Subversives All! Ronald Reagan & the Paternal Roots of “Law and Order” at Home and Abroad

Abstract

Law and society scholars have identified the call for “law and order” during the Cold War-era as a method for opposing egalitarian social change. But the law and order narrative was not simply a coded phrase meant to appeal to the anxieties of traditionally-powerful Americans. Instead, the depiction of egalitarian politics consistently offered in law and order narratives – that such politics was the product of unruly children who, due to a chronic lack of paternal influence, were deficient in the prototypical American virtue of self-discipline and, so, were vulnerable to communist indoctrination – performed constitutive work. The law and order narrative emphasized, first, that egalitarian politics was subversive of the American nation. Second, it offered a counter-subversive response to egalitarian politics that infantilized marginalized people and recommended the exercise of a stern, frequently violent, fatherly authority that would impart to them the discipline necessary for productive American citizenship. Exploration of Ronald Reagan’s employment of the law and order narrative to oppose student protestors while Governor of California and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua while President of the United States exposes the paternal roots of American law and order both at home and abroad.