“America is now in the deepest, most dangerous constitutional crisis since the hostility in the 1850s that led to secession and civil war,” Speaker Newt Gingrich writes in “American Despotism,” the first installment of his new American Spectator series. “The rule of law is steadily being replaced by a frightening new rule of power.”
Gingrich argues that this threat to the rule of law began in the 1960s and ’70s, when the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the growth of the civil rights movement gave rise to widespread activism and the politicization of the federal government.
In his third installment, Speaker Gingrich discusses “how the ’60s and early ’70s ignited the culture wars.” He begins:
When then-Gov. Ronald Reagan spoke on April 17, 1970, to an agricultural group about the radical movement and riots at the University of California, Berkeley, he said bluntly: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.”
We had just lived through the relative calm of the Eisenhower years — along with TV shows such as Father Knows Best and Gunsmoke (in which the good guys always won). So, what do you think led former romantic comedy movie star Ronald Reagan to say a bloodbath may be necessary?
Reagan was responding to the cultural war that exploded throughout the 1960s and continued into the first years of the 1970s. Understanding the depths and passion of today’s culture wars requires going back to the 1960s. The forces that came together then shook America so deeply that their momentum has grown for six decades.
Read the rest of the piece here!
Listen to The American Spectator’s exclusive interview with the Speaker here. Find the rest of the series here.
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American Despotism: Black Radical Activists vs. Law Enforcement