The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [105]
Bands like The Rolling Stones represented what neo-cons were rejecting. Their music and garish stadium rock concerts were seen as manifestations of a liberal culture that had abandoned social norms and cultural mores. They were edgy and dangerous and made neo-cons fear that groups like The Stones might help spark an unsafe and unwelcome transformation in society. Adherents to the neo-con point-of-view would not only take issue with The Stones’ lyrics and image, but would point to outbreaks of violence surrounding the band. The most obvious was the Altamont Speedway Free Festival where eighteen-year old Meredith Hunter, who was at the time under the influence of methamphetamines, was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club working security for The Stones while they played.
Neo-conservatism often attacks the perceived convergence of libertarianism (a political philosophy of personal liberty from external constraint) and modern liberalism, which is based on the definition and pursuit of maximizing individual rights, in the arena of popular culture. Robert H. Bork, a conservative political thinker who was nominated to the US Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan but rejected by the Senate, used his book Slouching Towards Gomorrah to argue that popular culture debased western society and was helping to unravel civilization as we know it.
Similarly, American philosopher Allan Bloom not only called Mick Jagger “weird,” he described him as the symbol of the hypocrisy of popular music. Although their rebellious antics might appeal to the youth, Bloom argued that the petty antics of The Stones are not authentically political because audiences don’t embrace political rebellion so much as they merely envy only their money and fame.
A shrewd, middle-class boy, [Jagger] played the possessed lower-class demon and teen-aged satyr up until he was forty, with one eye on the mobs of children of both sexes whom he stimulated to a sensual frenzy and the other eye winking at the unerotic, commercially motivated adults who handled the money. In his act … he legitimated drugs, which were the real thrill that parents and policemen conspired to deny his youthful audience. He was beyond the law, moral and political, and thumbed his nose at it. Along with all this, there were nasty little appeals to the suppressed inclinations toward sexism, racism and violence, indulgence in which is not now publicly respectable.45
By legitimizing decadence and dissident insubordination, The Stones embodied the fears and criticisms of those like Bloom who worried that modern culture would derail neo-conservative agendas. If Jagger could be happily and triumphantly “beyond the law,” so could all of his fans.
Oh No, Not You Again
The clash between The Rolling Stones and neo-conservatism is nothing new. It is actually at the heart of the band’s identity. What pushed it to a more overt confrontation was the recording of “Sweet Neo Con” at the beginning of George W. Bush’s second term as President of the United States. The song is a no holds barred criticism of contemporary right-wing politics, both domestic and international. It condemns the hypocrisy of Christian political actors and self-proclaimed patriots, and it takes swipes at unilateralism in American foreign policy aimed at forcing regime change through military action. By mentioning the public funds being directed to the Pentagon at the expense of other programs, it also revives an icon of 1960s counterculture, namely the quasi-conspiratorial connections between government, industry, and the military that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower infamously referred to in 1961 as the “military-industrial complex.”
The song also alludes to the US government selling influence to, and driving profit margins of, private companies like Halliburton and KBR (Kellogg, Brown, and Root). The song was so scathing in