on Paul Berman's A Tale Of Two Utopias

I’m on board with Berman’s left conservative outlook, which is awake to the shortcomings of both capitalism and socialism, and informed by extensive historical study and lived experience.  This survey and comparison of the pivotal movements of 1968-69 and 1989-91 yields many insights. And the history told here is thrilling and often inspiring.  Of course I have a few bones to pick. Begin with the framework of “four revolutions” presented in the first essay. Revolution #1 is the whole spectrum of political, sexual, racial and ecological ferment in Western nations at that time, plus all of the generationally specific cultural change of that period (rock, drug use, self-presentation etc.). Revolution #2 is “an uprising in the zone of the spirit” affirming a general right to self-determination. Revolution #3 is the global anti-imperialist struggle, and Revolution #4 was the struggle to ameliorate state tyranny in the Soviet bloc countries, most notably Prague Spring in 1968. But #1 is too broad to be taken as one thing. And #2 is a phenomenon that emerged from the many currents of #1, and took many different forms. Reifying this spiritual uprising seems to me a peculiarly Hegelian move, which is odd, considering that Bergman does a smooth takedown of the major strains (Marxist and conservative) of post-Hegelian thought in the last chapter. The “two utopias” of the title seem to be Communism on the one hand, and either the millenarian vision of the United States (which, again, takes so many different forms from William Bradford to Henry Ford to Abbie Hoffman to Ronald Reagan that it cannot be said to cohere, in spite of some continuities) or the globalized liberal vision of the “End Of History” which Francis Fukuyama and others wrote about following 1989. Berman’s conclusion is solidly anti-progressivist (or anti-Whig, which is the same thing)—totalizing attempts to install regimes of human perfection inevitably yield totalitarian results. Yeah.
Ironically, in the discussion of “the gay awakening” that constitutes the second of the four long essays in the book, Berman, writing in 1996, is not quite bien pensant by the standards of two decades later. He’s pretty snarky about the drag queens who were in the vanguard of the Stonewall rebellion. My guess is that if he were to revisit this story now, the mainstreaming of trans-acceptance would require some revision. Gay s/m culture gets the same sneering regard. Evidently all of these folks, outliers in the uprising of spirit towards which Berman seems to bear some sentimental allegiance, are just too far out for the author's comfort.