Posted on 02/13/2009 11:00:52 AM PST by sldghmr300
This is a very important point. They corrupted an entire university generation (probably my teachers in NY were among them, although many of my teachers came from families that were very left-wing to begin with, having been part of the union movements in the 1930s).
But the European academics who came here had a profound effect on American universities. Deweyization had struck in the ED schools and they were a bit on the weak side anyway, and the European influence in the higher disciplines pushed them over the edge.
The confluence of European nihilism and American progressivism reached critical mass in my generation (growing up in the 50s-60s). If you lived outside of any of the so-called intellectual centers, it took a few years to extend itself. But with the communications of the time, it was literally only a few.
All the above corresponded with growth of the economy, mass availability of drugs, the sensational music ???? of rock and roll. Completely spoiled children. The civil rights occurring during this time. The great welfare society, of President Lyndon Johnson, Riots in WATTS. Ca.!, Roe vs Wade ... beginning abortion on demand, huge growth of Television in color yet!, Archie Bunkers TV program, Which is an example of how the youth rejected “the establishment fo their parents”, Charles Manson and his ‘family’. Haight Asbury in San Francisco,, the rage of the Beatles, the mantras of transcendental meditation, etc ... Vietnam, etc., many changes occurred during these years. O and of course Political Correctness began too. Turbulent change. SEX AND DRUGS, COMMUNES, ROCK AND ROLL, WOODSTOCK. I'M SURE I HAVE THINGS OUT THAT WERE ALSO MAJOR.
Well don’t forget you had Vietnam and all that pretty much defined the generation and led to a lot of disillusionment with the world of their parents. Kids in those days were expected to conform above everything else. You didn’t have an opinion, at home or at school, and retaliation was often harsh and accepted to be the way to raise kids. And as for pot smoking, I’ll wager 90 per cent of the parents with their nightly cocktail hours were alcoholics
After TV I would also list:
The fraudulent “Kinsey Report”.
Militant Feminism
The Pill
The rise of McGovern Demos
A very weird obsession with youth
These are mostly 50’s kids—born in the early to mid 1950’s. They came up in the midst of the babyboom crap.
Children born in the mid to late 60’s hate the boomers for screwing all up: our schools, our drinking, our sex lives, and our government.
The greatest generation was so happy to be alive in the fifties and sixties, they turned their kids into pansies.
That was great. LOL thanks.
There is very convincing evidence that they had plans in place. And then a Roosevelt-formed generation came back to the US, found European professors teaching Marxist and Freudian theory in the universities, and were swept away by it. And they were the teachers of the Baby Boom generation.
Growing up in the 50's brought a definitely skewed vision of life for the kids who's futures were molded at the hands of their parents generation (the Greatest Generation) and the world events that shaped the actions/reactions of the institutions touching each and every child
. The move from a local/state/US-centric view of life to a new world view and the growth of an entire generation of young people dominated by a generation of very conservative parents and grandparents (who grew up during the depression) created a generation of rebels, as most children reject the teaching of their parents, that went too far in that rebellion.
How did it happen? Since I am not a child
psychiatrist/psychologist, I can't offer guarantees of accuracy, but see if you don't ask the same questions I did when I reviewed these observations. When we were kids, during the school day, once a month or more, we had nuclear drills. Where I went, we had to, on command from a loud siren, stop, drop, get under our wood and metal desks, on our knees in a weird type of fetal position and cover the back of our heads with our hands so the radiation from the atom bomb would not burn through our hands and damage our brains.
The Russians put nukes 90 miles from our shores, satellites above us and missiles in submarines. Well, I wonder where those children's phobias found an outlet.
Perhaps the peace movement/nuclear freeze movement... We had bomb shelters around town and had to know where it was, how to get there, and what was there to eat and drink and how many beds. If our parents weren't in the military, most of our neighbors were or had been.
The other neighbors were the older, childless couples who lived through the depression.
Both groups were VERY strict on the one hand and like every parent, wanted their children to have more than they did. Our parents gave us latitude, but demanded strict adherence to rules.
We could leave the house in the summer time, no watch, no phones, no cell phones, no parents, play all day without our parents able to see or hear us and make it home by 6 for dinner.
Everyone of those neighbors watched out for us and when we stepped out of line, we caught hell (corporal punishment) from the neighbors and no one thought twice about it.
What mental trauma over the years was wrought from the discipline of the parents and the neighbors? Perhaps, a generation of nor rules, liberal philosophy and personal self interest? I'd say that generation developed neurosis and fear that fed a lifetime of undiscipline, selfishness and a severe lack of responsiblity.
When you consider how the Beatles are worshiped in New England; you have to wonder...
Right on! Youth have been villainized since time immemorial. Institutions are threatened by radial ideas which in turn become institutions and are threatened by radical ideas.
..on a light note it was the time of the Volkswagen van. a few practically lived it them. Hippies.
My theory is that drug use causes permanent brain damage.
Then wouldn’t he need 7?
Poeple my age were very idealistic about Vietnam. We were protecting and liberating a people.
The only ones who weren’t were the leftists, most of whom had made sure they were either 4-F or could extend their college deferments forever. But they won, because their parents - who controlled the media, believe me, I grew up in New York with the kids of TV execs - controlled the public perception of Vietnam.
It was the first war lost by the media. The media betrayed the soldiers and everybody in it.
Or they could be patriots. Talk to them whenever you get the opportunity.
TV? We had nightly, pictures of soldiers dragged bleeding to helicopters, and bodybags piled up waiting to go home. We had nightly, pictures of dogs attacking black people and schoolkids in the south. We had JFK’s assassination, MLK’s, and Robert Kennedy’s. We had the Cuban Missile Crisis and the constant threat of nuclear war. I think we were deeply stressed out by the time we ever got to get away from home
I think that the real problems are #1,2,3 and 6, which I believe are all rooted in #1.
Think about it, for centuries there was no change. We went through wars before, Christianity has ebbed and flowed, and people lived through lean and decadent times, yet there was no fundamental change to society like in the 60s. What could make such a radical change? Unchaining sex from marriage is the only thing I can think of. So how do you unchain the two? Wealth won't do it, and neither will more or less religion, even condoms won't do it. But a pill that makes women not worry about the possibility of pregnancy strikes at the heart of the issue. When you could depend on women as "civilizing" because they kept sex to a minimum since they would be the ones stuck with children all of society benefited. When that broke down, so did everything else.
I WAS going to go, but I absolutely REFUSE to pay $135 per ticket to NOT see Jerry Garcia.
I paid 8 bucks and a bottle of Bass Ale to see my first Dead show, I saw them 40+ times in the ensuing years, and I think I’ll stay home that night and listen to old tapes or maybe even watch one of their shows on DVD.
Great post.
I agree that passing over the classics is key to all of this. Why are the “dead white European male” classics dismissed in favor of more modern works? Because they’re DIFFICULT. The classics of the past taught tough, important lessons but equally important is that they are used to teach careful reading, thinking about what is going into one’s head. They are not full of cues that tell the reader how to react, what is the “right” way to respond. Now look at the victim literature so popular in schools now, where the victim is enshrined, and the achiever is made the villain, the exploiter, as opposed to the achiever being the one who moves the world, defends the helpless (as opposed to the lazy).
(I work as a counselor in a high school, btw, so I know what I am talking about—a student recently graduated and is now in college for creative writing; he informed his parents he learned more about writing and literature from me than from his creative writing teacher.)
Reading is the foundation for all learning. If I could do one thing for a kid, it would be teach him to love reading—something that can only be done BY someone who loves reading.
It really does boil down to that. If you teach a child to love reading, he will learn.
If you teach him to watch the tube and play video games...he won’t learn.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.