force in American politics. If the region is to dominate the nation, and that seems likely, we must think about it as a frontier of frustration as well as one of opportunity. Early American frontiers were not settled by technocrats, by middle-class refugees from the cities, or by retired people. The distinction is important. Today's Sun Belt represents a confluence of Social Darwinism, entrepre- neurialism, high technology, nationalism, nostalgia, and fundamentalist religion, and any Sun Belt hegemony over our politics has a unique potential — not present in the Jackson-to- Bryan frontier or the Adams-to-Taft Eastern establishment — to accommodate a drift toward a peculiarly American authoritarianism — apple- pie authoritarianism, one might say. Indeed, one can easily enough imagine the Sun Belt as the launching pad of a powerful conservatism — based on communications and on high corporate technology, frequently plebiscitary and intermittently populist. At the same time, Sun Belt cor- poratist policies would demand that the government manage the economy more closely than is done today, mobilizing a USA, Inc., to cope with competition from France, Inc., or Japan, Inc. Meanwhile, the morality of the majority would be upheld and enforced, though with politically convenient lapses; the star-spangled banner would wave with greater frequency and over more parades; increased surveillance would crack down on urban outbreaks and political dissidents perceived as extremists. Such a combination would have a considerable popular appeal, not only in the Sun Belt but throughout the country. Walter Laqueur, the distinguished historian, has already projected somewhat the same development for Western Europe. In A Continent Astray: Europe 1970-1978, he anticipated a swing toward regimes of strong leaders and policies bordering on authoritarianism. “The reassertion ' of authority may be brutal, far-reaching, and costly, but it is equally possible that societies facing a crisis of survival will voluntarily surrender some of the freedom to which they have become accustomed and that gradually a new equilibrium will emerge between the rights of the individual and the interests of society.” The most popular politician in the “liberal” state of New York is the Democratic mayor of New York City, Edward Koch, who supports the death penalty, uses anti-minority imagery, and has deployed police dogs to guard subway cars. Instead of being a reformist force in the mold of the old frontier, then, the rise of the Sun Belt may intensify and further a quest for order in the United States. Moreover, that trend appears to be national and supra-ideological. So progressives who associate a reassertion of civil and police authority with the mood of Miami, Dallas, or Orange County must account fora parallel sentiment in the old Northern central cities as well. The most popular politician in the “liberal” state of New York is the Democratic mayor of New York City, Edward Koch, who supports the death penalty, uses antiminority imagery, and has deployed police dogs to guard subway cars. Populism as a contemporary ideology may turn out to be inherently unstable and inadequate. Eighty-five years ago, the agrarian presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan pursued relatively limited and specific economic goals. But today’s middle-class populism is more exercised by free-floating cultural and moral issues and by end-of-empire resentments. It also can make use of an elaborate communications technology. The devices of the referendum and the initiative are far more powerful tools in the 1980s — with “wired electorate” near at hand — than when they were introduced by populists and progressives at the turn of the century. Postindustrial or com- munications-age “populism” could support American authoritarianism, antigovernment rhetoric notwithstanding. To be fair to what might emerge from the Sun Belt: the future always presents unforeseen risks and rewards. And in the United States, the future has usually belonged to optimists, while predictions of disaster become forgotten. The great watershed periods of our history, like the one we are living through today, have rung with many an unjustified charge of dictatorship or fascism — directed toward Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt alike. Turbulent times have generated the boldest presidencies and the most notable and controversial changes of direction, as well as the loudest rhetoric. Such may be the case again. Yet during the 1980s, the risk seems to have doubled. Conventional hopes rest, first, on Reagan’s already unraveling radical economics, and second, on the prospect that the United States can maintain its long tradition of rebuilding a workable and democratic politics through upheavals generated by shifting frontiers, populisms, movements against elites, and religious revivals. To deny the vitality of these roiling forces in the past is to deny the reality of American history. To what degree can they be trusted now? Two decades of political and economic trauma have brought this country to a point of considerable risk. Unrepentant liberalism having apparently exhausted its credibility by the 1980s, the United States turned to a transformed, radicalized conservatism — as many voters crossed their fingers and hoped for the best. The precarious nature of the present conservative experiment cannot be overstated. In an era of upheaval like our own, there is no going back, no real way to recapture the past. Radical conservatism may succeed for a while, or it may be transformed, or it may break down completely. But to future historians, the early 1980s are almost certain to mark a transition to a new politics, a new economics, and a new philosophy of governance. It seems fair to say that a decisive part of the American electorate has already become postconservative as well as postliberal. EAST WIND ACUPUNCTURE CLINIC Traditional Acupuncture & Chinese Botanicals 3804 S.E. Belmont 231-4101 Michael Kane, R.Ac. IS YOUR BODY GETTING YOU DOWN? ACUPUNCTURE WORKS . LOOKING GLASS BOOKSTORE 421 SW TAYLOR 227-4760 OPEN 24hrs. M~F m idnite - 2p,m,Sa-Sun New Lunch C Dinner Menu Special Omelettes, Tacos Special Burgers, Pasta .99 2egg Breakfast 6a.m.-10a.m. 24th&S.E. 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