For some, the howl of outrage was a new and worrying trend. Lockhart wrote in Blackwood's that it brought out "the crying sin of the age - humbug!". In the recent past, Britons had not been afraid of indulging in their emotions, and they had not sought to conceal frank words behind layers of verbiage. Foreign visitors in the 1790s and the beginning of the 19th century were amazed at how little a Briton cared for the opinion of his neighbours and how shockingly candid his conversation could be. Affectation was a dreaded vice; as Walter Scott wrote, many people believed that it was better "to practise open looseness of manners because they said it was better than hypocrisy"The Scottish Sunday Herald also reviews the book here. The two reviews are not dissiimilar.
Wilson calls this period "the age of cant", which he defines as an excessive preoccupation with moral appearance. For all their obsession with sexual continence, the early Victorians were as badly behaved as their predecessors, as the growth of prostitution and venereal disease testified. The difference was the lengths they went to conceal and deny it. As long as appearances were maintained, they felt, society would not fall apart.The social conservatives ballyhoo the degenerates of the Sixties. BI question the social conservatives' concern. I see the counterculture as expressing its disgust at the United State's hypocrisy towards races and women and other minorities. That the counterculture went too far is pure American exuberance. That the counterculture overturned and exposed our national shortcomings cannot be refuted.
Which brings me to question the social conservatives motivation in its wholesale condemnation of a particular part of a specific decade. How can these social conservatives oppose what happened almost 40 years ago without condemning the bigotry and hypocrisy that the period condemned?
Those that are following the same sex amendment, might be interested to read the comments to TDW's post on the defeat of the amendment. I think that the comments show that social conservatives do not mind the racism, sexism, or the other discriminatory isms that disturbed the Sixties. They fall into that category of minds that flee with fear from any change upsetting their self-satisfied status of privilege created by those discriminatory isms. They dread the idea that all persons are created equal with certain inalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The comments are found here. The same view from a different perspective is found in Gary Welsh's (Advance Indiana) post here describing Eric Miller's response to the House Committee's defeat of SJR - 7.
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