Hippies still trying to ruin the country

Lexington Herald-Leader ^ | 11-15-06 | Jenean Mcbrearty

[atomic conspiracy]

This is really an excellent analysis of how and why so many rank and file leftists cling to outmoded and destructive beliefs: their worldview, which they associate with the glory of their youth, would collapse if those beliefs were abandoned. For true believers, the 60s paradigm cannot be altered to fit circumstances, it is dogma, untouchable. Instead, circumstances are altered to fit the paradigm. The pop-culture left is acting out a script and their motives are profoundly personal. It is unfortunate that their actions impact the real world, where terrorists and other savage enemies take heart from their influence and real people die because of moth-eaten fantasies.

For more on the relationship between leftist politics and the 60s counterculture, see Thomas M. Frank's landmark cultural history, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. This is a damning indictment of the media-industrial complex and Frank's status as a major liberal only enhances the credibility of this particular message. That message, supported by some remarkable documentation, is that the 60s counteculture was largely an invention of the advertising industry, not an authentic social movement. He also documents the crucial role of radical political memes in the counterculture, and maintains that the counterculture remains the chief influence on the internal culture of the mass media to this day. In short, the left as we know it today is little more than an advertising gimmick run amok.

[Dems_R_Losers]

Wow, I cannot believe the Lexington Herald-Liberal actually printed this!

[Ouderkirk]

America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.


Would make a great tagline

[JennysCool]

The only generation whose nostalgia has a body count.

[Volunteer]

"Yet, please be compassionate toward aging, albeit dangerous, erstwhile flower folks."

No. These people need to be removed from office, campus, and polite society. Confine them to "collectives" where they can talk about how great they were while taking new LSD with extra fiber.

[Chewie84]

Awesome article! Perfectly sums up the hippie mindset. However, it could have also mentioned that even though the Flower Children are getting closer to their graves, many of them (Especially those who are teachers) are trying to encourage America's misguided youth to follow in their footsteps. That's something else for us to be concerned about.

[JennysCool]

Don't trust anyone over 50.

[Blue Eyes]

(I posted this on a thread earlier this week; it also seems appropriate here.)

My husband is a professor in a local college, so I am often exposed to the "intellectuals" and "academics" who haunt the halls. Once every couple of months, we attend readings by guest writers or poets. Since the head of the English department is a Viet Nam vet, the vast majority (I can only think of one exception) of the guest authors are also Viet Nam war veterans, all rabidly leftist, all writing about what a terrible thing the US did to the people of VN, all pining for the days of protest and revolt, all blaming GWB for all the ills of the world.

The most recent reading featured a husband-wife team. The man was a vet, the woman was a poet from Nicaragua, having survived the turmoil that took place there during the 80s. The man, who was born and raised in a free country, wrote about rebellion, about how terrible his country was/is; the woman, who was truly oppressed and was threatened with violence and death on a daily basis, wrote about love and about being a woman. No calls for rebellion, no blame, just a joy in life.

During the question and answer session, one of the more "enlightened" students in the audience (the only thing worse than an intellectual professor is a self-important enlightened student) asked the man how it was possible to get "the truth" out in these times of oppression. The man, gladly taking that flag and running, spoke of the vast censorship that is now taking place and of how poets who dared to speak "the truth" are not being killed, yet, but that the time is not far off.

I just shook my head. I dared not say much to my husband, as our political differences cause great stress between us, but I was stunned at this guy's lack of reality. What censorship is taking place? (He later said that the censorship was that he could no longer get any real news on the network news casts, that he had to turn to the internet for news. Whatever). When are poets going to be killed? It was like he really really wanted to be a martyr for his "cause," and his cause is really dangerous, and look how noble and brave he is speaking "the truth" in the face of all of this oppression. But he sounded ridiculous.

I suppose the students in the audience were nodding along, also feeling "the cause," but hopefully someone was listening critically. These guys sit in their college offices, trying to resurrect the rebellious '60s, trying to do something so dangerous to their government that they might be killed for it, trying to do something important.

Meanwhile, the one who had actually been oppressed and threatened wrote about love and the joy of life.

[tacticalogic]

Okay, what the heck is "Generation Jones"?

[Rummyfan]

Bump!

[Froufrou]

"Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives."

Bingo! And there are more and more living in the park right outside my window. "GET A JOB," I feel like screaming.

[ElkGroveDan]

Let's not forget the gifts that the flower children left us; rampant drug abuse, venereal disease, widespread divorce and the breakdown of the family, millions slaughtered in the killing fields of Vietnam and Cambodia, 40 million abortions, the welfare state....

[atlaw]

For example, consider their continued belief that America's armed forces are neo-Nazi stormtroopers who delight in burning babies to further the aims of imperialistic corporations.

Somehow, I don't think that Ward Churchill and the seven aging hippies in Seattle who actually believe this are really capable of "ruining the country."

[OldFriend]

Perfectly describes the hippie generation. Wasters then, wasters now. Except now they wear a suit now and then instead of tie dyed t shirts and ripped jeans. They're still doing pot and trying the free love route. IOW, they're the PIGS with no morals or integrity.

[rightinthemiddle]

Good one!

[woofie]

As a grown up hippie I wonder how many were like me and turned to the right as they got older....The lefties seem like younger folks ...those of us who lived through the 60s are dead or nuts or grown up

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

I am 58 and grew up in Georgia. I was in college from 66-72 (B.A and J.D.) during the so called hippie years. At UGA there were very few hippies. There were demonstrations after the Kent State riots and shooing of the students there, but the protesters were in the minority. Most students were in complete disdain of the smelly longhairs.

I am always offended when I see TV shows or movies that give the appearance that everyone during the 60s was smoking dope, protesting the war, and going to some kind of woodstock. That may have been more common in California, but not in the South.

[DogByte6RER]

Add to that the rampant deviant sexual behavior that ushered in HIV and AIDS.

Without a doubt, the Woodstock wing of the Baby Boomer generation will go down as the most self absorbed, narcissistic and destructive generation in the history of America.

[ansel12]

"-- During the Vietnam War, seven million men volunteered for the military; only two million were drafted. Burkett's research indicates that 75 percent of those who served in Vietnam itself were volunteers. They were the best educated and most egalitarian military force in America's history. In WWII, only 45 percent of the troops had a high school diploma. During the Vietnam War, almost 80 percent of those who enlisted had high school diplomas, and the percentage was higher for draftees--even though, at the time, only 65 percent of military-age youths had a high school degree. Throughout the Vietnam era, the median education level of the enlisted man was about 13 years. Proportionately, three times as many college graduates served in Vietnam than in WWII."