Neoconservatives viewed the collapse of the Soviet Union as their ultimate victory. A neoconservative ally, Francis Fukuyama, described the event as the “end of history.” Midge Decter, seeing no further need for the Committee for the Free World, shut it down. Even as neocons celebrated, however, many remained uneasy. The counterculture, they felt, had become institutionalized on college campuses, in many sectors of the media, and in the politics of the nation. Writing in The National Interest in 1993, not long after Bill Clinton won election, Irving Kristol declared,

Success in the Cold War, in short, had little meaning for neocons if the broader culture continued to spin out of control. It was less that the old rules and values were ignored or flouted than that the newer ethos seemed to suggest that there were no rules. Morality was simply a matter of individual choice, and moral relativism had become the new norm.

The counterculture sought acceptance for what neocons and many ordinary Americans considered to be bizarre ideas and behavior.