Seven Events That Made America America

by Larry Schweikart

  Buried beneath the obesity hysteria was a deep hatred of capitalism and prosperity. Health problems of all sorts, especially cancer, continued to be blamed on capitalism, industrialism, and the West. The WHO and its International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), beginning in the 1950s, had studied cancer rates in Africa and compared them to those in the United States and some European nations, concluding that “most” human cancers were caused by environmental cancers and were preventable.69 Precisely because the American food industry expanded worldwide, it became a target for consumer advocates and health zealots, resulting in the demonization of such fast-food companies as McDonald’s. Leading the charge were polemics such as Fast Food Nation, aided and abetted by such supposedly public-interest firms as Michael Jacobson’s Center for Science in the Public Interest. By the 1990s, tort lawyers had joined the crusade, bringing suits against food corporations for causing obesity. Congress passed legislation protecting companies from such frivolous suits before any tobacco-type pattern could set in. According to Science magazine in 2003, “Our culture’s apparent obsession with ‘getting the best value’ may underlie the increased offering and selection of larger portions. . . .”70

  This fit well with the notion that the United States consumed too much of the planet’s resources, long a canard regarding the issue of energy use. In 2003, nutritionists David and Marcia Pimentel lent academic credibility to the war on meat by claiming in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that meat-eating and use of fossil fuels were inexorably intertwined, and the salvation of the planet lay in a vegan diet.71 Basing their analysis on American overpopulation (at a time when the world was already reaching its population peak and most nations had a more serious underpopulation problem to deal with), the Pimentels gave academic cover to the radical vegan movement, which was already partly supported by the antifat, heart-disease lobby. Then came Scientific American, which had already signed on to the bogus global warming theories with its alarmist article “How Meat Contributes to Global Warming.”72 Cow flatulence, farms that “give rise to greenhouse gases,” and the process of raising just one pound of beef for the dinner table (which requires ten pounds of plant protein), they argue, all contribute to the dangerous warming of the planet.

  Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine picked up the point and in 2009 said that “Food production accounts for about one fifth of greenhouse gases,” and that “moving about in a heavy body is like driving a gas guzzler.”73 Published in the Sun newspaper under the astoundingly honest (from the perspective of the study’s authors) headline, “Fatties Cause Global Warming,” the study claimed that each fat person was responsible for emitting a ton more of climate-warming carbon per year. Studies such as these merely constituted the natural convergence of the antiautomobile, anticapitalism, vegan, and environmental movements—a call to limit all human freedoms (indeed, all human characteristics) as “dangerous to the planet earth.”

  At the root of all this hatred of meat was a hatred for humans, for the authors of such polemics were always quick to point out that even asparagus absorbed a “CO2 equivalent of 3.2 ounces.”74 Clearly, even mandating a meatless diet wouldn’t be sufficient for the zealots, who would then attack vegan diets as “un-earth-friendly.” (You can just hear the critics discussing how plants “scream” at this point.) If people were the ultimate target, “Big Food”—capitalism embodied in caloric intake—was the immediate villain. Books such as Fast Food Nation began the assault on “Big Food” through implausible diet regimens and selective hysteria-ridden “facts.” Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary Super Size Me followed the filmmaker as he consumed only McDonald’s food for a thirty-day period and gained about 24 pounds. Later, however, a college student named Jared Fogle—who weighed in at 425—developed a “Subway diet,” based on the Subway sandwich chain’s turkey hoagies, and lost a total of 240 pounds. When a fellow student wrote a story about his weight loss, Subway hired him as a spokesman. Meanwhile, Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser’s diatribe against fast food and conservatism in general, became mandatory reading on college campuses as faculties attempted to propagandize via freshman orientations that required students to read the book. Even Schlosser had to admit that no scientific study had established a relationship between fast food and obesity, but insisted that there was a connection nonetheless.75 Like Barbara Ehrenreich’s attack on entry-level jobs in America (finally successfully challenged by none other than Adam Shepard, a college student who, after being dropped in a large southeastern city with only $25 and a sleeping bag, had a full-time job, a car, an apartment, and money in the bank at the end of a year), Fast Food Nation demonized all fast food as though it were eaten three times a day, seven days a week.76

  Larger food giants, though, soon found themselves in the crosshairs. Food corporations marketed foods low in nutritional value, duping children into buying cereals for the toys. (Unstated in these claims that Americans were getting fatter was a fundamental contradiction, given that most of the “experts” believed in evolution: if evolution meant for people to be less active and use their brains more, weren’t heavier people “natural”?) With renewed concerns about the cost of health care came a fresh assault on obesity, zeroing in on “unhealthy restaurants.” In 2009 the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council issued a report detailing strategies for local government to combat an “epidemic” of childhood obesity by using zoning and land-use regulations that would “restrict fast food establishments” near schools or public playgrounds.77 The report, called “Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity,” naturally encouraged higher taxes on foods it deemed harmful or of “minimal nutritional value” and similarly called for caloric information on all menus from restaurants with more than twenty stores. Already, some governments had taken actions, such as Los Angeles, which placed a ban on opening any new fast food restaurants in East Los Angeles. Astoundingly, the report even discussed restrictions on advertising for “physically inactive services and goods,” such as cars and video games!

  Given the politicization of diet, it is not surprising—in fact, now it seems entirely predictable—that the government began to politicize climate with “global warming,” one of the biggest scams in history that, conveniently, dovetailed with the war on meat. But this crusade didn’t come as easily. As early as 1975, when the government was still learning how to dictate dietary choices, Newsweek ran a major article by Peter Gwynne called “The Cooling World.”78 Gwynne saw “ominous signs” that the “Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically,” with horrific consequences for food production. The “great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R.” were “destined to feel its impact,” he predicted. Farmers had seen growing seasons decline in England, and the “most devastating outbreak of tornados” in recent memory had struck the United States. All this, readers were told, was the result of global cooling.

  Were it not so sad, the hysteria generated by the media on matters so out of human control as the weather would be laughable. Yet within a matter of years after Gwynne warned of an impending “Little Ice Age,” liberal environmental activists jumped ship to warn of another catastrophe, the warming of the planet due to human influences. Scientists had already identified a “greenhouse effect” as one of the results of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This “discovery” stemmed from efforts by regulators to control smog in the late 1960s and early 1970s by reducing auto emissions. The theory was that carbon emissions in the atmosphere would trap heat, causing the earth to warm. Yet equatorial sea surface temperatures had remained within plus or minus one degree for centuries—perhaps billions of years.79 Studies even showed that a doubling of the earth’s CO2 cover would have a small effect on temperatures.

  A complete history of the war on the automobile would require its own book. B. Bruce-Briggs and John Heitmann, among others, have documented the attacks on cars that have persisted for decades.80 “Green” parties in Europe had
already been formed as early as the 1970s, mostly by the Socialist Left, as a more palatable cover for opposing economic growth, and the concern in the 1980s was less a warming planet than the loss of the ozone layer over the earth. When this proved a phantom threat, the environmentalists turned to temperature variance as evidence that humans were hurting the planet.

  Tom Paine once said, “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression.” In the decades after Eisenhower’s heart attack, intrusions on economic liberty were common, and during Vietnam, many claimed that their political liberty was in jeopardy. But perhaps the most insidious threat of all was the erosion of freedom in the name of “a person’s own good.” At the very time that some well-meaning, but myopic, Americans sought to limit everyone’s freedoms—to choose what to eat, what to drink, even what to drive—under the auspices of “helping” them become “healthier,” Paine would have screamed, “Someone guard them from oppression!” Edmund Burke seemed to have the government’s diet police and global warming in mind when he wrote in 1784, “The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”

  In this case, the delusion was that medical science had settled on what constituted healthy diets, and that big government needed to protect us from Twinkies or Humvees. Yet in both cases—even if the science firmly established the dangers of either—no individual should surrender personal liberty to the discretion of faceless bureaucrats who can never have an individual’s best interest at heart. Of course, in neither the case of the dietary fat hypothesis (note the key word, hypothesis) nor that of global warming is the science anywhere near settled. Quite the contrary; recent studies are increasingly suggesting both are wrong. But that is a matter for science, not government. When Jefferson said, “It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself to resist invasions of it in the case of others,” he no doubt was referring to political issues. Yet what have food and transportation in our day become but political issues? If Ike knew what he’d started, he’d likely have had another heart attack!

  5.

  A STEEL GUITAR ROCKS THE IRON CURTAIN

  [S]ome of the most important discoveries, both in arts and sciences, have come forward under very unpromising and suspicious appearances.

  JAMES MADISON TO CONGRESS, APRIL 20, 1789

  As the picks and hammers began chipping into the Berlin Wall in November 1989, “People Got to Be Free” by the Rascals blasted out from nearby boom boxes.1 The fall of the Wall was primarily the result of eight years’ worth of economic and military pressure from President Ronald Reagan, with important moral support from Pope John Paul II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Yet lost amid the flying cement and cheers of onlookers was the fact that a thoroughly American institution, rock and roll music, which the Beatles had revitalized more than twenty-five years earlier, had made a significant and quite overlooked contribution to defeating communism. When, on November 9, the checkpoints opened and border guards didn’t fire on the tens of thousands of East Berliners who stormed the entry points to West Berlin, the beat of a new generation behind the Iron Curtain, largely influenced by American rock, became truly audible for the first time.

  Rock and roll perfectly complemented the new freedom in Eastern Europe. It was indeed the music of the people, and occasionally, the voice of protest—completely unsupported by government at any level. Rock originated in the United States, was nourished in the United States, and perfected in the United States, so it is ironic that one of the greatest events in American history came with the arrival of the English “Fab Four,” the Beatles, on American soil in February 1964. That a British band would play such a crucial role in the revival of rock—which in turn would be energized, re-Americanized, and spread throughout the world—was one of those ironic twists that makes history perpetually entertaining. Just as Reagan relied on Margaret Thatcher for support, so too the American rockers mixed freely with their English cousins in the revival of rock that ensued. But ultimately it was the American record market, American producers, American audiences, and often American artists who eventually helped pry open the jaws of tyranny enveloping much of the world. In the end, whatever the British or, for that matter, the Czech, Polish, or even Russian underground rockers played or sang, it was more or less “made in the USA.”

  In the mid-1960s, antiwar radicals, some of them seeking a revolution that would overthrow Western capitalist society, latched on to rock icons, hoping they would provide the attractive and popular front men (and women) necessary to reel in the youth. They were disappointed. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Mick Jagger—all sooner or later let down the leaders who sought social upheaval by refusing to become the standard bearers of their cause. Ironically, then, two decades later rock as a musical form and cultural movement would contribute mightily to eroding the foundations of the Communist system that so many of the true radicals loved.

  The paradox is that rock and roll by its nature is both entertainment and social criticism, revolutionary yet extremely sympathetic to the very liberties that infuse the American capitalist and political system. Artists who complained about “the man” and sang of “takin’ it to the streets” enthusiastically took—and mostly kept—large checks for their performances. One has to look no further than the concerns musicians express over music pirating; most artists had starved to get where they were, but after meeting with some success, quickly adopted the clichéd rock-star lifestyle of indulgence and luxury. At the very moment Doors singer Jim Morrison waxed romantic about “revolting against authority,” he was tooling around Los Angeles in the “Blue Lady,” a Shelby GT 500 (a “terrible and mean machine,” as Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek labeled it). Shelbys weren’t cheap—about the price of a fully tricked-out top-of-the-line Corvette!2 Guitarist Jim McCarty, of “Devil with a Blue Dress On” fame, rolled his eyes when he recalled the fascination of Cactus bandmates Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice (formerly in Vanilla Fudge) with their Panteras.

  Commentators from the Left later attempted to redefine reality, trying to claim that some of the rockers’ actions complemented their own ideology. When the Beatles formed Apple Records, one writer insisted it represented “the worker seizing control of the means of production.”3 The reality that Paul McCartney deeply resented England’s high tax laws and found a way around them by forming a label in the United States seemed lost on such writers. When McCartney described Apple as a “kind of Western communism,” he was talking a good Karl Marx but his actions were 100 percent Adam Smith: Apple launched a blizzard of new products and divisions—books, electronics, clothing, films—all at a profit.4 Rock’s revolutionary character came from the quite capitalistic spirit of creativity itself, a point leftist interpreters frequently missed. While rock may have “fought the system,” it fought every system! The same undefined craving for freedom that infused American musicians’ call for civil rights for blacks lay behind the East Bloc artists’ battle for their own civil rights against much more repressive regimes. And where some rockers could croon—or scream—about love, peace, and brotherhood, it often failed to line up with their personal lives. Pete Townshend of the Who even smacked Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman on the head with his guitar for interrupting the Who’s set at Woodstock.5

  Like jazz and country and western before it (both also 100 percent American music forms), what made rock revolutionary when it arrived on the scene in the 1950s was not its lyrics or political preaching but rather its essential liberating form. All three styles shared a common thread of liberty, in which the band starts together, then after a few verses or choruses, introduces soloists, followed by a reunion at the end. This musical genre symbolized the nation’s essence like no other music forms, in that it reflected both the communal and the individualistic nature of American society. But by 1960, American rock had begun to lose its dynamism, having drifted away from the revolutionary sounds and moves of Elvis Presley to sappy love songs and appearances in B-level movies, such as King Creole a
nd Flaming Star.

  The Beatles transformed American rock from nonthreatening, simplistic, feel-good tunes popular in the 1950s into a sophisticated (and rebellious) medium, returning it to its roots. They were aided in that transformation by a radical new instrument, Leo Fender’s new electric guitar with its distinct sound tailored perfectly for rock and roll. Soon the Gibson company’s Les Paul, with its more “bluesy” sound, joined with Fender’s to create a recipe for a cultural explosion: a radical new instrument with a new sound mixed with several streams of music—much of it (country, folk, R&B, and rock) rebellious in nature—together energizing the largest generation of prepubescent Americans in history.

  These trends collided with a fourth development: a radical turnover in talent from the original rock and rollers. Already, however, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson (aka the Big Bopper) were dead; Jerry Lee Lewis had become a pariah due to his scandalous marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin; and Little Richard had been born again, playing only gospel music between 1957 and 1963. Carl Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes” was already considered an “oldie,” and had increasingly come to be identified with a new subvariant of rock called “rockabilly.” On top of that, Perkins was three years older than Presley, four years older than Roy Orbison, and almost a decade older than up-and-comers such as Gene Pitney and Ricky Nelson. In teen years, like dog years, that made Perkins ancient. And the King? Elvis’s “rock star” was waning. He was increasingly absorbed with making movies, and most of his songs came as tie-ins to his films. Though “Jailhouse Rock” became a classic, more often the material proved second-rate and forgettable. 6 Both Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, big crooners of the forties and fifties, had transitioned from music to Hollywood, though Sinatra still occasionally ducked into a studio and emerged with a new “easy listening” hit. Elvis, on the other hand, slipped into an artistic funk for years.