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The kinds of influence The Stones had points to an important distinction between “strong” and “weak” publics within the public sphere. Strong publics are ones concerned with decision making, whereas weak publics deal with the formation of identity. When someone attends a political rally or a protest, they are engaged in the process of trying to advance a particular goal and play a direct role in furthering public deliberation. The appeal is designed to be much more intellectual and engaged in public debate and deliberation. When someone attends a Stones concert, there is still an impact but one that is not as direct. Just as your parents may have feared, when you associate yourself with an anti-establishment rock’n’roll band, you may become more distrusting of centralized power and institutional means for social control.

Obviously, it’s not often that someone will have their life changed by listening to a song, buying an album, or attending a concert. It’s just as unlikely, however, that that same person would end up making long-term political decisions from attending one single political rally or watching one news broadcast. That is simply not how human beings operate.

Numerous studies on what is known as “political socialization,” or the induction of an individual into their political attitudes, opinions, and a political culture, point out that there are several important factors that are working to influence individuals throughout their lifetimes.44 However, prolonged exposure to a particular attitude toward life, especially one that a person feels a deep emotional attachment to, as fans of The Rolling Stones will attest, begins to have an impact on the ways a person thinks about and values things.

The music, performance, and lifestyle of The Rolling Stones make their rebellious worldview seem attractive and legitimate. So when a die-hard Stones fan hears politicians professing a need to use the tools of the state to enforce a cultural or political agenda, they may be less likely to accept that at face value. What may start troubling a Stones fan is the nature of the game played by so many politicians of wealth and, maybe, taste.

My Sweet Neo Con

If The Rolling Stones represented the liberal and free-spirited side of the social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, Neo-cons were united on the opposite side of that coin. The neo-conservative philosophy began in the 1960s as a political movement in reaction to what were perceived as the failures of liberalism and the radicalism of the left. Responding to the expansion of the social welfare state, the Civil Rights movement, demonstrations against US involvement in Vietnam, and other challenges to traditionalism and American identity—the British Invasion among them—neo-conservatism rose as a means to consolidate state power in order to restore a sense of order and promote so-called “traditional values.”

Early neo cons, the likes of Daniel Bell (1919–2011) and Irving Kristol (1920–2009), argued that liberalism, focused as it was on individual rights and principles of freedom, had transformed over the decades. What was once a politics of limited government and personal responsibility, they complained, had been replaced by a philosophy of big government programs that forced social and economic changes through massive top-down policy programs like the New Deal and Civil Rights and the decadence of an unchecked consumer culture.

What makes neo-conservatism different from traditional conservatism? To be sure, both embrace traditionalism and only the most gradual pace of change to society. The difference is that neo-cons are willing to use the state as a means of advancing their political agenda. Traditional conservatism is skeptical of centralized power and authority, no matter who is in charge or what their worldview happens to be. The original neo-cons, many of whom were radical socialists before becoming disillusioned with what was happening in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin,