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How the Right Stole the '60s (And Why We Should Get Them Back)

By Astra Taylor, AlterNet. Posted May 19, 2006.


Conservatives are winning the battle over how the 1960s are remembered. But their version is far from the truth.
051906_story
How the Right Stole the '60s
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It wasn't until I got to college that I heard that the 1960s had "failed" and that all the Baby Boomers went straight and sold out.

Yet such sweeping proclamations never quite rung true. Those weren't the people I knew when I was a kid: the aging organic farmers, the people living on and running a commune founded long before I was born, the self-sacrificing teachers and social workers, the lawyers who gave up a big paycheck for a good cause, or my friends' parents, who managed the local Kinko's and were anything but wealthy. Those weren't the adults I later met who sometimes struck me as more radical in their ideals and extreme in their political convictions than my college classmates. Maybe these folks weren't the vanguard of the revolution, but neither were they getting rich from selling it out. Instead, they were just regular people trying to make ends meet and live by their principles.

My family spent the '80s and '90s, long after the spirit of the '60s had supposedly been put to rest, carrying a torch for some of the inspiring qualities of that decade. Our home was marked by constant creativity, healthy suspicion of material wealth and social status, and our trust in the ultimate goodness of humanity. We called our parents by their first names as a testament to our status as equals (and often drove them crazy when we threw the injunction "question authority" back in their faces). For over a decade, we drove around in countercultural classics -- two VW vans covered in bumper stickers.

School, however, was one place they never drove us to. Instead, my siblings and I enjoyed a life of anarchic leisure and self-education. We were "unschooled," a radical branch of homeschooling that had its heyday in the 1960s (though similar educational philosophies go further back). Growing up in Georgia, my parents' commitment to raising their kids outside the mainstream definitely put us in a minority. But it was a strong one, and one we were proud to be part of. Like countless kids across North America, we were tie-dyed diaper babies.

Idealism lost

Regardless of whether we were raised in the hippie tradition, those born too late to remember the '60s firsthand have heard an awful lot about the decade, most of it bad. The period has been trivialized, commemorated and castigated ad nauseam. It's been reduced to a risible relic, a series of clichés about hippies and protesters and lost idealism.

Today we too often assume the mythic '60s to be solely the invention of sentimental liberal Baby Boomers unable, or unwilling, to let go of the past. But, more often than not, the 1960s the media portrays is a construct invented to serve corporate and conservative interests. The fact is, conservative Baby Boomers are even more fixated on the '60s than their progressive counterparts.

The spirit of the '60s, conservatives claim, has infiltrated and corrupted almost every corner of our culture, destroying America in its wake. They blame the decade for corroding family values, weakening the church, inspiring rampant drug abuse, spoiling the poor, ruining higher education, ridiculing Western civilization and emasculating white men. Over the last 40 years, reactionary forces have never ceased their assault, singling out the decade for unique and unparalleled abuse, alienating many people, especially young people, from the progressive ideals and spirit of experimentation the 1960s embodied.

For the generation that has come into political awareness against the backdrop of Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq, this has proven particularly true. The last few years have seen the '60s framed in a negative light with powerful consequences. The right is expert at circulating potent untruths about the era, like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's 2004 smear campaign against John Kerry or the digitally edited image of Kerry sharing a podium with Jane Fonda at a 1971 antiwar rally he never attended.

These misinformation campaigns build on longer-term strategies that erase historical realities from the public memory (and, as a result, erase possibilities from the public imagination). A timely example is the mostly forgotten GI movement against the war in Vietnam, an important chapter in 1960s history uncovered in the recent documentary "Sir, No Sir!" Jerry Lembcke, a Vietnam veteran and scholar who appears briefly in the film, wrote an entire book about one of the '60s' most enduring -- and counterfeit -- images: the self-sacrificing soldier spat upon by unpatriotic protesters. Lembcke shows how the Nixon administration and the media purposefully propagated this myth in an effort to disparage the antiwar camp and drive a wedge between the military and civilian peace movements. Decades later most people, young and old, barely remember that half a million young men deserted, that grunts were refusing to fight en masse, and that soldiers published over 100 underground antiwar newspapers.

Conservative complaints

It's hard to overstate just how prominently the '60s figures on the conservative movement's cognitive map. Next to the Bible, George W. Bush's second favorite book is Myron Magnet's "The Dream and the Nightmare: the Sixties Legacy to the Underclass," which the president claims "crystallized for me the impact the failed culture of the sixties had on our values and society." In his introduction Magnet explains how Bush's "youthful fling with the culture of the sixties" gave him "firsthand knowledge of its destructiveness." Having learned the error of his ways Bush, Magnet assures us, will govern in as "un-sixties" a manner as possible, which means, among other things, cutting social services and rehabilitating good old-fashioned tradition and morality.


Digg!

Astra Taylor is a writer and documentary filmmaker. Her first book, "Shadow of the Sixties," is forthcoming from the New Press in 2007.

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View:
Conservative bias in this article? Yes!
Posted by: nbrown on May 19, 2006 12:28 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The Democratic Party has nothing in common with the "spirit of the 60s."

By framing the issue in terms of, Repugs are evil, Dems = the 60s, the author says that Dems are somehow different from the Repugs.

Has the author bothered to look at the voting records of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Iraq war, PATRIOT Act, No Child Left Behind, Department of Homeland Security, military budgets, the prison system?

If yes, the author is trying to trick readers into voting for a clone of the Repugs.

If no, why does the author have writing space in an authoritative space?

What is alternet's position on this? Does alternet back the Iraq war, PATRIOT Act, DHS, NCLB, DOMA, militarism, the prison system?

Yes or no.

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Ive seen it
Posted by: lordzombie on May 19, 2006 3:01 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I dont live in america anymore, the last time I was there I saw more than a few commercials which made a hippy the butt of jokes, and the victim of violence. one in which a sporty SUV ploughs through a group of hippies singing and playing guitars, Ive been well inspired by the people, writing, politics, and attitudes from the 60's, the protest movement, all owe a great deal to those "dirty hippies" something I think the right would just as soon have everyone forget.

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» RE: Ive seen it Posted by: filtersweep
» Keep Going On Posted by: errandchild
You Had to Have Been There
Posted by: ChristopherLL on May 19, 2006 3:01 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I was there, in college and then medical school in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 60's and 70's, and it was not the hedonistic, chaotic, anything goes culture that is being portrayed. First there was a real war going on with deaths of young men in the hundreds every week, a draft that meant every young man vunlerable for miliatry service, a military/industrial institution and a society that promoted conformity and materialism with the resulting lack of relevance to the needs of human beings. Those who received the attention as demonstrators or "hippies" were usually rich kids who had the time and immaturity to act out. The majority were deeply affected by social and personal issues but behaved responsibly. The two groups who, to me, are in many ways responsible for the subsequent path of this country are those rich kids who became even better than their parents at wealth and power and those who dropped out and no longer engaged in contributing effectively to society. Home schooling negates any social interration except with primary family members and I consider this a form of dropping out. Many of us have stuck it out, contributing to society and maintaining our idealism and commitment. We will, in the end, remain as the foundation to ensure the structure may crack but will not break.

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» RE: You Had to Have Been There Posted by: medstudgeek
» RE: You Had to Have Been There I was Posted by: ChristopherLL
» RE: You Had to Have Been There Posted by: the poet
As a person of the 60s I can understand this article
Posted by: HawkSpirit on May 19, 2006 3:09 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I would love to dropout and go live in commune with like minded people. Facing retirement in another year or so do to working a lot for low pay for the State of Texas dept of Corrections. In the 80's it was the only job I could find in three states. Hopefully Texas will live up to its pension plans and my 401K does not go belly up again. I am not sure where there is some place in the USA that is safe to live where is government cannot revoke everything I have worked so hard for.

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lying
Posted by: rsaxto on May 19, 2006 3:33 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
That's the Bushies: lying about the past, lying about the present and lying about the future. And lying about almost everything else from religion to scientific reality to war and peace. Their actions are easy to determine: crimes galore. The solution is simple : IMPEACHMENTS GALORE.

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» RE: lying Posted by: Marjiro
WE HAVE TAKEN IT BACK!
Posted by: brendastarr on May 19, 2006 3:47 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
But this time we are SPIRITUALLY grounded and not just idealistic and angry at the status quo.

TIKKUN's www.tikkun.org
Second Spiritual Activists Conference in DC has brought together 1,200 patriotic progressive spiritual activists who all have imagination, passion and we will not give.

The more spiritually holistic one is the more politically active one becomes.

When one WAKES UP to the fundamental truth that ALL life is sacred and interconnected and

When one WAKES UP to the fundamental truth that we are ALL in this together and must learn to share the world
we will DO SOMETHING to change reality as we now know it.


"Every movement of social change in any society has been hopeless: the beginning, the middle and the end. But, all of a sudden it just happens."-Howard Zinn

Throughout history when enough people rose up/intifada and did not give up: reality changed.

It was because of people with imagination who were able to see a world without slavery that its abolition became the new reality.

"Imagination is evidence of the Divine."


"We hope someday you will join us and the world will be as ONE."-John Lennon

http://www.wearewideawake.org

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revisionist history has never ever worked out for the writers
Posted by: concerned Canadian on May 19, 2006 3:53 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Funny thing about all this is that the conservative right , or whatever name the current power grabbers are given or use,they have done this without fear or shame and only with a sense of entitlement and ever gathering seizure of power. My question to you Americans so would someone out there please provide me with a cogent answer to the question: How did you let your country get to this state where the checks and balances only refer to how much money the government in power can grab from the people and ensure that the balance left for the people is a massive debt. How did you manage that? And would someone of the Alternet mindset also tell this Canadian neighbour of yours how you intend to get back what it's taken you fourty years to lose? It looks like it should be a case of accepting that this is being done, throwing down the gauntlet and saying: ok, if that's how it's gonna be, so be it!!! Of course there is still time to get things back on track and just count the losses as losses, fourty years or not. But, without the checks and balances working the way it needs to work, no chance guys, no chance. So is there a chance?

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» IT'S A MYSTERY TO ME Posted by: LMNOP
Some valid points to ponder
Posted by: redstarwraith on May 19, 2006 3:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The author does raise some interesting points although I agree wholeheartedly with the first comment; the Dems are no "party of opposition" and, moreover, were certainly were no great "party of opposition" in the 60's either. We progressives need to sever ties once and for all with the democratic party.

Another thing we have to do:
Why haven't the progressives bitch-slapped these 60's traitors who turned into right-wing fanatics (like David Horowitz) into oblivion? Why hasn't anyone just come out in public and called this guy a lying whore? It's so patently obvious that he sold out ONLY because sucking the teat of the power elite is more handsomely rewarded. . .same goes for his partner, Collier. Whore-o-witz constantly writes and carps about how all the 1960's activism was misguided, supported "the enemy", etc., etc. . .

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I remember the '60's...
Posted by: adp3d on May 19, 2006 4:00 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...as a wonderfully different age in which social upheaval was the rule rather than the exception. My progressives values stem from the age of civil rights, the Viet Nam conflict, the draft, race riots, Kent State, Nixon and Agnew, assassinations, the so-called sexual revolution, anti-establishment voices from the music and movie "industries". These are all things the Right hates so there is no wonder that they try minimize the effect on the shaping of the country today. In 1967 on the eve of my seventh grade math final exam Bobby Kennedy was shot. In 1968 the Detroit Tigers won the World Series behind Denny Mclane's 31 win season and Al Kaline and Willie Hortons bats, and the Beatles were singing "Hey Jude". These are things the Right will never be able to take away.

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» RE: I remember the '60's... Posted by: peacefulaim
Back on what track?
Posted by: churchofone on May 19, 2006 4:23 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"The '60s marked the beginning of America's great moral decline, the story goes, and the conservatives are here to set the country back on track."

The question, to me, is what track?

The idealized 1950s, where everything was run by white men, while blacks still rode the back of the bus, women wore pearls to do their dusting, died horrible deaths from backstreet abortions and gays were firmly closeted? Domestic violence was hidden and Dad came home from work every day and poured a martini while the wife waited on him and the children hung on every pronouncement? Bah... it only happened on television!

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» RE: Back on what track? Posted by: fred_53_99
» RE: Back on what track? Posted by: Annarisse
Das Sixties
Posted by: Tom Degan on May 19, 2006 5:21 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As young as I was in the 1960's (I was born in 1958) I was smart enough to be aware of the fact that the country was going through some serious changes. Because that decade didn't really begin untill Nivember 22, 1963, I always tell people that I'm old enough to remember the 1950's - or at least what America was like, for good or for ill, in the 50's.

The dirty little secret of the entire conservative/Reagan revolution is that it was a reaction to all of the positive changes that the 60's bought to the US. Reagan wasn't successful - thank God! Everything George W. Bush has done to you, the Gipper would have done to you had he had control of both houses of Congress. It wasn't untill 1994, five years after his administration mercifully ended, that the GOP was able to take control of the House and Senate. Thankfully at the time there was a moderate democrat in the White House by the name of Bill Clinton who was able to stem the tide of disaster despite the most despicable partisan attacks on any president in living memory. You remember what happened, don't you? Poor ol' Bubbah fibbed under oath about having what in reality was a harmless fling with a half-witted intern. For that minor indiscretion these hideous bastards and bitches (Hi Kay Bailey!) were almost able to forcably remove him from office.

On 20 January 2001, everyone's worst nightmare finally happened. Four five and a half years now, the republican party has been in charged of the store and look at what's happened: Our country is on the verge of a total social and economic melt-down.

Have we learned any lessons here, kiddies?

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

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» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: fred_53_99
» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: Tom Degan
» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: owleyes
» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: Ellie1
» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: jackyD
» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: dix
» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: jlt
» RE: Das Sixties Posted by: AlphaHusky
I was there...
Posted by: tkwilson on May 19, 2006 5:25 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
and I'm still here.
The sixties wasn't an isolated blip on the social scene. It had roots that go way back in US and European history; and that movement is far from dead, so lets not have a fucking funeral just yet.
Back when authority (the church mainly) was all there was, Martin Luther was nailing his 'theses' to the cathedral door.
We're still fighting authority, still nailing shit to their doors.
Authoritarianism in all its guises is a bankrupt meme.
The signers of the Magna Carta knew it.
It just takes time.
Raise your children well.
This too shall pass.

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» RE: I was there... Posted by: fred_53_99
Interesting article, but relevant?
Posted by: SufiLizard on May 19, 2006 5:26 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I think this article raises some valid points, particularly about how the "Right" has yet again distorted history to suit their needs.

But I think it's also dishonest to somehow idealize the 60's as if all of the progressive ideas originated there. The 60's counterculture grew directly out of the 50's Beat Generation and even they drew from prior generations.

This movement goes back hundreds of years. From women's sufferage to the labor movement of the early 20th century to the abolitionists of the 19th century to the very American Revolution -- a progressive movement has made steady progress.

Of course the forces on the other side have existed parallel to the progressive movement the whole time too and they have had their moments of ascendency - usually leading to disasters like the Great Depression.

Since the Right (for lack of a better defining term) has made the 60's into a symbol -- or shorthand for a set of ideals -- it makes sense to try to correct the record on their misinformation. But let's not lose sight of the big picture.

Personally I think the left would do better to remember the time when blue collar workers, farmers and preachers tended to be progressive populists. When Woody Guthrie sang about Jesus Christ as a socialist hero and farmers across the country were independent, contrary and politically active.

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Hippies
Posted by: Shakti on May 19, 2006 5:38 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I wrote a dissertation on societal health, and used Timothy Miller's excellent book 'The Hippies and American Values' (U of Tennessee Press, 1991) extensively for my chapter on the counterculture.

Hippie culture made lasting contributions to America: health food (who introduced granola and whole wheat bread to the mainstream?), organic farming, yoga, meditation, communal living (transmuting into co-housing), homebirth/midwifery, folk medicine and a very healthy impulse to explore "the perennial philosophy" in the form of American versions of Buddhist, Zen, and Vedic traditions. (Some of this can be found in my 1998 book 'Healing the Social Body' (Garland Publishing).

This doesn't even touch on the hippies' contributions to popular music, racial integration, the environmental movement and pacifism.

The hippies unquestionably were slandered by the MSM, images of hedonistic, tripping, mud-covered revelers at Woodstock totally eclipsing the lasting contributions made by the counterculture.

Thank God for the hippies. Their legacy is what makes the U.S. tolerable to live in today.

Long live the counterculture!

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» RE: Hippies Posted by: Awake
» RE: Hippies Posted by: Awake
» RE: Hippies Posted by: owleyes
The view from a gen X'er
Posted by: Jasonix on May 19, 2006 5:50 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I love it when baby boomers complain about being called to task for being either selfish, immature, greedy, licentious hippies (their youth) or rabid religious fundamentalists (their middle age). Why on earth would those of us in our 30s or younger complain? Let's see...a baby boomer could expect to raise a family and own a house on just one income...their youth was marked by a rising standard of living and increasing egalitarianism in society...they were optimistic about the role politics and social change could play in making life better...technology made life better all the time...young people had free love. What's my life like? Two parents working three jobs between them sliding deeper into debt all the time...life is getting worse while power and aggression are the rule of the day...all of society's institutions, especially government, business, and the churches, have failed miserably...the planet itself rebels against us...most folks have an STD (HPV at the very least).

So Baby Boomers lived the American Dream, while the rest of us are poor, oppressed, disillusioned, diseased, and waiting for the planet to finally get rid of us. To make matters worse, most baby boomers managed to get their cheap houses and get through most of their careers before the crap hit the fan, so they think that we're lazy whiners! Why on earth are we so bitter?

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» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: churchofone
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: Jasonix
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: churchofone
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: Jasonix
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: Jasonix
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: MatthewSavage
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: Jasonix
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: jeffersonian
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: MrSubtle
» YAWN Posted by: chuckville
» RE: YAWN Posted by: tmilligan5640
» Hey, you presumptuous ASS!! Posted by: russianblue1
» Nice response Posted by: russianblue1
» By the way, Posted by: russianblue1
» Thank you!! Posted by: russianblue1
» RE: Talkin bout My Generation Posted by: aussidawg
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: trillium97221
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: owleyes
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: peacefulaim
» RE: The view from a gen X'er Posted by: AlphaHusky
» RE: Shame on you... Posted by: jeanniedean
» view from another "gen xer" Posted by: Michelle
nemo
Posted by: nemo on May 19, 2006 5:52 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What the author doesn't go into is the enormous effect the teachings of Leo Strauss had on the budding NeoCons. Strauss distrusted any challenges to authority, such as exemplified by the 1960's, and specifically used that decade as a example of what he believed were 'negative' social forces at work. The NeoCons have taken his lesson to heart, and castigate anything that gives the impression that the 1960's were a time of societal progression. And since Strauss distrusted modern democratic processes and felt that lying to the public was justifiable, then should we be surprised if they attempt a little 'revisionist history'?

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» RE: nemo Posted by: outsidea
» RE: nemo Posted by: owleyes
Learn from Thomas Frank and David Sirota
Posted by: maxpayne on May 19, 2006 6:02 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
www.tcfrank.com and www.davidsirota.com are perfect places to look to start taking back what the cons stole from us. If it can work in MT and KS, I don't see what's to lose by progressives being themselves rather than trying to "appease" the "right".

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» Learn from what you just said Posted by: chuckville
bentfiend
Posted by: Earthie on May 19, 2006 6:05 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Astra got a lot of it right, which is quite commendable for someone who did not directly experience the 60's, but "nbrown" is correct in assessing the Democrats as no reliable friend of progressive thought (though far more of it exists there than in the Republicans).

The murders of Jack Kenendy, Malcom X, Medgar Evers and countless other less known people (viet Namese & GI's included), somehow (probably through rage as much as anything) empowered my generation to act outside the defined borders of social thought and behavior. We nearly took over, but not quite.

LBJ (who in retrospect is far better than in real time) was run out of office over his horrible mismanagement of the Viet Nam debacle and the murky suspicion that he had something to do with Kennedy's death. His "War on Poverty" and civil rights achievements were underappreciated because of the lapse in time required for their effect to be felt.

Several progressive Democrats stepped to the fore, most notably Eugene McCarthy (still one of the most decent American political figures) and somewhat later (and less progressive), Robert Kennedy. Just as Kennedy seized the momentum for the Democratic nomination in 1968, he was also murdered. McCarthy's march, having been stifled by Kennedy, never fully recovered and the Dems, in an extremely corrupt, conservative and contoversial convention, nominated Hubert Humphrey. A decent enough old hack, but certainly lacking charisma and any connection to the progressive ideals of the movements of change in America.

The Republicans recycled Dick Nixon and through a false promise of a "secret plan" to end the war and the deep divisions in the opposition, managed to win the Presidency in the '68 election. It was a devastating conclusion to a decade that had brought so much and promised so much more.

In the mid-70's, after a fair amount of study on the topic, I arrived at the theory that the same people who were responsible for returning Nixon to the White House (as President this time) were also involved in Jack Kennedy's death. (Delve into it, see if it doesn't make sense to you.)

But, conspiracy theory aside, look at who worked in or was affiliated with the Nixon Administration in the 70'. Many were temporarily disgraced for various nefarious deeds, but never jailed or convicted and permanently run out of politics, mostly due to strategic pardons and the misplaced compassions of prosecutors. And they have returned with a vengeance in the current administration. They know they can't govern, nor do they intend to, and they know they'll once again be driven out, and they could care less. While they're in power they are brazenly stealing everything they can get their bloody hands on and ammassing a fortune that will sustain them and theirs for generations to come.

Hey! Lookout, there's an Arab sneaking up on you, or is it a Mexican? It's hard to tell them apart, but go ahead and shoot, they both want to steal your lawn, rape your Bible and and get your 401K on drugs!

(that was a parody) So, vote these guys out of office NOW! Impeach, prosecute and jail as many as we can. Work on ending this insane war. Promote alternative energies, protect the environment, love your neighbor and get high (even if you have to meditate to do it).

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» RE: bentfiend Posted by: outsidea
» RE: bentfiend Posted by: aonghus36
The day progressives become Schweitzer/Freudenthal Democrats and visit the Dakotas
Posted by: SDres11 on May 19, 2006 6:18 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
is the day progressives and Democrats will actually start winning. Until then, it's losing business as usual !

Remember, when progressives/Democrats write off one too many states like they've done for the past few decades, tyranny through divide-and-conquer not only thrives but reaches new heights.

If Kerry and other Democrats hadn't written off South Dakota, the state would not have been such a FUCKING laughing stock by now like Kansas was back in the 1990s.

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They didn't sell out because....
Posted by: cmaukonen on May 19, 2006 6:35 AM   
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they never were there. A large portion of the people I met
during the 60s who marched, chanted etc. were, as Frank
Zappa would say, "Phony Hippies". They were there only
because it was "Hip" to do so.

Sure there were a few who really did believe and lived their
ideals. But they were darn few. The rest baught their ideals
at the leather shop along with thir clothes.

After the war, the leather went into the trash along with their ideals.

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True Hippies Put "The Hippie" To Rest
Posted by: ZPaul on May 19, 2006 6:59 AM   
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I don´t know if anybody remembers the symbolic funeral celebrated for "The Hippie" at the beginning of the 70s in San Francisco. The hip knew that those devoid of understanding had already begun to twist the word "hippie", "60s", etc. to their own ends. In one of Allen Ginsberg´s last interviews, he was asked what was hip nowadays, and he answered simply: "not being `hip´"

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» 1967 Posted by: Longdream
YAWN...
Posted by: chuckville on May 19, 2006 7:06 AM   
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...whatever. Baby Boomers are the most spoiled, self-indulgent, self-obsessed, narcissistic, materialistic and consuming generation the world has ever known. It never ceases to amaze me the lengths they go to rationalize their gluttony, by pointing to a brief period long ago when they held the youthful idealism all humans posses, and then a smattering of people who held true to revolutionary beliefs. Blah blah blah...

Here's to me the perfect symbol of "the spirit of the Sixties". Back in early '05 I was in San Rafael, Marin County visiting my friend Byron Belitsos and we went to a lecture by Catherine Austin Fitts, which Byron organized, on "alternative investing" in preparation for the great looming economic crash of Peak Oil. If only the writing staff of The Simpsons had been there. The room was filled with these so-called "ex-hippies" and former "Marxist revolutionaries" who arrived in BMWs, were all wearing (I swear) Birkenstocks and wool, smelled like lavender, and whined and wailed and gnashed their teeth about "their 401ks" and their "retirement portfolios" and their "real estate values".

So, go ahead and laud the merits of the cool Hippie couple who never sold out, and now work a menial job to support their totally non-Hippie daughter. SOund familiar? It's because it was a staple cliche plot point of most '80s teen films. Go ahead, try to convince yourself that you haven't totally given this world over to the people with the green stuff, and abdicated responsibility to a whole nation of crooks masquerading as politicians and big business.

Anyway, thanks Boomers. We're all so happy we get to stick around and clean up the mess you made.

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» RE: YAWN... Posted by: xbj
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: chuckville
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: xbj
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: Jasonix
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: barryr
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: Jasonix
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: barryr
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: xbj
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: churchofone
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: xbj
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: barryr
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: chuckville
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: barryr
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: BlueTigress
» RE: UNFAIR....really? Posted by: jeanniedean
» RE: UNFAIR....really? Posted by: Shakti
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: Earthie
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: peacefulaim
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: jeanniedean
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: peacefulaim
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: KPelley
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: owleyes
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: peacefulaim
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: chuckville
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: xbj
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: xbj
» UPCHUCKVILLE Posted by: Longdream
» RE: YAWN... Posted by: alterhead
The 60s were great in Quebec, at least
Posted by: secretchief on May 19, 2006 7:25 AM   
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The Quiet Revolution happened in the sixties in Quebec. It involved freeing the people from the tight control of religion, and actually profiting from our natural resources instead of selling them for 5 cents a ton to our industrious neighbors and buying cars back for $5 000 a ton.

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I was there too and it's still here
Posted by: cityofangelslady on May 19, 2006 7:29 AM   
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The original writer made a good point. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War were a major voice in the antiwar movement.

Today the sixties and seventies have been compressed. It has taken much less time to get the antiwar message out with the Iraq War thanks to people taking control of communications through the Internet, a major-major revolution that was predicted by Timothy Leary by the way.

As a Peace & Freedom party activist in the '60s I am happy to see how fast the message against this war got to people.

kay

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Let's resurrect the sixties
Posted by: lpericol on May 19, 2006 7:36 AM   
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Let's show those lying conservatives for what they are. Put a psychedelic flower power symbol on your car or a peace sign or start wearing tie-dyed t-shirts to rallies and protest marches. As far as I'm concerned, the ideals of the sixties live! Let's not let these lying revisionists destroy the truth.

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Liberating the 60s