I was too young, thank God, to get totally involved with the leftie agenda of the '60's. But I was also old enough to have had a good dose of traditional teaching (in elementary and middle school). Once I started seeing the Truth of the '60's, I was appalled that I had embraced, albeit loosely and somewhat unknowingly (my parents reared me right -- all mistakes were mine and mine alone!), many leftie ideas. This started me on a quest to find out what the heck happened!
It was hard to believe that things just turned without ryme or reason, like in a vaccum or something. One of my biggest questions to the previous generation was how could they have just let it happen? How was it that so many supposedly in charge just capitulated to the student uprisings, etc? Why did the previous generation just sit back when they were accused of all sorts of evils (real and imagined)? What did they do with the feelings of resentment they must have had about being made to look ridiculous??
One answer from a woman who was like a mother to me was that they just didn't believe "it" could happen in America. They thought it was a fad or something. They didn't understand the power that the baby boomers would have, nor how the boomers (their precious children who would be given every opportunity) would greedily grasp and corrupt that power. I think they were innocents, so to speak.
Another huge turning point for me was reading "Venona Secrets" (subtitle was, I think, "Communist Espionage in the United States"). I used to laugh with the rest of the lefties at people who "saw commies behind every bush." Hahaha, those poor deluded saps, such provincial thinking, etc. Turns out, they were right. Commies were placed in strategic positions in the '40's and '50's (education, government, media, law, religion) and, it's my opinion after lots of research, this led directly to the horror of the '60's, bolstered by the sheer numbers of baby boomers.
(Robert Bork's book, "Slouching Toward Gommorah" was also hugely instructive. Highly recommend both books.)
Another book that was very instructive (was fairly balanced, surprisingly) for me was Landon Y. Jones' "Great Expectations: America and The Baby Boom Generation." Some points from that book as well as my two cents follow.
The boomers started out with such promise! I think up 'til the Rock Nation was usurped by the Woodstock Nation, my generation showed signs of being "all that" and more. Instead, we threw out tradition (the baby with the bath water) and created our own standards. The electronic babysitter won our minds. We had a kind of sophistication, but without understanding. Adults followed us instead of leading. Such an abnormally large generation couldn't be pacified or controlled by society. Special treatment, in the form of student deferments (again the questions: Why and how was this allowed??), was given to a huge percentage of male boomers who were eligible for military service but didn't serve -- it was an educational and economic gap, not racial, contrary to the poverty/race/war mantra. Many were really just refugees from affluence!
The self-indulged, pampered, enshrined boomers were NOT going to Vietnam. Anxiety set in and radicalism festered. Jerry Rubin. SDS (the Port Huron Statement of 1962, my GOD!), Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Fonda, radical politics, Weather Underground all reared their ugly heads. By '69, the best and brightest boomers were increasingly politicized and alienated from the greatest generation.
By Fall 1970, the rads went underground, which included cutting their hair, cleaning themselves up, exchanging bell bottoms for brief cases and pot for designer drugs, and moved into the mainstream -- education, gov't, media, etc. -- where their presence swelled the numbers of lefties who had been placed there earlier. Lots of rads (the political revolutionaries) and some of their dupes and followers (the cultural/hippie revolutionaries) were disenchanted, pessimistic, old, cynical; they could not and would not adjust to society and vice-versa. Anger, alienation, suicide, drugs; the summer of love turned into rampant, unthinking rutting.
The Woodstock Nation became a disaster (it should have been obvious that it would). Because we were so numerous, our needs so compelling, our energy so robust, we believed we were special (our parents/society told us as much), unique, powerful. And we were, but beliefs are not always Truth and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I can only look back at the late '60's and early '70's as a time of great sadness for my generation and what it had wrought upon itself and the nation -- the tarnishing of our great national spirit, the wreak of our great promise, the dawning realization of the bills of goods we bought and sold.
Boomers and their impact on society is easily tracked -- the pig in the python. In this order: Education (God out, revisionist history in), military (ridiculed and dessimated), marriage (ridiculed, redefined), family (our children murdered in the womb), parenting (turned over to schools, gov't, and "experts") all changed drastically. We are coming into our time of being "in control" as our parents pass away. The next institution we will affect greatly: Old age. It's possible that the last, self-preservating deal the boomers make will be with the new breed of immigrants: Come, work, pay taxes to support me in my old age and we'll overlook the fact that you'll change America forever. We'll turn a blind eye if you're here illegally, if you aren't innoculated against infectious diseases, if you have criminal records, if you come from enemy nations.
One end scenario of the boomer legacy could be doom and gloom, which is where it was going up until recently. But the other end scenario is that we come to our senses, that we use our huge numbers to turn us back to God and tradition and American values. We can do it. We can do it quickly and decisively. We cannot be ignored -- we are too many. The 2004 election gives me great hope that my generation will make necessary changes in order to leave a legacy that honors God, respects the heritage of the greatest generation, and gives hope and courage to the next generation.
Prodigal baby boomers, come home!!
Phew. I must have had to get that off my chest!!! Sorry so long.
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Thanks for the ping!
I read the whole thing. Well done.
Read The Black Book of Communism for a global look at the movements these people favored. It's written by (yes!) a group of European intellectuals the lead author was (oui!) French.
I was really a little puzzled by my cohorts, tho I liked them heartily, found them a bit foolish. I always thought they's outgrow it.
Sorry so long
if I had a dollar for every time I have had to say that, I'd be rich.
That would have made a good post (vanity) all by itself. Thanks.