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How perfect it was that while running for president in 2008, the 40th anniversary of "1968," Barack Obama should denounce the 1960s. His candidacy and his times are bland compared to what was happening then, or so everyone thought. The year 1968 had a torrent of cataclysmic political events, each of which might have destabilized any other year. We just passed Robert Kennedy's assassination, and before that the Paris student riots in May 1968. Up next month, the Democratic convention in Chicago - with its pitched battles in Grant Park between the cops and antiwar demonstrators, the anti-Vietnam protests inside...

[Click through to article to view interview with author James Piereson.] The central thesis of James Piereson's Camelot and the Cultural Revolution was that JFK's assassination was the key moment that caused a large portion of once sensible liberals to begin to tilt to the far, far left, and for lack of better word, become Unhinged. Like this calm, rational fan of the New Frontier! In the (admittedly totally tasteless) formulation of a friend of mine, the best thing that ever happened to civil rights in this country was the bullet through JFK's head. Along the way, as I wrote...

Sometime later, after the events of 1968, I would look back at Hayden’s Bratislava speech as a turning point not only in the short history of the New Left but also in the history of American radicalism. Protesting against America’s wars has an honorable tradition, running from Thoreau to Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. But starting with Hayden and continuing in the turbulent outbursts of 1968, that tradition of legitimate democratic opposition morphed into outright collaboration with the enemy.

By late in the evening of June 4th, 1968 it was clear that Robert Kennedy had defeated Eugene McCarthy in the California Primary to establish his preeminence as the "outsider" Democrat candidate for president. Bobby Kennedy did one-on-one interviews with the big network television reporters and then walked into a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to make a victory speech. Kennedy told his audience "we can end the divisions within the United States" and then spoke of "change" happening if delegates would consider how he had won in California. It was now after 3am in the East...

He had a doctorate in education from UCLA, but his ideas were anything but "Piled higher and deeper." Max Rafferty had been elected twice (in 1962 and 1966) as California's Superintendent of Public Instruction. Dr. Max Rafferty wrote books with titles like "Suffer Little Children" and "What They Are Doing To Your Children." Rafferty blasted modern public education and its emphasis on "life adjustment." His conservative views on education appeared in a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Rafferty's conservative supporters put him up as an alternative in the June 4th, 1968 Republican U.S. Senate Primary. Rafferty faced incumbent liberal Republican U.S....

The assassination was over in a few seconds. In the photograph of that moment, Bobby Kennedy, his eyes open and glazed, lies on his back on a hotel pantry floor, his head cradled by a busboy dressed starkly in white - a tableau that seems almost angelic were it not so brutal. Less than 26 hours after being shot early on June 5, 1968, right after winning the California presidential primary, Kennedy was dead. He was 42.Three major assassinations rocked America in the 1960s. Two of the assassins - Lee Harvey Oswald, the killer of John F. Kennedy, and James...

The Robert Kennedy campaign began in the ashes of Lyndon Johnson's re-election effort. Eugene McCarthy had spoiled LBJ, but if there was a favorite among anti-Johnson forces in the Democrat Party, it was Bobby Kennedy. He was warmly received at the 1964 convention and those who loved his brother always looked to him to bring back the Kennedy Administration. Lyndon Johnson did not bow to pressure to make Robert F. Kennedy his running mate in 1964. Instead, LBJ chose Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, a man who proudly wore the label "liberal" and who would buckle under to Lyndon Johnson's leadership...

The killing of Robert F. Kennedy has always been submerged in mythology spread by a liberal media and educational elite that has its own ideology and "theology" in mind. Kennedy's killing is bunched together with the assassinations of his brother John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King in a "Holy Trinity" of martyrdom that is an object of idolization and worship. It is ironic that all three men were far from deities, but all too human as has been evidenced by the details of their extramarital "relationships" that have emerged over the years. The other common mythology that was spread...

It’s been 40 years since his passing, but Robert Kennedy is again in the news. One reason is Hillary Clinton’s imprudent mention of his assassination. Barack Obama and media accomplices managed to turn that molehill into a mountain in near-record time. Another reason is that Obama has invoked Bobby’s memory throughout his campaign. People who weren’t around 40 years ago have been instilled with the fable of Kennedy’s pristine greatness and Barack hopes to benefit by the association. I wonder how many of Obama’s young, college-educated liberals know much about the real Bobby Kennedy. Would their admiration be diluted if...

I sat in the same kitchen this morning and listened to the same song I heard on the radio every morning in late May and early June of 1968. I knew nothing about a movie called "The Graduate" back then but my eight year old mind easily comprehended the common phrases Paul Simon put into the song. Those lyrics were drummed into me: "Jesus loves you more than you will know.... "God Bless You please Mrs. Robinson, heaven holds a place for those who pray...... "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you..." Of...

Lost in the uproar over Sen. Hillary Clinton's invoking of the assassination of Robert Kennedy when explaining why her staying in the race won't hurt party unity is an actual examination of her comparison of the 2008 Democratic primary season to the one from 1968. Clinton yesterday before the Argus Leader editorial board also invoked her husband's race in 1992. We've already twice now looked at how her reference to how her husband was still campaigning in June 1992 is a disingenuous claim.

'WHY don't we just vote to strike tonight - and we'll decide to morrow what we're striking for?" Those were the words of a student protester thoughtfully deliberating at Yale University, as recounted by Roger Kimball in his book on the left, "The Long March." It was a question that captured much of the heedless spirit of the student demonstrations of the 1960s, for which "May 1968" is shorthand. That spring 40 years ago saw a radical takeover of Columbia University - eventually duplicated at other elite campuses - and student protests around the world. In France, the government was...

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn't have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too. The Pentagon Papers (the 7,000-page, top-secret US government report into the Vietnam War) are proof of this: right after the Tet Offensive, the business world turned against the war, because they thought it was too costly, even though there were proposals within the government - and we know this now...

The ACLU of Colorado has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service and the city of Denver to ensure that protesters are within "sight and sound" of delegates attending the Democratic National Convention this August. "Ultimately, it's the federal courts that are sort of the last resort protectors of constitutional rights," Mark Silverstein, the ACLU's legal director, said today. "It's been the federal courts that are the ones to say law enforcement has not struck the proper balance here between security concerns and citizens' fundamental First Amendment rights," he said. Silverstein said the city is dragging its feet...

Americans are well acquainted with presidential candidate Barack Obama’s legendary pledges to bring “change” to America’s political and social landscape. (For example, see here and here and here.) Indeed, “Change We Can Believe In” is the slogan that adorns the homepage of his campaign website and so many of the placards displayed by the supporters who attend his speaking engagements. His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, is also well practiced at issuing calls for change. Her “Change and Experience” ad campaign was but an outgrowth of her 1993 declaration, as First Lady, that “remolding society is one of the great challenges...

NEW YORK, April 26 -- Forty years ago, they launched a student protest at Columbia University that involved the occupation of five campus buildings, the hostage-taking of a dean, 712 arrests and injuries to scores of students, faculty members and police officers. This Story At Columbia, Remembering a Revolution The 1968 Protesters, Then and Now Now, they are lawyers, judges, playwrights, poets, professors and ministers. They gathered this weekend back on campus with former classmates to hear memories of those events and occasionally raise a revolutionary fist for old times' sake. "Strangest reunion I ever saw," said Victoria Benitez, a...

Spiro Agnew's political career rose like a phoenix from the ashes. In six short years he went from being elected Baltimore County Executive to being elected Vice-President of the United States. He would be a bulldog for President Richard Nixon, playing a role that many future GOP Vice-Presidents like Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney would, making tough speeches to keep conservatives in line with the more moderate president who would "stay above it all." Agnew's attacks on the mainstream media ("the nattering nabobs of negativity") would make him as hated at the president himself in MSM circles. Agnew's election as...

The conference program on the sponsors’ website promises to air a “wide range of viewpoints” on what happened and why, but the list of speakers shows no range at all—everyone seems to be a proud ex-protester or at least a familiar partisan of the Left. While Todd Gitlin (formerly the president of Students for a Democratic Society, now at Columbia’s journalism school) is a sober and reflective thinker, most of his fellow speakers are far from that standard. They include Kathleen Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver’s widow and a former Black Panther official; veteran activist Tom Hayden; several former members of the...

Tributes poured out from all over the world in honor of Martin Luther King with Father George Clements of Chicago saying King "is a saint" and "should be canonized." Meanwhile on the streets of Chicago rioting broke out after King's death. Three thousand National Guard troops were initially deployed as many fires burned on the West Side of the city. Dozens were injured by rocks thrown at their cars or by gangs on the streets. Bricks were thrown at firefighters trying to put out the flames and stores were looted. Mayor Richard Daley called on President Johnson for regular Army...

"go home and get your guns"-Stokely Carmichael April 4,1968 in Washington D.C. I had a habit of sitting in the kitchen and eating my breakfast while the radio was turned on to the morning news. The morning of Friday April 5th, 1968 I heard the account of a radio reporter (from UPI) who hid under a car while mobs rioted in the street around him. He sounded scared and he had reason to as rioting broke out in the nation's captial following the assassination of Martin Luther King late on the evening or April 4th and early on the morning...

On Thursday April 4th, 1968 the City of Memphis was back in federal court seeking a permanent injunction against any protest by Martin Luther King to support the sanitation workers strike. Police Director Frank Holloman spoke of black adults buying guns and young black people receiving training in the use of molotov cocktails. In the evening I watched the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" on NBC and saw the story of the day before including the King speech. I was seven years old and this was the first time I had ever heard the name "Martin Luther King." In the evening just after...

Dr. Martin Luther King originally wanted to stage a new march in Memphis on Friday April 5th, 1968 but decided to push the march back to Monday the 8th so labor leaders could show up. The City of Memphis was afraid of more violence if King led another march on behalf of the striking sanitation workers. They went to federal court seeking an injunction. Federal District Judge Bailey Brown issued a temporary restraining order against a march on Monday April 8th. It was with that court order in mind that Dr. King made what would be his last speech. The...

On Monday April 1st, Martin Luther King was in Atlanta preparing for a return to Memphis to lead a march on behalf of the striking sanitation workers. He spoke to his aides and others that day. Matters of discussion were the planned Poor People's March On Washington later in the year and the decision of President Johnson not to run for re-election. King had started on good terms with Johnson, who pushed through the controversial civil rights legislation of 1964. Portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were seen by conservatives as federal power usurping state power in an...

Those lovable, aggressive peace-loving anti-war factions of the left are ready for the 1968 presidential race. At least some of them are preparing to recreate the chaos that surrounded the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago when the Dem delegates gather this August in Denver, Colorado. The band of loons, freaks and frauds planning the new mess is unimaginatively named Recreate 68. It’s a radical left-wing group of “peace-loving” Castro-ettes whose goal is described as peaceful through good old fashioned liberal violence upon the dangerous American establishment and government that Recreate 68 feels must be taken down and controlled by revolutionaries....

"Does Ho Chi Minh have anything like this"-President Lyndon Johnson According to Texas writer Larry L. King (not the CNN guy) the earthy talking Lyndon Johnson made this comment in the White House to staff members with his pants down and his manhood on display. Regardless of the raw nature of Johnson's reported comments the administration's Vietnam War policy always aimed to be a repeat of the Korean War with some negoatiated ending. The "bombing" of North Vietnam was restricted when it came to the main conduit of North Vietnam's war supplies, Haiphong harbor. There was fear that Soviets on...

The sanitation workers strike in Memphis could be seen as just any other labor-management dispute over pay, but since most of the workers were black, the racial aspect stood out. This brought Dr. Martin Luther King to Memphis in the spring of 1968 to support the strike that had begun in February. On March 28th, 1968 King marched with five thousand others in the streets of Memphis. Around 20 minutes after the march began, 200 youths began to break windows and loot stores along Beale Street. The march turned into chaos and Dr. King was taken away. One person was...

The Democrats head for their convention beset by splits and overshadowed by a war, just as they did 40 years ago when Chicago became the focus for extraordinary anti-Vietnam riots. As two films recall those tumultuous events, veterans are reflecting on the similarities with the conflicts of 2008Forty years ago, John Froines was a Sixties radical leading anti-war hippie protests to the Chicago Democratic Convention. After the 1968 convention descended into riots and more than 25,000 troops and police were deployed on the streets, Froines became one of the famed 'Chicago Eight'. He was put on trial for inciting the...

Denver '08 bring up memories of Chicago '68? It will if a group called Re-create 68 have anything to say about it. The group is promising "demonstrations that will rival those at the bloody 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago" at the August's Democratic National Convention in Denver, according to the Rocky Mountain News. The Re-create 68 Alliance is upset that a permit for the Civic Center, a "spacious plaza" that "has been used for major public events and celebrations representing the diversity and cultural heritage of Colorado and Denver," according to the city of Denver's Web site, went to the...

The student unrest in Paris and London 40 years ago filled our writer with revulsion. The protesters enjoyed enviable freedom and had no idea how lucky they were. In 1968 I was living the good life with my first wife and first baby in our first house on the swell of my first play and was beginning to be noted by my peers as someone who was politically dubious. It was to be some years before a well known left-wing director, asked to typify a “Royal Court play”, replied that it was a play not written by Tom Stoppard, but...

The road to the White House was filled with a lot more backrooms in the past. Most of the delegates to political conventions were "superdelegates" in those times. For candidates in 1968 only a handful of primaries existed with New Hampshire leading off the six that had any meaning (linking votes and delegates). Into this situation entered Democrat Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, running an anti-Vietnam War campaign against incumbent Lyndon Johnson. The first big anti-war protests began in 1967, but those protesting were countered by a large demonstration supporting America's Vietnam War effort in New York City. The street...

In 1944 with his chips down Adolf Hitler made a big gamble to try to defeat the Western Allies and force them out of World War II. The Nazis launched a desperate offensive in the Ardennes Forest hoping to cut the Allied armies in two. Covering the Battle of the Bulge was a reporter for the United Press named Walter Cronkite. Just over 23 years later Cronkite, now America's most popular television newsman, would visit Vietnam to witness the another desperate offensive against American forces. This time it was launched by the Vietnamese Communists and was called the Tet Offensive....

People worldwide -- and indeed, most Americans -- are under the impression that whichever party candidate has the most delegates at the end of the primary elections is assured the party nomination for president. And who can blame them? In a typical year, one candidate will emerge from the primary campaign with a majority of the delegates, and he will have the nomination secured. But this year's race is unprecedented; a woman and black man, running neck to neck against each other to try and reach the magic number of 2025 delegates to lock the nomination. There are 4,049 total...

John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" – so named by the dashing young candidate at the Democratic leadership convention of 1960 – was barely two years old when veteran filmmaker John Ford suggested the whole thing might be a lie. The context was a 1962 Ford movie called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a Western about a lawyer (played by James Stewart) who negotiates a bogus claim to heroism to a seat in the U.S. Senate. At the movie's climax, a newspaper editor is informed that the real man who shot the desperado Liberty Valance isn't the man everybody thinks...

It was 40 years today that the film from the first day of the Tet Offensive (January 30th) made it onto our television screens. Back then there was no live satellite link from Vietnam so the newsfilm of the war was flown to Hong Kong or Tokyo for satellite transmission to the United States. I sat as a seven year old transfixed by the exciting pictures of the kamikaze style attack by the Vietcong on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Militarily speaking the attack was an utter failure, but visually speaking the attack was shocking to Americans sitting in their...

I was seven years old in early 1968 watching lots of television on a black and white picture set in my bedroom. One of my favorites was the "Batman" series on ABC with Adam West in the title role and Burt Ward as Robin. One of the guest villains on the program was "Catwoman" Eartha Kitt, whose entertainment career blossomed in the 1950's. Kitt, was black and a woman, which clearly qualified her for an invitation to the White House for a ladies luncheon in January of the election year, 1968. The First Lady, who was known by her nickname...

(This is part of an actual newscast from 40 years ago today as broadcast in Los Angeles at 1pm Pacific Time.) "Its 1pm, 61 degrees at Civic Center, no smog, this is David Rogers, KFWB News..... California seems to be a veritable stomping ground for those who desire White House occupancy. The most recent to be hitting the hustings, one who doesn't like the way the current chief executive is handling things across the Pacific. KFWB's Charles Arlington has details of what he has to say: 'Minnesota's Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy in Los Angeles to campaign to get on the...

January 9, 2008 This 40th anniversary of the turbulent year 1968 is already starting to spawn nostalgic accounts of that year. We can look for more during this year in articles, books, and TV specials, featuring aging 1960s radicals seeking to relive their youth. The events of 1968 have continuing implications for our times but not the implications drawn by those with romantic myths about 1968 and about themselves. The first of the shocks of 1968 was the sudden eruption of violent attacks by Communist guerillas in the cities of South Vietnam, known as the "Tet offensive," after a local...

Today, we are on the verge of the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary, but 40 years ago today the campaigns were just beginning. The Democrat who had dared to challenge incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy, was just opening a campaign office in New Hampshire. That's where voters would go to the polls in the first primary on March 12, 1968. There were only a handful of primaries back then. Only 7 had real meaning and were seriously contested by any prospective candidates.(New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota and California) California's primary was the last one and...

Tom Brokaw's two-hour flashback to 1968 is refreshingly far more complex than simply one of those groovy nostalgia pieces on those wacky days of sex love and rock 'n' roll.Viewers will get the good, the bad and the cultural confusion of the time in the compelling History Channel special "1968 with Tom Brokaw" (9 p.m. Sunday). Brokaw connects the period to the present - "1968" becomes a kind of Rorschach test for one's current political and social values."I think 1968 was probably the worst year in this nation's history," conservative Pat Buchanan says in the film.On the other hand: "It...

Can America rise above the divisions of the 1960s? Not yet. . . . What fell out of 1968 was a profound division over what I would call civic vision. One side, which took to the streets in Chicago or occupied Columbia University, concluded from Vietnam and the race riots that America, in its relations with the world and its own citizens, was flawed and required big changes. Their defining document was the March 1968 Kerner Commission report, announcing "two societies," separate and unequal. The press, incidentally, emerged from Vietnam and the riots joined to this new, permanent template. That,...

Denver chief asks metro agencies to send officers. Denver won't have enough cops of its own to police the 2008 Democratic National Convention, so Chief Gerry Whitman has called on suburban police departments to help carry the load. In a recent letter, Whitman asked various metro area police chiefs to pledge forces for the convention next August... Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates has responded by pledging 300 officers - 50 percent of his street force - for five days. Denver police declined to release a copy of the letter or to discuss convention security plans. "We won't talk a lot...

A city councilman expressed outrage today that the council will consider a proclamation initially drafted by a protest group that calls for restricting police tactics during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. The one-page proclamation headed for a council vote next Monday is based on a compromise version of the original statement proposed by the Recreate 68 Alliance, which is organizing protests for the 2008 Denver convention. The group's Web site vows to make Chicago's 1968 Democratic National Convention — notorious for its brutal, bloody clashes between Chicago police and anti-Vietnam War protesters — "look like a small get-together...

BOBBY Bobby uses an all-star cast to follow more than twenty characters through one of the most fateful days in American history. CLIP: “Senator Kennedy, welcome to the Ambassador Hotel.” “Thank you very much.” That’s Anthony Hopkins as a hotel doorman who joins Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, Lawrence Fishburne, Christian Slater, and many others to dramatize the night of Robert Kennedy’s assassination at his LA victory celebration in 1968. CLIP: “What if Kennedy loses?” “We can all forget it now. I’m 19, Jimmy, I don’t want to go to Vietnam.” “Do you?” “Now that Dr. King is gone, I don’t...

This Day In History SOVIETS INVADE CZECHOSLOVAKIA: August 20, 1968 On the night of August 20, 1968, approximately 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring"--a brief period of liberalization in the communist country. Czechoslovakians protested the invasion with public demonstrations and other non-violent tactics, but they were no match for the Soviet tanks. The liberal reforms of First Secretary Alexander Dubcek were repealed and "normalization" began under his successor Gustav Husak. Pro-Soviet communists seized control of Czechoslovakia's democratic government in 1948. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin imposed his will on Czechoslovakia's communist leaders, and...

The government of Iraq is secretly holding a Baathist cabal of military officers it claims attempted a coup against Prime Minister al-Maliki. The plotters were rounded up July 5 with the help of American military authorities after the Iraqi government's security warning center sent word to Mr. Maliki, who was in Kuwait on his first official visit as head of state, two highly placed Iraqi sources said. The prime minister quickly canceled a scheduled trip to Amman, Jordan, and returned to Baghdad to attend to the matter. At the time, Mr. Maliki's staff told reporters that the prime minister was...

I've been rummaging in the TIME archives and came across an article from 1968 entitled "Freedom vs Authority in the Catholic Church". Here some excerpts (article is subscribers-only) - it's scary that some of the same guys are still around kvetching. JULY 29, 1968, may prove to be a major landmark in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church—as significant, perhaps, as the moment when Martin Luther decided to post his theses on indulgences at Wittenberg Castle Church. On that day last summer, Pope Paul VI promulgated his seventh encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which condemned all...

Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, comes up for parole again this week in a potential conflict for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is married to RFK's niece. Sirhan shot Kennedy to death at a Los Angeles hotel in 1968, minutes after the New York senator claimed victory in the California presidential primary. Sirhan received a death sentence, which was commuted to life in prison in 1972 when the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional. The assassin's parole hearing at Corcoran State Prison on Wednesday _ the 13th since his conviction and the first since Schwarzenegger's election in 2003...

The Conventional Wisdom among well-educated liberals in 1968 included the following: * Anti-Communism was a greater menace than Communism. * The planet could not possibly support the population increases that would take place by the end of the twentieth century. * Conservatives stood in the way of progress for minorities. * Government programs were the best way to lift people out of poverty. * What underdeveloped countries needed were large capital investments, financed by foreign aid from the rich countries. * Inflation was a cost-push phenomenon, requiring government intervention in wage and price setting. The degree of confidence in these...

An international incident 38 years ago this month remains shrouded in mystery. On the bitterly cold morning of Jan. 23, 1968, an American intelligence vessel, USS Pueblo, was operating in international waters off the coast of North Korea. It was surrounded by four North Korean patrol boats, with two MiG aircraft flying overhead. The boats ordered the Pueblo to stop and let the North Koreans board. The order was refused. The Pueblo headed further out to sea. The North Korean boats immediately opened fire. Armed with only a 50-caliber gun secured from the freezing temperatures by a tarp, the Pueblo...

The first phalanx of police attacked the marchers at 8 p.m. from the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balbo Street, just north of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, swinging their clubs. The young demonstrators ran in all directions -- into the park, across Balbo, up and down Michigan. Some escaped. Some were caught and beaten. From the window of his campaign head-quarters on the 23rd floor of the hotel, Sen. Eugene McCarthy watched, horrified. "It's incredible," he said. "Like a Brueghel." Classic McCarthy. Detached even in his compassion. And what other American politician, then or ever, would think of scenes from...