From the beginning, Kennedy's presidency had tapped into a nationalistic and religious leitmotif increasingly central to American liberalism and consonant with the themes of both Progressivism and fascism. The Kennedy "action-intellectuals" yearned to be supermen, a Gnostic priesthood imbued with the special knowledge of how to fix society's problems. JFK's inaugural opened the decade with the proclamation that America was the agent of God and the possessor of godlike powers: "For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life." The sociologist Robert Bellah found proof in this address that America already had a civil religion, defined by "the obligation, both collective and individual, to carry out God's will on earth." The New York Times's C. L. Sulzberger wrote that the inaugural appealed to anybody who believed there was "still room on this earth for the kingdom of heaven."21
John F. Kennedy represented the cult of personality tradition of American liberalism. He wanted to be a great man in the mold of Wilson and the Roosevelts. He was more concerned with guns than butter. Lyndon Baines Johnson, a southern populist ward heeler born and bred in the New Deal tradition, was, on the other hand, all about the butter. Johnson could neither be a warrior nor a priest. If he couldn't be the liberal lion his predecessor wanted to be, he could embody the maternal aspect of Progressivism as the caring and protective shepherd overseeing his flock. He would transform the Kennedy personality cult into a cult of government. To this end, LBJ, a crafty and clever politician, made shameless use of JFK's assassination, converting it into precisely the sort of transformative national crisis that had always eluded Kennedy himself. His legacy, the modern welfare state, represents the ultimate fruition of a progressive statist tradition going back to Woodrow Wilson.
As we've seen, Wilson and the progressives laid the intellectual foundations for the divinized liberal state. The progressives, it should be remembered, did not argue for totalitarianism because the war demanded it; they argued for totalitarianism and were delighted that the war made it possible. But World War I also proved to be the undoing of the progressive dream of American collectivism. The total mobilization of the war — and the stupidity of the war in the first place — reawakened in its aftermath the traditional American resistance to such tyranny. In the 1920s the progressives sulked while Americans enjoyed remarkable prosperity and the Russians and Italians (in their view) had "all the fun of remaking a world." The Great Depression came along just in time: it put the progressives back in the driver's seat. As we have seen, FDR brought no new ideas to government; he merely dusted off the ideas he had absorbed as a member of the Wilson administration. But he left the state immeasurably strengthened and expanded. Indeed, it is worth recalling that the origins of the modern conservative movement stem from an instinctive desire to shrink the state back down to a manageable size after the war. But the Cold War changed that, forcing many conservatives to support a large national security state in order to defeat communism. This decision on the part of foreign policy hawks created a permanent schism on the American right. Nonetheless, even though Cold War conservatives believed in a limited government, their support for anti-communism prevented any conceivable attempt to actually get one.
Kennedy's contribution to the permanent welfare state was for the most part stylistic, as we've seen. But his "martyrdom" provided a profound psychological crisis that proved useful for the promotion of liberal goals and ideas. Johnson used it not just to hijack the national political agenda but to transform Progressivism itself into a full-blown mass political religion. For the first time, the progressive dream could be pursued without reservation during a time of prosperity and relative peace. No longer dependent on war or economic crisis, Progressivism finally got a clean shot at creating the sort of society it had long preached about. The psychological angst and anomie that progressives believed lay at the core of capitalist society could be healed by the ministrations of the state. The moment to create a politics of meaning on its own merits had finally arrived.
In his first speech as president, Johnson signaled his intention to build a new liberal church upon the rock of Kennedy's memory. That church, that sacralized community, would be called the Great Society.
THE BIRTH OF THE LIBERAL GOD-STATE
We have already discussed at some length the personalities driving American liberalism. It is now necessary to take what may seem like a sharp detour to address the cult of the state itself in American liberalism. Without this historical detour, it is difficult to see modern liberalism for what it is: a religion of state worship whose sacrificial Christ was JFK and whose Pauline architect was LBJ.
It's hard to fix a specific starting date for the progressive race for the Great Society, but a good guess might be 1888, the year Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward burst on the American scene. One of the most influential works of progressive propaganda ever conceived, the book sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was hailed as the biggest publishing sensation since Uncle Tom's Cabin. The narrator of the book, which is set in the faraway year 2000, lives in a utopian, militarized society. Workers belong to a unified "industrial army," and the economy is run by all-powerful central planners partly inspired by the successes of German military planning. Citizens are drafted into their occupations, for "every able-bodied citizen [is] bound to work for the nation, whether with mind or muscle." The story's preacher informs us that America has finally created the kingdom of heaven on earth. Indeed, everyone looks back on the "age of individualism" with bemused contempt.22
The umbrella in particular is remembered as the symbol of the nineteenth century's disturbing obsession with individualism. In Bellamy's utopia, umbrellas have been replaced with retractable canopies so that everyone is protected from the rain equally. "[I]n the nineteenth century," explains a character, "when it rained, the people of Boston put up three hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth century they put up one umbrella over all the heads."23
Bellamy's vision of a militarized, nationalistic, socialist utopia captivated the imagination of young progressives everywhere. Overnight, Bellamite "Nationalist Clubs" appeared across the country dedicated to "the nationalization of industry and the promotion of the brotherhood of humanity." Nationalism in America, as in most of Europe, meant both nationalism and socialism. Thus Bellamy predicted that individual U.S. states would have to be abolished because "state governments would have interfered with the control and discipline of the industrial army."24
Religion was the glue that held this American national socialism together. Bellamy believed that his brand of socialist nationalism was the true application of Jesus' teachings. His cousin Francis Bellamy, the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, was similarly devoted. A founding member of the First Nationalist Club of Boston and co-founder of the Society of Christian Socialists, Francis wrote a sermon, "Jesus, the Socialist," that electrified parishes across the country. In an expression of his "military socialism," the Pledge of Allegiance was accompanied by a fascist or "Roman" salute to the flag in American public schools. Indeed, some contend that the Nazis got the idea for their salute from America.25
Everywhere one looked, "scientific" utopianism, nationalism, socialism, and Christianity blended into one another. Consider the 1912 Progressive Party convention. The New York Times described it as a "convention of fanatics," at which political speeches were punctuated by the singing of hymns and shouts of "Amen!" "It was not a convention at all. It was an assemblage of religious enthusiasts," the Times reported. "It was such a convention as Peter the Hermit held. It was a Methodist camp meeting done over into political terms." The "expression on every face" in the audience, including that of Jane Addams, who rose to nominate Teddy Roosevelt for his quixotic last bid for the presidency, was one "of fanatical and religious enthusiasm." The delegates, who "believed — obviously and certainly believed — that they were enlisted in a contest with the Powers of Darkness," sang "We Will Follow Jesus," but with the name "Roosevelt" replacing the now-outdated savior. Among them were representatives of every branch of Progressivism, including the Social Gospeller Washington Gladden, happily replacing the old Christian savior with the new "Americanist" one. Roosevelt told the rapturous audience, "Our cause is based on the eternal principles of righteousness...We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord."26