The first entry in this series—Understanding the Times—featured Herbert Schlossberg and his uncommon book, Idols for Destruction (1983). With his book, Schlossberg preserves a deep and comprehensive understanding of the times. Francis Schaeffer and Herbert Schlossberg were significantly advanced thinkers during the latter half of the 20th century. They were two of several critically thinking individuals who prompted me to think carefully and critically concerning the culture during the last quarter of the 20th century as I acquired a more comprehensive biblical view of and for our world. What this means is that while serving Christ’s church in various ministry capacities and then studying toward a Ph.D. in Theological Studies, I endeavored daily to think deeply about the culture, “taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Those were simpler times when inhabitants of the last century were largely dependent on newspapers, published books and pamphlets, broadcast radio and television, and movies to assess the culture. That was an era of slower-paced life without the instant connectedness of the internet. Breaking news was confined to radio and television, and then only as promptly as microphones and cameras could scramble to broadcast reports. Thus, we read, viewed, processed, and digested information at slower, more thoughtful, and digestible paces. Because we were not bombarded with information as we are today via the internet, we tended to comprehend matters more fully and deeply. Thus, given my heritage that incited critical thinking, I acquired a breadth of interests, especially the interfacing of Christianity and culture, with a deep interest in history. I mindfully accumulated a vast library of books across the spectrum of disciplines, not just theological treatises and biblical commentaries.
Personal Reflections: Tumultuous Decades—1960s-70s
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech, “I Have A Dream” (August 28, 1963), resonated deeply with all my classmates. Thus, in 1964-65, it was not difficult to recognize that President Johnson’s Great Society program contradicted King’s argument that America’s white population was obligated to uphold the morality and principles of the nation’s founding. King’s appeal echoed what we high school students read in Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery. He called for America’s descendants of slaves to own their dignity and take responsibility for their own prosperity.
Johnson and the Democrat Congress found an uncanny way to turn racism into a positive power for the very people who suffered from racism and seduce them to become loyal Democrat voters for life. They rejected Booker T. Washington’s appeal and embraced W. E. B. Dubois’s Marxist approach, evident in what he called “double-consciousness,” obligating white people to elevate blacks as victims of oppression. This is the notion that America’s blacks cannot escape seeing themselves through the eyes of a racist white society and thus measure themselves by the standard of “a nation that looked back in contempt” (The Souls of Black Folk, 1903). The Great Society enabled Johnson and his Democrat majority in Congress to appear as if they forsook the Democratic Party’s racist heritage without actually repudiating their racial paternalism and patronization. Ironically, thanks to President Johnson’s shrewdness, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s labors for civil rights resulted in a new form of slavery for many of America’s blacks, with Uncle Sam as their new master.
But white guilt meant they were obligated to black people because they needed the moral authority only black people could bestow. Only the people themselves—meaning of course the black leadership—could vet the white moral redemption, the white deliverance from racism. Thus, white guilt made racism into a valuable currency for black Americans—a currency that enmeshed whites (and especially American institutions) in obligation not to principles but to black people as a class. (Notice that affirmative action explicitly violates many of the same principles—equal protection under the law, meritorious advancement—that the King-era civil rights movement fought for.) Lacking other sources of capital, blacks embraced racism as power itself (White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, 34-35).
What a sad legacy the Great Society hatched! The Supreme Court case, DeFunis v. Odegaard, is revealing. Marco DeFunis, a white applicant with superior qualifications, was denied admission to the University of Washington law school in favor of less qualified black applicants. Justice William O. Douglas alone dissented. He reasoned, “Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as racial discrimination against a black.” To support his case, he appealed to Justice Thurgood Marshall’s argument, twenty years earlier in Brown v. Board of Education, “That the Constitution is colorblind is our dedicated belief.” Tragically, Marshall’s response to Douglas reveals the wholesale abandonment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s appeal to moral and constitutional principles had penetrated the Supreme Court. Marshall offered a shallow, profoundly immoral, and transparently unconstitutional reply to Douglas: “You guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now it is our turn.”
A Nation in Turmoil—Assassinations & Political Winds
President Johnson took the nation to war in Southeast Asia, a distinctly unpopular war. His presidency provoked deep ideological, class, and racial divisions. Our society was in turmoil. President Johnson stunned the nation on March 31, 1968, by announcing he would not seek reelection. He bowed out of resolving the political-cultural-social mess his administration had created. Four days later, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Two months later, on June 6, 1968, President Johnson’s Democratic Party political nemesis, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas (November 22, 1963). These three anguishing deaths were etched deeply in my memory, with two of them occurring the year I graduated from high school.
With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the Presidency of your country.
With Johnson’s exit from the race, five Democrats pursued the presidency—Eugene McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert H. Humphrey, George McGovern, and George Wallace. The field was narrowed to four with Kennedy’s assassination. Wallace, however, became the American Independent Party’s candidate. For four days in August 1968, the Democratic National Convention was rocked with conflict, protests, riots, and bloodshed as thousands of Leftist protesters swarmed the streets to protest the Vietnam War and the political status quo in Washington, D.C., where Democrats controlled Congress and the White House. President Johnson’s Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, became the Democrats’ nominee only to lose overwhelmingly to Richard Nixon, not by popular vote but by the Electoral College count: Nixon winning 32 states (301), Humphrey winning 13 states plus D.C. (191), and Wallace winning 5 states (46). It seemed the whole world was in chaos. Our campus, nestled in the rolling hills of East Tennessee, was a haven from where we watched nightly news reports throughout my college years, consisting of university sit-ins, racial riots, draft dodgers, and body counts from Vietnam. Acquaintances and friends were drafted into the army. Some beat the draft by volunteering for military service in their chosen branch. Many of us, for one reason or another, were passed over by the military draft, but all wondered when their number would come into play and they would be called to submit to a military physical exam to assess draft worthiness. I was delighted to fail my military physical exam due to a deathly allergy to stinging insects.
Watch for the continuation of my personal reflection in the next entry: Understanding the Times 3.1—The Formation of a Christian Cultural Critic.
