PART THREE - COUNTERREVOLUTION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
The impulses behind yesterday's reform may be put in the service of reform today, but they may also be enlisted in the service of reaction.
Richard HofstadterIdeology makes it unnecessary for people to confront individual issues on their individual merits. One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae. When these beliefs are suffused by apocalyptic fervor, ideas become weapons, and with dreadful results.
Daniel BellTraditional ideas are often attractive simply because they are traditional; accepted as eternally true, they remove the need for independent thought and for adjustment to novelty, which is frequently frightening.
William J. BouwsmaThe rapidity of change beginning with the onset of the Second World War evoked both dismay and delight. Certainly most Americans welcomed at least some of the revolutionary changes we have discussed. But for many, the transformation of American society created much anxiety and distress. The entanglement of the United States in foreign alliances and the exposure of the nation to dangers from abroad; the changing culture and structure of business; the breaching of traditional standards of sexual decorum; the challenge to traditional relationships among the races and between men and women, as well as changing attitudes regarding relationships between men and men and between women and women – these and other phenomena of modern America raised questions about policies, standards, mores, morals, and propriety that probably most people normally prefer to accept unquestioningly. It was discomfiting to be faced with questions whose answers had once seemed firm, conclusive, and unequivocal.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- America TransformedSixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941–2001, pp. 199 - 200Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006