Posted on 12/26/2004 11:12:41 AM PST by zzen01
My scholarly friend Herb Meyer contends the American Revolutionary War was the greatest intellectual event in western civilization, not simply because the British were beaten, but rather it determined God's power flowed to the people and not to the kings.
With that, insists Meyer, the rule of law and the concept of individual rights were born.
(Excerpt) Read more at canoe.ca ...
Yes, but drugs do not a hippy make. I'm in danger of my head exploding imagining Kerry sitting around in a tie-dyed shirt listening to Jefferson Airplane and saying, "Far out man, like pass the doobie" in that prep school accent.
"We have to start electing people who know what they are talking about. Instead, we elect far too many people who pose, preen, say they feel our pain, say they are sympathetic to us, but they never solve any problems."
What they do, says Meyer, is subvert the foundations of our free society.
We are now in the second American civil war, against those who want to put the American Revolution in reverse.
Today, in the U.S., Canada and other democratic nations, we see the results.
There are no absolute rights or wrongs.
Whatever makes you feel good is just OK.
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Total validation of why The Reagan Revolution needs to keep expanding. Gen-Jones is about to become the dominant political force over the next 10-15 years and undo some of the Hippie-Boomer damages. After that...?
I view the counter culture as the diffusion of bohemian manners and mores through educated young people to society at large.
Yes, it was only a phase for some. I believe that the counterculture cannot be separated from the persavive prosperity and economic security of the postwar "Golden Age". It was an age when upper and upper middle class young people were so comfortable that they believed that scarcity based values like hard work, self-discipline, deferred gratification, etc were as obsolete as knightly chivalry. The counterculture presumed that effortless prosperity was everyone's right, conflict and competition were unnecessary and we could all play frisbee, smoke pot and screw.
Most people were not that comfortable. And the recession of the early 70s smashed counterculture delusions as it poured the main cohort of the baby boom with their soft liberal arts degrees into a glutted job market (before 1970 it wasn't necessary to have a college degree to have a white collar job. degree inflation has made it necessary since.). But the sexual morality (immorality, rather) took, shorn of utopian pretensions. "Winning Through Intimidation" replaced "The Greening of America".
The culture of the mid to late 70's kept the drugs and depravity but discarded the flower power stuff. It's a hard, cold cruel world in which there are winners and losers (notice how that term popped up in "Rocky" and "Saturday Night Fever" ?). Disco culture was elitist, which is why it was so easy to hate it from the outside. There are a handful of the rich and famous and beautiful who glide past the velvet rope while most wait outside in the cold. The clothes were expensive and the dances were difficult and rejection hurts. There are the Tony Manero "winners" whose happy ending is to realize how far above their "loser" friends they are.
That couple are a walking advertisement for self-gratification, aren't they?
I think the seeds of the "drug culture" were planted in the 50's with the advent of synthentic drugs like barbiturates and amphetamines that didn't carry the stigma historically associated with narcotics.
I believe that! Every time I hear the Beatles songs from that era (I Want to Hold Your Hand, etc.) I instantly get morning sickness. I was pregnant at the time -- brings it all back. However, we were not officially part of the hippie era, as we are still married after 41 years!
Carolyn
As a member of Canuckistan I agree with this...
"Blame hippies Sixties counterculture eroded moral foundations of society"
Many of them came from south of the border.
I agree with most of your rant -- as distasteful as mention of disco era seems. Tony Manero, by the way, was a figment of Nic Cohn's (SP?) moron imagination...
However, I particularly loved the term, "scarcity based values," which I plan to use and call my own invention at the first opportunity.
Oh come on, they weren't that bad early on. Can't you nail it down a little closer for me about the moral issues you raised?
The moral issues were part of an unfolding societal change, IMO. IOW, the Vietnam War protests, the drug culture, the Woodstock mentality, were all part of the anti-war movement. I've always said that if the hippies had gotten together with the militia movement, they would have been unstoppable in the civil rights areas. Just a ditzy theory, probably.
Carolyn
Yes. "Scarcity based values" is one of my prouder inventions.
I mention the disco era because it showed that the sexual revolution survived while all the "free love", "love and peace" stuff from the counterculture collapsed once hard times hit in the mid 70's. "Saturday Night Live" and "Rocky" struck chords because they were about making it in a tough world. Getting out of the working class tenements into the glittering lights of the big city. Having one chance and doing everything and anything to make the most of it. An indispensible part of social climbing is dumping friends who want to stay in the old neighborhood and are just content with good time Saturday nights. There is no point wasting love or loyalty on "losers".
The audience who loved "Saturday Night Fever" completely accepted Tony ditching his friends to make it in Manhattan.
I don't quite follow that. Could you explain? I happened to be out of the country at the peak of all of this, so I have missed some things I am sure.
Clinton is representative of the American public distrust of the Military. Do you remember his letter during the draft saying that HE HATES THE MILITARY. Yet he became its commender in chief.
I have seen "scarcity based values" here in NYC among immigrant populations of diverse religious beliefs. You see it among Indians, Russians, Asians, etc. who still believe in the "American Dream" and they pass it on to their children. I have said this time and again, the kids/parents who have a sense of entitlement or believe that some things never change are in for a rude awakening in the next couple of years.
Marxism and their forms of Cultural Marxism are a religion, a collection of cults. In many cases they worship a dead Karl Marx like some (and I stress some) Christians worship a dead Jesus, and not a living God. This is no more apparent than in the practice of enshrinement and regular grooming of Lenin's corpse in the former Soviet Union, the use of Princess Diana, Martin Luther King Jr. and other dead people to conjure up "spirits of the sixties."
Visit my FR homepage and surf around the links, dude...
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