WOODSTOCK IS FINALLY OVER

John Guthmiller

[John Lenin]

WOODSTOCK IS FINALLY OVER
THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'

By: John Guthmiller

Pundits are wallowing in the unexpected largesse of last Tuesday's history-making midterm election. Seldom do the chattering classes get so much meat to chew on. Conservatives - the handful who get air time - are reveling like the Osbournes at a wrap party, while Democrats are alternately wailing like they should have at Paul Wellstone's funeral or putting on a game face and pretending their unprecedented losses don't matter. In the end, Republicans made political gains in the House of Representatives, and retook the Senate. These are stories to warm the cockles of hearts on the Right, and give a generation of Leftists tales with which to frighten their children

But significant though the national election was, there is an equal, perhaps more telling, tale told on the state and local levels. For example, Republican Bob Ehrlich defeated Kathleen Townsend Kennedy for the Maryland governorship. Now, Maryland is not a particularly influential state, nor an incubator for political trends. But Maryland hasn't had a Republican governor since Spiro T. Agnew in 1964. It has been a bellwether state for the socialist march, ratcheting ever leftward for decades. Furthermore, its liberal candidate was [genuflecting] . a KENNEDY! You know, of the House of Kennedy? Yet in a left-leaning state, a scion of that anointed liberal clan was defeated by a relative newcomer in a midterm election where conservatives held the White House. This isn't just notable; it sends tremors through the whole left-wing power structure. And it's just one of many.

The GOP banner hangs in the Georgia governor's mansion for the first time since the 1870's. And defections from the Has-Been Party have now turned that state's senate Republican as well. This in the heart of Dixie, where the phrase "yellow-dog Democrat" was born.

All along the liberal Northeast - Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island - the sinister erosion was halted. Hawaii elected its first Republican governor in 40 years. Florida remained solidly in Republican hands, despite a siege by Clintonites and the focused efforts of the Do Nothing Committee (the DNC).

And liberal lighthouses blinked out all over the referendum reef. In Nevada, the citizens defeated a proposal to legalize marijuana, and banned same-sex marriage. Similar pot proposals failed in Arizona, South Dakota, Ohio, and the District of Columbia. Massachusetts voters discarded the state's bilingual education provisions, demanding that public school classes be taught in English only. Jury nullification was struck down in South Dakota. All around the country, sales and income tax increases were soundly defeated, along with bond issues for questionable "public works" projects.

The country is in a Republican mood.

This election should show, more than anything, that the frivolous days of the Clintons' eight-year Mazola party are over. America has serious business to transact, and the time is not right for childish indulgence. Perhaps when our borders are safe once again and we can stroll our parks and parking lots without fear of being murdered by religious fanatics, perhaps when we've reasserted control of our far-flung economic interests and re-invigorated our own marketplace, perhaps when we once again know the pride of being American, we can lower our sights to such trivia as homosexual unions, animal rights, and whale-saving. Sometimes it takes a crisis to point out the sheer paucity of the liberal platform, its embarrassing paltriness, and the Left's patent inability to handle anything more demanding than protecting pregnant pigs. But right now, we've got bigger enemies to contend with, and we're not in the mood for pranks.

It's becoming axiomatic that when times get difficult, the GOP is the party to turn to. Democrats throw a heck of a kegger, but you wouldn't want one driving your pregnant wife to the labor room. In a predictable political irony, the Left, which once masked its socialist agenda behind such rhetoric as "Down with the Establishment," BECAME the Establishment, and has been in Bunker Mode for the last 25 years. The butterfly chasers from the Summer of Love have infiltrated the power structure and still think they can solve the world's problems by sticking daisies in gun barrels. The party that shunned the status quo has built bulwarks of its own intransigence. Daschle's Democrats have redefined the word "reactionary," proposing nothing of their own but obstructing virtually every measure the administration has endorsed.

On Tuesday, in villages and boroughs from Teaneck to Tucumcari, voters demanded that the roadblocks come down. While the Democrats were busy circling the wagons, the rest of the country moved on.

Tuesday demonstrated the fragility - and obsolescence -- of dynasties like those of Kathleen Townsend Kennedy and Walter Mondale. It heralded a new day for moral responsibility and self-discipline. And it tolled the death knell for a philosophy that was born in the turmoil of Viet Nam and never grew up. As the most famous balladeer of that age sang, "The times, they are a-changin'." Woodstock is finally over.

[hosepipe]

Finally over..?....
I don't think so...
The Nations Acedemic Institutions are brain washing with a Maytag and the "media" are doing the drying..<;-/ so whos folding and putting away...the (DSA) Democrat Socialists of America...google that...

[lds23]

Well, good rock (based on R&B) music has been over for about 10 years now, ever since whiny grunge took over.

[John Lenin]

Have things changed since I was a kid ? When I was a kid anything the grownups (professors) told me I did the opposite. I think your paranoia is a little off. Sure some will fall for it but the 60's were created as a backlash to the prudish 50's.

[msru]

down with the hippies and bring on the mullets! LOL

[John Lenin]

Hearing libs and demoRATS say that the election was no big deal is a joke and they know it.

[Billthedrill]

there is a mystique thst Woodstock was the "Dawning of the Age of Aquarius". It wasn't...

You know, I'm not so sure about that. I just don't think its proponents had a clue just where that was really going. Let's face it, a world with only one superpower that is behaving so fundamentally differently from the old imperial model as we are, constitutes a sea change in history. It may be better or worse, and Lord only knows where it's going, but I think it's unarguably different.

I remember those hippy days well. We all thought the Age of Aquarius meant free pot, free lunch, free love. If, instead, it merely means "free," then I'd say we've gained something much more precious.

[jwalsh07]

But freedom wasn't the salient point. Freedom was only discussed as regards sex, drugs and rock and roll. Other than that the message was socialism, communism to be exact. Communes sprung up all over the place and " "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" became the holy grail.

I rejected it and though I had long hair and wore Indian beads, I had an answer to the two fingered peace sign. It was a three fingered peace sign that basically said , peace but screw you anyway.

[Billthedrill]

Well, I don't recall thinking of it at the time to quite that depth - heavy medication will do that to you. (Sure made Jimi sound good, though.)

Freedom was the issue, but it was a freedom from societal restrictions, and it wasn't obvious to those for whom that was the motive that a move to collectivism threatened that even more than the existing societal restrictions. In fact, the trend to collectivism/socialism on the part of the hippies was profoundly reactive - it was seen as the only available alternative to hung-up society. For a lot of folks on the left that's still the case. Now there's the additional element that socialism/collectivism is so entrenched in academia that it is an Establishment all its own, to be reacted to toward freedom just as the original move toward it was reactive on the part of the young leftists of the 60s. Unfortunately it has a large element of anarchism grafted onto it - that, too, is reactive. It is very difficult for the young to embark on truly new territory - they haven't the background to recognize it when it isn't. You can't tell them that, though.

[jwalsh07]

I rejected it when I came too which is why I enlisted in the Army. It was a bit of a journey.

[bassmaner]

Apparently, the author forgot to consult with the moral-liberal Libertarian Party first, because otherwise he'd be calling these issues 'truly conservative and patriotic' and very important to the Founding Fathers.

Never miss an opportunity to bash the LP on the pot issue, huh, CJ?

As you're no doubt well aware, libertarians in and out of the party do not support "moral liberalism" as much as they oppose the shredding of the Constitution by federal jackbooted thugs in the name of the insane and unwinnable War on Drugs. And, as you are also well aware, marijuana was not under the jurisdiction of the feds until 1937 when it was New Deal politics (i.e. Commerce Clause twisting) cloaked in "Reefer Madness" hysteria that pushed the unconstitutional "Marihuana Tax Act" through Congress for FDR's signature.

That was 32 years before Woodstock: long before hippies, counterculture, love beads, Vietnam, Timothy Leary, etc. etc. etc., but at the beginning of the rise of socialism in America.

Of course, you probably already know that - you've been told about these indisputable historical facts many times on this board, and you choose to ignore them. Every time.

[Timesink]

On MSNBC yesterday, they ran a clip from SNL showing a doofus-looking Bush counting up the Senate totals.

Did they leave in the part where "Bush" said, "Oh, by the way: Senator Jeffords, welcome to Hell."?

[oyez]

How many people bought into the gospel according to The Easy Rider?

George: You know, this used to be a helluva good country.
I can't understand what's gone wrong with it..
Billy: Huh. Man, everybody got chicken, that's what happened, man. Hey, we can't even get into like, uh, second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel. You dig? They think we're gonna cut their throat or something, man. They're scared, man..
George: Oh, they're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em..
Billy: Hey man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody needs a haircut..
George: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom..
Billy: What the hell's wrong with freedom, man? That's what it's all about..
George: Oh yeah, that's right, that's what it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it - that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em..
Billy: Mmmm, well, that don't make 'em runnin' scared..
George: No, it makes 'em dangerous.

[duckman]

"Prudish 50's'?
Did you ever hear 'It ain't the meat its the motion.' by the Dominos?

[anymouse]

curiousa signed up 2002-10-14.

[Route66]

"Democrats throw a heck of a kegger, but you wouldn't want one driving your pregnant wife to the labor room."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I love that line.... ;-)

[luigi]

It was this sort of thinking that bit us on the bee-hind in '94.

I couldn't agree more...

Sometimes it takes a crisis to point out the sheer paucity of the liberal platform, its embarrassing paltriness, and the Left's patent inability to handle anything more demanding than protecting pregnant pigs.

While we reelected Jeb and gave him a republican legislature, the citizens of my fine state also passed a constitutional amendment (!) to protect pregnant pigs. Seriously.