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Holy Wars
A review of David Wagner's The New Temperance by Peter Webster
The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice,
by David Wagner. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1997. ISBN
0-8133-2568-4 (hc).
"By paying so much attention to the devil and by treating
witchcraft as the most heinous of crimes, the theologians and
the inquisitors actually spread the beliefs and fostered the practices
which they were trying so hard to repress."
— Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun
By substituting easily imagined nouns in Huxley's observation
about the Spanish Inquisition we arrive at precisely the correct
diagnosis of the present situation in that great modern Holy Inquisition,
the War on Drugs. Yet how does a writer of today go about telling
such a truth, telling it in such a way so as to positively affect
public opinion and those in power, a way which might help to resolve
such an obviously irrational situation before it takes an even
higher toll? And considering the history of such Inquisitions,
is such a literary undertaking possible even in principle?
Several recent and well-written books have each, from a different
perspective, attempted to reveal to the general public and policy-makers
the utter futility and tragedy of that great 20th Century fiasco,
Substance Prohibition. But David Wagner's new book, The New
Temperance, is much more than just another exposé of
Drug War folly. Instead, we are given a cogent historical and
sociological analysis of "The American Obsession with Sin
and Vice" to the valuable end that we may understand the
present Prohibition in the much larger context of the nature and
character of American tradition, religion, politics, and mores
in general. Professor Wagner examines the broad scope and deep
roots of the repression of pleasure and stigmatization of certain
personal behaviors in America, from 19th Century Temperance and
"social purity" movements onward, and shows how the
present reactionary compulsion to demonize certain behaviors and
subgroups of the population, especially those persons identified
with the ideas and ideals of 1960s "radical" counterculture,
is but an oft-recurring theme in American history.
Professor Wagner explains his choice of the term "Temperance"
to define the paradigm under consideration, and introduces some
of the major themes examined in his sociological analysis to follow:
America has long witnessed moralistic popular movements against
citizens' sins and vices (see chapter 2). Because the most famous
was the Temperance Movement, lasting from the 1820s to the passage
of National Prohibition (against alcoholic beverages) in 1919,
I draw upon this name... [It] makes sense to discuss today's behavioral
control movements in terms of temperance because, like the old
(anti-alcohol) Temperance Movement, they produce similar political
alignments. As in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
rural fundamentalists and conservative traditionalists have become
allied with urban middle-class "progressives," uniting
some elements of the Right and Left... And as with the Temperance
Movement of old, today's universalist claims about the harms of
"immoral" behavior hide major subtexts of anxieties
about social class, race, and ethnicity.
The New Temperance shows us that the present War on Drugs,
and the wider War on "immoral behavior" in general,
is not something new, nor of merely peripheral importance in the
general outlook of middle-class America, nor even just the next
phase of a recurring American nightmare. Professor Wagner shows
us that Temperance is rather a perennial national ideology, the
reigning social paradigm in America: it is the instinctive expression
of American national character, especially of the fears and insecurities
of that great middle class consciousness which is the backbone
both of American reality and myth. Challenges to the paradigm
such as the "radical" 1960s have been rare, and routinely
followed by periods in which the Temperance addicts attempt to
expunge the very memory of former expressions of idealism and
personal freedom.
We might suspect then that the latest and most fanatical expression
of that character, The War on Drugs, will not likely be reversed
through logical argument or even the widespread recognition of
the harm it is causing. We may understand why such excellent books
as Dan Baum's exposé of Drug War folly in Smoke and
Mirrors, and Richard Lawrence Miller's frightening and accurate
identification of the Drug War with nascent fascism in Drug
Warriors and Their Prey have so little effect in bringing
about change, for as we read of the history of American Temperance,
we see that logic and demonstration have never been very
important or effective in aborting the "poisonous germ...of
Puritanism" (Wagner quoting Emma Goldman). On the contrary,
the more the illogic and harmfulness of such a Religious Inquisition
is exposed, the harder the proponents of Puritanism and "The
New Temperance" must play the game to rationalize
their convictions. The great modern Drug War is therefore far
more the "in vogue" manifestation of a permanent quirk
of the collective American psyche than a policy choice, far more
the latest incarnation of a collective phobia for some of the
most important founding principles of free societies than a rational
response to the real, if propagandized harms associated with the
"recreational" use of substances other than the socially-approved
ones.
Professor Wagner begins his analysis with a seemingly innocent
and even trivial observation on the fin de siècle scene
we are living through:
The last decades of the twentieth century may well be remembered
as a time when personal behavior and character flaws dominated
the American mind. As prominent political figures from Gary Hart
to Robert Packwood were brought down by personal scandals, even
death seemed to provide no respite from examination of behavior
and morality. The media reported on the deaths of the Grateful
Dead's Jerry Garcia and baseball star Mickey Mantle as exercises
in moral diagnosis. Mantle was said to have died from too much
"partying"; and Garcia, from assorted drugs, cigarettes,
and food. Constant public service announcements, political speeches,
and public health pronouncements urge us to "just say no"
to drugs, cigarette smoking, fatty foods, teen sexuality, non-monogamous
sex, and violent TV shows and music lyrics. Typically, the media
have applauded such changes as reflecting the new mood of the
times.
This "new mood of the times" has been applauded not
only by the media, but by practically everyone (at least in public):
we can almost hear the question being asked, "well, why not?
Isn't this the path to a better, healthier, stronger, right-living
America?" The mood appears as a sort of final push for America
before entering the next millennium, a purification rite to make
America squeaky-clean and worthy to "lead the world"
in the next century if not for all time to come. Such "moods
of the times" have always been difficult to assess from within
the set and setting of those societies expressing them, and it
has usually required a singular diligence or temporal or physical
isolation from such a society to see the often perverse nature
of such collective perception.
As an example, the present post-cold-war "mood of the times"
was expressed to an appreciative audience by Colin Powell when
he was considering running for the presidency: In a speech in
Washington's Kennedy Center in August 1995 he declared (to much
applause) that "America had been established by divine providence
to lead the world." (New York Times). He also urged
Americans to "consider themselves as a family". Americans,
in their zeal of self-congratulation and self-purification, applaud
heartily, and apparently do not recognize such words for what
they are: the harbingers of doctrines of a master race leading,
or rather ruling, for a thousand years.
Now I am quite sure that many readers of this review will feel
that it has taken a most unpleasant turn when I compare the words
of Colin Powell to Nazi megalomania. But at the very least, it
is indeed a strange and even perverse indulgence for a military
and political figure of national importance in a country whose
Constitution is based solidly on the idea of separation of Church
and State to be citing "divine providence" as a justification
for world hegemony, no matter how purportedly beneficent the intention.
Yet there is a common denominator here between American Prohibitionism
and The New Temperance, and American justification for its attempted
Americanization of all life on earth. As Professor Wagner states,
"This book argues the constant focus on personal behavior
in America serves as a tool of political power..."
The agenda of fundamentalists and their organizations, no matter
what their special persuasion, has always been the enforcement
of their perception of acceptable behavior on others, whereas
those who value freedom of choice and personal responsibility
have always realized that a morality or doctrine which is coerced
upon another becomes itself immoral, no matter how pure its intentions.
Morality must be freely entered into for it to remain other than
the seed of totalitarianism. This is the essential reason why
a free society must ensure the strict separation of Church
and State not only in principle but in practice. That all will
not willingly lead lives of morality is the price of freedom.
With the clarity of view now available from the books and ideas
under discussion here, and a corresponding recognition of the
essential character and roots of Drug Prohibition, we see why
it is a very necessary task to estimate the possible significance
of words such as Colin Powell's, and not to routinely dismiss
them as "mere electioneering" or "politicking."
Prescient individuals, and populations as a whole, should rightly
be suspicious of a nation so ready to applaud such words
and ideas, and such suspicion should immediately become alarm
when a major policy of that nation such as the War on Drugs is
seen to be based far more on moralist fundamentalism and extremism
than rational policy choice, upon a historically repeated perversion
rather than demonstrated beneficial results.
At this point in my argument, I believe, we can clearly see the
essential connection between The New American Temperance as a
national trait, The War on Drugs as a tool of political power
and as a mechanism for conveniently aggravating the very problems
it purports to attack, (thus providing the Temperance crowd with
an ever-increasing evil to combat), and the extremely worrying
trends in American "leadership". The "theologians
and inquisitors" of the Huxley quote were no dopes either,
and certainly many of them used the Inquisition to forward their
own quest for power, or whatever it was that tickled their fancy.
We should have no illusions about the fundamental essence and
final intention of American national character as expressed
in the constant paradigm of American Puritanism and Temperance.
We are led to the most obvious of conclusions, that the underlying
reasons for and hidden doctrines at the root of the War on Drugs
pose a greater threat to the future existence of free societies
than all of the currently designated demons put together.
More than any other current book, The New Temperance, despite
some optimism expressed by the author, leaves this writer with
the conviction that the current Holy War against drugs, against
the 60s, against the least "deviance" from the ineptly
named American dream, against the recognition of the many tragedies
foisted on the American people and the world by the ridiculous
indulgence of Puritanical extremism in America, will very probably
not be overcome by rational choice or political change
driven by popular demand, but by the same kind of global crisis
which united the free world against fascism in W.W.II, only worse:
This time around the threat will likely be widespread irreversible
famine, disease, and associated regional military conflicts that
the "West" will feel obligated to "settle"
in order to secure its lion's share of dwindling resources, all
this arising perhaps from climatic catastrophe or some other catalytic
event. Then American Puritans will have some real problems
to worry about, such as brute survival and where the next meal
is coming from. At this stage and not before, I believe, will
the puerile indulgence of Temperance and Substance Prohibition
be overcome: it will be completely forgotten.
What is most ironic perhaps, is that the states of mind catalyzed
by intelligent use of some of the currently demonized substances
might have had a chance, in lieu of Prohibition, of favorably
affecting the collective psychology of the people of the free
world, of providing at least a mild and temporary, but perhaps
cumulatively effective antidote to the very tendencies which ensure
the future disasters in store. The 1960s research into the possible
uses of some of these now "illicit" drugs, research
that was brought to a halt by U.S. government fiat, had promised
at least such a possibility.
I would advise all who can bear the weight of such a dismal prognosis
to read and study The New Temperance, for only by fully
understanding the deepest roots of our current predicament does
there arise a hope for averting a great catastrophe, one which
may ultimately be the beginning of the end for the preservation
of the founding ideals of free societies the world over. The hell
the human race will suffer through for not reversing current insanity
will make even the presumed intentions of "the evil
empire of communism" seem acceptable by comparison. If these
seem exaggerations, I would plead that they are the necessary
calls to awakening which a writer must use to attempt to bring
about change in the face of such pandemic collective irrationality,
but in reference to the final question with which I opened my
discussion, I myself have profound doubts whether any literary
technique, much less logic and demonstration, is sufficient to
the task. As in the 1930s, warnings fall on deaf ears, and the
idea that human intelligence plays much of a role in averting
great disaster seems a hopeful fantasy, at best.
But as a small enticement to further study, and with the slim
hope that good sense may finally save the day, I reproduce here
a part of the brilliant climax to The New Temperance, in
which we see illustrated all the sociological background and historical
evidence of earlier chapters exemplified in the present situation
of the escalating Drug War. The title of the section, "Demonizing
the 1960s", itself reveals an important secret concerning
the reasons for the overweening fanaticism of the Drug War. In
this final chapter Professor Wagner suggests that,
symbolically, the New Temperance has served as a vehicle through
which the remnants of the "60s" have been conquered
and expunged. As with the McCarthyism of the 1950s, one purpose
of the new social conservatism is to repress all positive memories
of dissent and social unrest. Whereas McCarthyism aimed to dismantle
all opposition emanating from the social movements of the 1930s,
the New Temperance villainizes the 1960s. It demands an active
renunciation, particularly on the part of baby boomers and former
activists-just as the suppression of social unrest in the late
1940s to 1950s required people to purge themselves by "naming
names." (p.11)
(An excerpt from The New Temperance):
Demonizing the 1960s
It is not coincidental that advocates of the New Temperance have
so strongly attacked behavior that they claim was at the heart
of the "excesses" of the 1960s. The war on drugs and
on many forms of sexuality has been fought as much for its symbolic
value (i.e., as part of a strategy of eradicating the mythologized
"60s") as for any of its more manifest purposes. Writing
late in his life, Richard Nixon forcefully pointed us back to
Woodstock as a symbolic reason for continuing the war on drugs:
"Even today, when most of the prestige media have managed
to crowd onto the anti-drug bandwagon, they could not help indulging
in a revolting orgy of nostalgia during the twentieth anniversary
of Woodstock. The smarmy retrospectives glossed over the fact
that Woodstock's only significant legacy was the glorification
of dangerous illegal drugs.... To erase the grim legacy of
Woodstock, we need a total war against drugs."
Similarly, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was
fond of attacking the sexual doctrines of the 1960s, holding promiscuity
and free love responsible for the AIDS epidemic and the widespread
child sexual abuse reported during the 1980s: "We are reaping
what was sown in the 1960s. The fashionable theories and permissiveness
claptrap set the scene for a society in which the old virtues
of discipline and self-restraint were denigrated."
The historical events of the "60s" (in actuality including
much of the 1970s) have been repainted in dangerous and frightening
hues. Consider this vitriolic comment by conservative historian
Joseph Conlin regarding the "60s" lifestyle: "
[L]ife in the New Age communes of the 1960s and 1970s . . . [was
like living in] 'garbage dumps' and 'hells': children smeared
in their own filth for days, hysterical under the LSD given to
pacify them.... [V]enereal infection, pneumonia, influenza, and
the unprimitive affliction of hepatitis reached disastrous proportions."
For many people alive at the time of the 1960s counterculture,
this sinister and bizarre reconfiguration of history has a clear
agenda of vilification. Of course, not everything that
occurred in this (or any other) time period was positive or worth
repeating. But the presence of a few dirty and sick children on
a commune somewhere by no means sums up the reality of this period,
any more than conservatives of the time were correct in summing
up the French Revolution as primarily about terrorism and guillotine
practice. The popular movie Forest Gump similarly portrays
1960s "long-hair radicals" as violent and misogynist,
and the movie hero must save his girlfriend from their abuse.
Perhaps there were a few more people of this sort than I was ever
aware of in the late 1960s, but it is still absurd to portray
"60s"-style radicalism in this way. If anything, the
image of the peaceful hippie flashing a peace sign would be closer
to the mood of the times. In short, the retrospective portrayal
of the "60s" has little to do with veracity. Rather,
it is an attempt to take the essence of the social and cultural
revolution of the 1960s and convert it to one primarily of sin
and vice.
[...]
I make no claim of originality in drawing a connection between
the mandatory drug testing of the current period and the McCarthyism
of the 1950s. As early as 1986 a leader of the Civil Liberties
Union called drug testing a "form of social McCarthyism aimed
at getting rid of people who won't buy the line. It's a step away
from an authoritarian society." In addition, writer Ellen
Willis has observed a link between the drug test and the loyalty
oath: "The purpose of this '80s version of the loyalty oath
is less to deter drug use than to make people undergo a humiliating
ritual of subordination: 'When I say pee, you pee."'
[...]
The urine test-along with mandatory sentencing and other severe
behavioral controls central to the drug war-is a power strategy
that mirrors the "personal is political" radicalism
of the 1960s. It takes seriously the proposition that those who
resist the dictates of power, whether or not such resistance is
framed as "political" in the conventional sense, are
enemies and are undermining production, public order, and rationality.
Like the loyalty oath and the "naming of names," the
policing of everyday life-which in schools, for example, focuses
on behaviors such as smoking, speech, and sexuality-requires Americans,
from an early age on, to comply with the norms of the powerful
without asking questions, and to accept the right of the state
and corporate power to hold their bodies captive. Ultimately,
it is not important whether drug testing finds traces of a drug
in a student's urine or if locker searches turn up cigarettes
or guns or pornographic literature. Rather, it is the policing
itself that makes the point about who is in control.
Another key point about the role of the New Temperance in symbolically
eradicating the "60s" is its constant use against members
of the baby boom generation, particularly those who might be charged
with having some relationship to the social movements of that
period. It is not coincidental that Democratic Party politicians
from Gary Hart to Bill Clinton have come under relentless questioning
about their sexuality, prior drug use, and past participation
in political demonstrations (although some Republicans such as
former Supreme Court justice nominee Arthur Ginsburg have been
caught in the net as well). Reminiscent of McCarthyism's "Are
you now or have you ever been a Communist?" questions, political
leaders (and many potential civic, corporate, and bureaucratic
leaders) are now asked "Are you now or have you ever been
a '60s'-style person?" That is, did you use drugs, engage
in nonmarital sex, attend anti-war rallies, or burn a flag?
As in the ritualized hearings of the 1950s, most members of the
1960s generation either admit guilt and purge themselves of sin
or minimize their past guilt ("I didn't inhale") and
promise future clean living. To some extent, liberals and former
leftists have been forced, far more than conservatives and moderate
politicians born before the baby boom, to actively repudiate
the 1960s. And like many liberals in the late 1940s and 1950s
who dissociated themselves from communism, they have, for the
most part, happily obliged. Some sociologists studying the drug
war, for example, have observed that, in the election campaigns
of 1986 and 1988, liberal Democrats hammered home the attack on
drugs far more than Republicans did, and charged government leaders
with being "soft on drugs."
The reason that Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gary Hart, George McGovern,
Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, and other leaders or public figures
must constantly answer McCarthyite questions about the 1960s,
and reveal their views on issues like drugs and sex, is that their
opinions on these issues and their distance from the tradition
of the 1960s are considered a measure of their respectability
and readiness to accept political, corporate, and civic leadership.
Conversely, there is little reason to question the Bob Doles and
Dan Quayles whose loyalty to dominant norms has never been in
doubt. But among those who have had any association with the dreaded
"60s," only a repudiation of both the politics and the
culture of the times is deemed acceptable by the media and political
elites as a measure of their potential to serve as responsible
leaders.
Novelist Sol Yurick captures the sense of this constant need to
repress the 1960s: "[T]he 60s, like some compulsive recurrent
nightmare[,] still persists in the consciousness of the ruling
elites. They must exorcise and reexorcise it, demand acts of contrition,
to ask of its adherents that they confess that they were possessed
by the devil.... We are asked to admit, once and for all, . .
. [that we] were wrong, to make penance and obeisance, to hypostatize
those sins into those devils now on trial."
Peter Webster email: vignes@monaco.mc
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