Free Republic

It has become increasingly apparent that our Culture has become leftist. With Environmentalists, Unionists, Big-Government supporters, bias media, teachers, and liberal Hollywood it has become clear that the original Counter Culture of the 60s has won the battle over the minds of Americans. CNN and NYT are preaching to their dwindling fan base that the Occupy Movement is the New Counter-Culture in America. Occupiers resemble the 60s Counter-Culture in a number of ways. Both movements believed that government should end it's overseas wars, wanted sexuality to be more open, and believed that fat cat businessmen should pay their “fair” share....

But Barack Obama is not an "other" so much as he is a child of the 1960s. His coming of age paralleled exactly the unfolding of a new "counterculture" American identity. And this new American identity—and the post-1960s liberalism it spawned—is grounded in a remarkable irony: bad faith in America as virtue itself, bad faith in the classic American identity of constitutional freedom and capitalism as the way to a better America. So Mr. Obama is very definitely an American, and he has a broad American constituency. He is simply the first president we have seen grounded in this counterculture...

What a long, strange trip it's been. In the 1960s, young people, moved by opposition to the Vietnam War, rebelled against the values of their parents' generation in what came to be known as the "Counterculture." They detested authority. They called policemen "pigs." They said, "Never trust anyone over 30."    When the Vietnam War ended, the Counterculture as a widespread movement fizzled out. Rock music gave way to disco, and the hippies started turning 30. The vast majority of these rebels found jobs and started families. And a surprising number of them voted for Ronald Reagan. But the political...

The evangelical movement's eye-popping numbers (new megachurches are opening as mainline churches shrink), cultural power (think The Purpose Driven Life or crossover hits from Christian radio), and political success (George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, etc.) makes it easy to forget that evangelical Christianity is very much a countercultural phenomenon. Even as it adapts to the contemporary American cultural landscape—look at Rick Warren's Hawaiian shirts or the number of megachurches that now boast coffee shops—the American evangelical movement nonetheless defines itself as separate from the rest of the country. "Religions that grow are the ones that are hard-core in...

This weekend marks the fortieth anniversary of the much beloved and widely worshiped “counterculture festival of peace and love” -- Woodstock. According to popular belief, Woodstock was a generation-defining event that represented the best of the sixties spirit: half a million young people gathering for peaceful anti-war protest, easy sex, great rock music, mind-expanding psychedelics, and a rejection of lifeless commercialism. But is that what Woodstock really was? This hallowed sixties legend, like that of so many “iconic” counter cultural events, has deeply and deliberately distorted the truth. In reality, Woodstock consisted of masses of people spending several days outdoors...

As America's Muslim population grows, so too does the influence of Islamic law, or Shariah, in daily life in the U.S. "Shariah Law is the totality of the Muslim's obligation," said Abdullahi An-Na'im, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta. According to An-Na'im, Shariah is similar to Jewish Talmudic Law or Catholic Canon Law in that it guides an adherent's moral conduct. "As a citizen, I am a subject of the United States," An-Na'im said. "I owe allegiance to the United States, to the Constitution of the United States. That is not inconsistent with observing a religious code...

There's a certain kind of discomfort unique to certain kinds of rabbis. Those of us who grew up in secular homes and found our way to Torah observance later in adulthood inevitably did things in our past lives that we would prefer buried and forgotten. And although this may be universal, for the individual whose position demands a public persona of propriety and self-discipline, it can be particularly discomfiting. One colleague of mine felt compelled to remove a tattoo he had once had inscribed into his flesh in a moment of post-adolescent impetuosity. Many others have worried about past associations...

Russell Brand was last seen in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, possibly the worst movie ever made. Not content to merely grace us with cinematic vomit, Mr. Brand returned recently to host the MTV Video Music Awards. You know about some of this, in all likelihood. You probably saw the video clips, on TV or on YouTube, of the esteemed Mr. Brand making fun of a certain 17-year-old girl from Alaska while begging the United States, “as a representative of the global community,” to elect a certain Illinois senator to something or other. From there we moved on to a discussion of...

For a brief and amusing interval in 2002 I was a candidate for the position of chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Amusing, for there was never the slightest chance of my being chosen. This was inadvertently made clear by the first question during my interview in the East Wing of the White House. After the preliminary niceties, I was asked to sketch my life and accomplishments. “Of course,” my interviewer prompted helpfully, “we all know about your music.” Ah yes, my music. Either she was referring to a certain defunct college band, suggesting background checks of...

What would you say if I told you that there is an American business that drops metric tons of toxic waste on your country and in your homes every day? I'm not talking about chemical waste or nuclear waste but toxins far more lethal - the byproducts of what's called entertainment, which are destroying the social environment. I refer to Hollywood, whose primary products are sex, violence, perversion, nihilism, attacks on religion and a thoroughgoing anti-family ethic. They are produced both for domestic consumption and export. It wasn't always so. As fans of old movies can attest, in the 1930s...

Veteran actress and feminist Jane Fonda has been slammed for not paying her female employees working in the actress' radio network Green Stone Media. The twice Oscar winner and the radio network's co-founder Gloria Steinem have been accused of "putting their own reputations above their female employees' finances." According to the New York Post, Fonda and Steinem are 'refusing to pay severance, and the founders won't file for bankruptcy protection because it would publicly embarrass Jane and Gloria.' However, the 'Klute' star's spokesperson has denied the reports and said that the accusations are unfounded. "This is pure speculation. There is...

Ted Nugent Blames Hippies for Divorce, Abortion, Drugs and Crime 7/3/07, 2:22 pm EST It was only a matter of time before Ted Nugent decided to rain on the Summer of Love’s anniversary parade. In an article from today’s Wall Street Journal titled “The * Summer of Drugs,” the notoriously opinionated guitar god took some time off his busy hunting schedule to blame “stoned, dirty, stinky hippies” for “rising rates of divorce, high school drop-outs, drug use, abortion, sexual diseases and crime, not to mention the exponential expansion of government and taxes.” * Highlights (including some choice words for Jimi...

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding? That's the question that we should be asking in light of the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Hippie values and culture have been taking a beating over the past few years. However, while the hippie movement had its flaws, there is much about it that should be honored, cherished and celebrated.

Mark Steyn: Requiem for the Counterculture - Given the choice between reality and dopey naiveté, our cultural elite remains fatally true to its 'trusting nature' Mark Steyn - February 12, 2007 Given the way the Canadian media write about, say, Alberta's oilpatch as if they're on an anthropological expedition to a remote corner of Papua, it's always interesting to note the things they don't feel the need to explain. Earlier this month, the Globe and Mail ran a front-page lead headlined "Attraction To New Orleans Turns Tragic For Canadians." This was the story of Paul Gailiunas, raised in Edmonton, and...

High fashion is going granola. But not the grunge of hippie yoga wear and grainy hemp T-shirts typically associated with organic clothes. Think soft soy dresses, cropped organic terry jackets and slim fit organic denim jeans to pair with stilettos, not flip flops. Consumers worried about ingesting harmful pesticides have long been purchasing organic foods. But the philosophy is slowly hitting mainstream clothing retailers as experts warn about the dangers pesticides pose to the environment. Whether shoppers are buying eco-friendly because it's trendy or because they hope to preserve Mother Earth, they no longer have to sacrifice fashion for philosophy....

In his brilliant essay "The Great Relearning," Tom Wolfe recounts a "curious footnote to the hippie movement." In 1968, at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, doctors found themselves treating diseases "no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names." These maladies had such names as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the rot. These afflictions materialized because those hippie pilgrims believed the Man had nothing to teach them, so they turned their backs on "bourgeois" morality, a category of knowledge that included this thing...

Millions of [young adults] nationwide, including male university students, have chosen to remain virgins until marriage. In doing so they unflinchingly clash head on with a modern day culture that implicitly condones free love. ... Men with piety are often presented as genderless beings a young man would never want to imitate. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the equally distorted concept of men who are macho. Such men see the loss of virginity as not only an acceptable but even a necessary step towards their deformed image of manhood. Sherif Girgis would be the first to disagree...

In light of the fact that I saw the "Die Hippie, Die!" episode on South Park last night, it is really karmatic that today I found this DUmmie THREAD titled, "Where have all the hippies gone: a poll for hippies past and present." I can answer that question. Most of the aging hippies are in a state of semi-hibernation deep in their parents' basements from where they make nostalgic posts in DUmmieland about how wonderful the '60s were. Yes, time has passed them by. Although the vast majority of Hippies have disappeared from public view, there are still a...

In 2005, who's in the vanguard of the "counterculture," living a truly "alternative lifestyle"? For my money, it's Jim and Nadine Reinhardt of Burnsville. In this age of families averaging 2.1 children, the Reinhardts have nine youngsters, ranging in age from 18 to 3. This is the first time since the first year of their 19-year marriage that they haven't had a child in diapers. Walking into the Reinhardts' modest home, you'd expect to see a harried mother, a father desperate to escape to a TV baseball game, and a living room without an uncluttered square inch. But on a...

This was a news item a few days ago: ‘Massachusetts Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry lambasted Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum yesterday for writing that the Catholic Church's pedophile scandal was centered in Boston in part because of the city's morally permissive culture.’ As one who has experienced the grief and horror of having a child abused, not by a priest, but by a neighbor, I can tell you that it is worse than murder. At least when someone is murdered, they can’t be hurt anymore. Even if they live through it, a sexually abused child lives a...

At the heart of the challenge facing the conservative agenda lies one simple fact: while we focused our efforts on politics, our opponents on the left focused instead on culture. Each of us won. Compared to where the conservative movement was the year I came to Washington, 1967, we are today immensely stronger politically. Republicans, most of whom are at least nominally conservative, control both Houses of Congress and the White House. That is success on a grand scale. Unfortunately, our opponents have won an equally large victory over our culture. Today, what was called the "counter-culture" in the 1960s...

Hi freepers. I need to know, for an assignment, what the Conservative Response was to Counter Culture in the 1960's. Any help would be deeply apreciated!!

THE SUICIDE of Hunter S. Thompson, aged 65, according to the New York Times, or 67, according to the Washington Post, at his home in Aspen, may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion that began in the 1950s and crested in the 1960s, and which was dignified with the title of "the counter-culture." "Counter" it was, as an expression of defiance toward everything normal and reliable in society. "Culture" it was not, any more than Thompson's incoherent scribblings constituted, as they were so often indulgently described, a form of journalism. When a major representative of any dramatic...

In his new history of the counterculture, author Ken Goffman tracks down history's freethinkers ON THE FIRST page of Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House, author Ken Goffman, a.k.a. R.U. Sirius, affirms Nietzsche's eschewing history in favor of myth. The philosopher believed that myth creates a spiritual community that history squashes like a bug. The pages that follow provide an expositive chronicle of freethinkers and myth seekers from Socrates to the current day, revealing how counterculture types tend to be folks who don't subscribe to any one specific dictum, ideology or reality tunnel. Instead, they put their...

A tsunami of conservatism has moved through American institutions over the last 30 years. First the small magazines (National Review, Reason, The Public Interest), followed by the think tanks (The Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, to name just a few). Maggie Gallagher In the late '70s and '80s, the Christian right began to create its own huge counterculture: singers and songwriters, Christian pulp fictions and self-help books, coloring books and cartoons, as well as lobbying organizations (like the Family Research Council). In the '90s, conservatives got their own television news and talk radio shows. What will the...

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.

<p>WASHINGTON -- Will we ever recover from the Sixties? What's happening with the bitter dispute over John Kerry's role in Vietnam confirms my fears that my generation may never see the day when the baby boomers who came of age in that troubled decade are reconciled sufficiently with each other to lead a united country.</p>

Recently, I had the dubious pleasure of attending a university graduation ceremony. Usually in Britain these tend to be staid affairs, in which there is an opening theme, “the great and the good” academics and trustees in flowing robes of scarlet and black ascend a stage, followed by a member of the House of Lords who is the titular head of the institution. Speeches are made, usually about the progress of the school and offering congratulations to the students. The roll call is given, students shake the hand of the Lord or Lady, a final word is said, and then...

RUSSELL Halley takes pride in being able to do the splits as well as any woman on the dance floor. His partner, Jorge Guzman, can spin faster than the female competition. So when the two men don their see-through chiffon shirts to dance together, they alternate the lead. "I can send Jorge into a triple spin and catch him, and vice versa - even in the course of one move," Mr Halley boasts. "We can change place instantly. From an audience point of view it can be very exciting." The duo are at the forefront of an upheaval in America's...

Screen star Mel Gibson is reaping manna from heaven by breaking Hollywood's 10 commandments of film-making with The Passion of the Christ, which is on course to shatter box office records as it opens in more countries. The Catholic movie-maker took an unprecedented risk on the film that depicts the grisly last hours of Jesus Christ, financing it with $25 million of his own money and foregoing traditional publicity amid a dearth of investors. But after breaking all the rules of Hollywood movie making - which teach filmmakers to blitz the public with glossy ad campaigns and never finance their...

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) said Wednesday he was "troubled" by gay weddings in San Francisco and by legal decisions in Massachusetts that could clear the way for same-sex marriage. But he declined to say whether he is any closer to backing a constitutional ban on such vows. "I have watched carefully what's happening in San Francisco, where licenses were being issued, even though the law states otherwise," Bush said. "I have consistently stated that I'll support law to protect marriage between a man and a woman. Obviously these events are influencing my decision." "I am watching...

The Democratic party, which once was the party of labor, has long since been taken over by radicals and become focused upon countercultural issues such as homosexuality and abortion. Its economic views are essentially Marxist or paramarxist that would enjoy seeing the free enterprise economy, and workers along with it, fail, in order to validate their philosophy. The Republican party now lives in another galaxy which occasionally sends bland gutless brainless visitors to this world who are aimlessly unaware of anything. None of this relates to the real economic world. The percentage of voter turnout hovers at all time...

<p>So the entire world has now got a taste of what passes for entertainment on MTV every day. That was our reaction to the furor over the MTV-produced Super Bowl halftime show, which network President Judy McGrath described as "exciting" and "great" and marred only by "five seconds none of us knew anything about."</p>

LOS ANGELES -- On the heels of Janet Jackson's stunning breast-baring incident on Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show, Jackson reportedly will not appear on the CBS Grammys telecast. "Entertainment Tonight" is reporting Jackson won't be participating in a tribute to Luther Vandross on Sunday night. She was previously scheduled to be a part of the Grammy Awards tribute. No reason was available for her departure. Jackson, CBS, MTV, the NFL and Justin Timberlake have all apologized for the Super Bowl's too-revealing halftime show. CBS said Tuesday it would institute a video delay system to avoid any recurrence at Sunday's Grammy...

Every day I read the NEW YORK TIMES. I have to see what's happening in the world in order to do this broadcast. But sometimes it sets my teeth on edge. A couple of weeks ago David Brooks, the TIMES's new and generally conservative columnist, wrote a provocative op-ed piece titled "The National Creed." In it Brooks argues that Americans hold their religious beliefs very loosely. We feel free to jump from one church to the next as if the differences make no difference. Brooks writes that Americans believe that, "In the final days, the distinctions will fade away, and...

Hip hop gets out vote Houston event aims to register 10,000 youths By WYATT BUCHANAN Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Political and hip-hop industry leaders are kicking off an effort to register 4 million new voters for the November general election at a "Hip Hop Summit" in Houston scheduled during Super Bowl week. "There is a new movement. It is hip hop ... it is the civil rights movement of the 21st century," said U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, among local political leaders and hip-hop artists announcing the event Thursday at Texas Southern University. The event will draw top hip-hop...

Ken Kesey spun his magic again Friday in the heart of Eugene, this time with a little help from his friends. A statue of Oregon's most famous storyteller, unveiled at Broadway Plaza, put him squarely back in the community's midst two years and five days after his death from cancer at age 66. The sculpture shows Kesey sitting on a granite bench reading to his three grandchildren, who posed for the work. After friends and family pulled the rainbow-colored fabric back to reveal the statue, kids in the crowd of hundreds pressed in first. Zane Kesey, son of the late...

Columnists' Corner "The New Counterculture " By Gary Aldrich On Nov. 7, 1972, the New Left, also known as the “Counterculture,” suffered a major defeat at the polls when Leftist presidential candidate George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon. Nixon’s joy was short-lived. His re-election caused a furious counter-reaction by the emerging Hard-Left ideologues like Hillary Rodham Clinton. This movement, nurtured on the dreams of a Marxist-style revolution, had to settle instead for grown-up pragmatism that had as its basic tenet that to destroy the hated “system,” you first had to join it. They left the romantic Counterculture...

Most French people devote their summers to quintessentially Gallic pursuits: celebrating Bastille Day, spending some of their mandatory eight-week vacation time, going on strike. But Sabine Herold, to put it mildly, is not your typical Frog. Herold, the 22-year-old leader of Liberté, J’ecris Ton Nom (Freedom, I Write Your Name), has in the last few months emerged as the massively popular and highly photogenic leader of -- zut! -- a burgeoning pro-market, pro-American counterculture in France. Earning comparisons to Joan of Arc, Brigitte Bardot (!), and Margaret Thatcher in the panting British press, she represents something French politics hasn’t seen...

Illustration: Carly Sertic / 20Below artistUnshaven legs. Chicken-fried tofu. Strange body piercings. These are considered normal in my home. I live in an 88-acre hippie commune. For those of you with raised eyebrows, that's not its official title. It's actually called Lost Valley Educational Center and it's an intentional community-conference center near Dexter. Twenty other people live with me (although not in the same building). We eat lunch and dinner together, we have meetings together and we're like an extended family. True, a rather strange family, but a tight-knit one just the same. We also have "visiting hippies" who come...

<p>Burning Man, the wild counterculture festival held annually in one of the nation's most remote areas, is coming to cities across America.</p> <p>It's time to try to influence the very culture against which this year's record 30,500 Burning Man participants rebelled, the phenomenon's founder and resident visionary said in an interview.</p>

<p>A woman riding an "art car" at the counterculture Burning Man festival died when she accidentally fell under the vehicle's wheels, authorities said.</p> <p>The death of Katherine Lampman on Saturday was the most serious in a series of accidents at the weeklong huge desert revel, where thousands of people gather each year in a celebration of art, performance and individuality.</p>

<p>Wanna know what conservatives really hate?</p> <p>What makes everyone from harmless GOP dittoheads to ultra-right-wing nutjobs full of rage and hiss and homophobia and blind jingoism roll their eyes and throw up their hands and scamper for their Bibles for reassurance that life is still repressed and we're still going to war and Dubya is still smackin' 'round the envurment along with them wimmin and homosekshuls and furriners?</p>

RENO, Nev. -- Thousands of techies, old hippies, trippers and artists from worldwide are on their way to the northern Nevada desert for the annual Burning Man counterculture festival. Although the event known for its eclectic artwork, music and games began yesterday, most participants aren't expected to show up until later this week at the Black Rock Desert, 120 miles north of Reno near Gerlach. Billed as a celebration of art and radical self-expression, the 17th annual gathering is expected to draw 28,000 people from at least 40 states and 20 countries. "There's a certain energy out here, everybody is...

Nude Performance Artist Shocks Conservative ChileThu Jun 13, 3:03 PM ET SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - A teen-age performance artist known as "Baby Vamp" sent shock waves through Chile this week by strolling naked down city streets in the conservative South American nation. Sporting only sunglasses and a backpack, 17-year-old high school student Lucia Fernanda Flores went nude on short outings in the city center as part of a visual arts project. Luizo Vega, organizer of the event said the so-called "Baby Vamp" project was a playful jab at Chile, aimed at provoking debate in this bastion of conservative Catholicism. "Basically,...

The following is abridged from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College seminar in Naples, Florida, on March 20, 2002. Let us take a few minutes to think about a 12-year-old American boy living in the early twenty-first century. Now, there are a number of things to say about this boy. Chances are, for instance, that absent the requisite amount of parental pressure, he is likely to be a bit of a slob: his room piled with trash, his hands dirty, his socks sliding down into untied shoes. Chances are, too, that as yet he has no definite idea as...