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I.
In a forceful speech delivered February 12, 2003, Senator Robert Byrd, the 85 year old Democrat from West Virginia, described the chamber of the Senate as "ominously, dreadfully silent" while the nation stood at the brink of war against Iraq. "There is no debate," he said, "no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. . . . We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.' In my heart of hearts, I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for the rudest of awakenings. I must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive, unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is 'in the highest moral traditions of our country.' This war is not necessary at this time.'" Byrd's speech was all the more remarkable coming from an old hawk who had once described himself as "the last man out of Vietnam." Over time, he came to regret his support of the notorious Gulf of Tonkin resolution during the Vietnam War, and he vowed never again to give a President unchecked power to wage war. In February 2003 Byrd stood virtually alone in the Senate, condemning the Bush administration for its saber rattling and his colleagues for their cowardly silence. His haunting phrase "sleepwalking through history" recalled the title of Haynes Bonner Johnson's 1991 history of America in the Reagan years, itself alarming enough to be a wake-up call if anyone had been listening during the upup-and-away nineteen-nineties. Sleepwalking Through History meticulously chronicled the Reagan presidency's impact on social, economic and political life in America, including abuses in the S&L institutions, in HUD, in the National security Council, on Wall Street, and in religious broadcasting. Most damaging, it revealed how Reagan evaded judgment during the Iran-Contra affair because of his reputation for not being in charge. Without the gullibility and inattention of the American public, however, the ethical wasteland of the 1980s would not have been fostered so easily by the Reagan administration.2
Extending the metaphor, I want to chronicle in this paper more recent forms of sleepwalking that afflicted American culture in the first half of the...