Can We Revive '60s-Era Ideals?

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | December 7, 2007 | Dick Simpson

[T Lady]

Can we revive '60s-era ideals?

December 7, 2007 BY DICK SIMPSON

Politically, 1968 began in Chicago in 1967. The country at the time faced three great crises: racial discrimination, the Vietnam War, and the imperial presidency in which all executive, legislative and judicial power was being gathered into the hands of the president.

Behind these loomed the cultural clash of the '60s generation. The hippies, Yippies, Beatle-loving, pot-smoking free lovers doing their own thing came up against Richard J. Daley, the Chicago cops and the National Guard upholding the status quo against their own ''barbarian'' children. Society was sliding into stereotype, and anger was rising.

The clash had begun with civil rights protests, which had morphed into anti-Vietnam protests and a third-party convention held in a downtown Chicago hotel in August 1967. At the time forming a third party of students, some community leaders and protesters seemed plausible. We sought to draft Eugene McCarthy as our candidate before he entered Democratic Party primaries. There were no rules for how to defeat a seated president, end racial discrimination, stop a disastrous war and return power from an imperial presidency by giving "all power to the people."

Those of us who came of age in the 1960s were optimistic. We actually believed that peace, democracy and justice could be achieved. We naively thought it would only take a few years of dedicated struggle.

None of us in the "movement" believed that 40 years later we would be fighting another disastrous war abroad, fighting yet another imperial president, one who spies on American citizens, and living in a country in which minorities are still not equal.

Still, some real progress has been made. Richard M. Daley is more enlightened than his father, for instance. Many African Americans (and women, Latinos, Asians and gays) have made major strides individually and collectively. Our great enemy since World War II, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. Times have changed.

In the '60s, though, we didn't really worry about getting a job, about finding health insurance or about saving for retirement. We weren't fearful of crime walking our city streets. We felt free to demonstrate, protest and work inside and outside the system for our idealistic goals.

Today, we no longer believe that anything is possible. We no longer expect to achieve peace, democracy or justice in our lifetime.

Some of my fellow '60s activists have dropped out over the last 40 years. But there is still a hard core of us in human services, mid-level government positions, the halls of Congress, foundations and other places in society. We have not lost our zeal. For us, the question is whether today's youth can overcome their own generation's doubts and current cynicism. Peace, democracy and justice still demand the same noisy protests as they did then.

The '60s began with Kennedy in the White House, folk songs in the parks, civil rights marches in the streets and hope in the air. They ended in assassinations, urban riots, the epic clash at Chicago's 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the quagmire of the Vietnam War.

By contrast, our 21st century began with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, followed by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Now we face a housing crisis and a looming economic recession -- in part brought by tax breaks for the wealthy and the drain of the wars abroad. Previous imperial empires have been broken not by defeat on the battlefields but by corruption within and a waste of resources in wars they couldn't afford. The fear is that we will remake their mistakes.

Our hope is that the spirit of the '60s still lives or may be reborn. If so, we will achieve more progress this time around if we learn the '60s' hard lessons. It still must be the youth who provide the energy and leadership. But we all need to rediscover the idealism and the determination we had back then.

[T Lady]

I heard Rush discuss this column on his show in the last quarter hour.This Simpson guy sounds like a Loon.

[MamaB]

He is a kook.

[darkangel82]

“Can we revive ‘60s-era ideals?”?
No, get over it you hippie.

[BuffaloJack]

The one 60s era ideal that was good was “the only good commie is a dead commie”.

[ReluctantDragon]

You forgot the barf alert. Now I think I am going to barf. Don’t those hippies ever give up?

[T Lady]

ROTFLMBO!

[lilylangtree]

Revive the 60s? no, No, NO!

[Gay State Conservative]

He is a kook.

You're too generous.I'd say *excrement*.

[robomatik]

"Those of us who came of age in the 1960s were optimistic."
no! you (hippie scum) were idiots! In the words of a former Russian professor, "the '60's generation was the most destructive in American history"
DITTO!!!

[frogjerk]

Our great enemy since World War II, the Soviet Union, no longer exists. Times have changed.

Will this loon thank Reagan, Thatcher, or Pope John Paul II? I think not.

[MamaB]

I’m much too nice to even think of something like that!

[July 4th]

1960’s ideals? As in 1960 and 1961?

[T Lady]

It’s also interesting to note that this Fruitcake would pick the anniversary of the attack on Pear Harbor to write this screed.

[robomatik]

heres a barf alert!

[T Lady]

LOL!

[HKMk23]

Our great enemy since World War II, the Soviet Union, no longer exists.

HAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaaaaaa!!

You DOLT! Our "great enemy" is not GONE!!

Look in a freakin' MIRROR!!!!

The Soviet Union no longer NEEDS to exist, because YOU have so ably taken its place in the world, you psychopath!!

[Popman]

Those of us who came of age in the 1960s were optimistic

No, you were idealist.

• One whose conduct is influenced by ideals that often conflict with practical considerations.
• One who is unrealistic and impractical; a visionary.

You continue to try and impose your unrealistic and impractical political ideology on this country and drive it into socialist hellhole

I can't wait until most of these sixty era morons pass onto eternity and take their crap with them.

.....yea and I was born in 1959

[frogjerk]

Some of my fellow '60s activists have dropped out over the last 40 years. But there is still a hard core of us in human services, mid-level government positions, the halls of Congress, foundations and other places in society. We have not lost our zeal. For us, the question is whether today's youth can overcome their own generation's doubts and current cynicism. Peace, democracy and justice still demand the same noisy protests as they did then.

The millions dead of South East Asia thank you.

[infidel29]

Revive? Heck, 60s style ideology never went away, it morphed and has become more insidious than ever.

[T Lady]

'I can't wait until most of these sixty era morons pass onto eternity and take their crap with them.'

I'm with you on that one...and by the way, I was born in 1962, well before the drug induced madness set into our culture, brought by the likes of Mr. Simpson.

[Jaidyn]

America, Love It, Or Leave It, and it goes today. Otherwise, the 60’s were the worst times of my life. I don’t talk to my grandchildren about it much, because it sucked!

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Does he really want the 60's to come back ... really ...

[upchuck]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1936241/posts

[Kozak]

[T Lady]

Sorry about the double post...I did search, though.

[Arthur McGowan]

People having all the sex they can possibly have, and more. Lots of venereal disease, always increasing. Abortion. Pornography in every home.

Revive??? Seems to me the ideals of the Sixties are doing just fine.

[robomatik]

i just saved that pic to my hard drive. i love it. south park is not p.c. and, occasionally, funny as heck!

[upchuck]

No apology needed. There are some interesting replies on the other thread.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;s=revive

[MrLee]

I hope not!

[netmilsmom]

>>.....yea and I was born in 1959<<

1961 here. I agree fully!

[oldbrowser]

But there is still a hard core of us in human services, mid-level government positions, the halls of Congress, foundations and other places in society.

They are also in education and the courts. These are the unseen hands that undermine what ever does not suit them. The shadow government.

[Miss Didi]

RUSH: I really don't believe this. I really don't have time to read this. I'm going to have to save this for Monday. It's a column today by a guy named Dick Simpson in the Chicago Sun-Times. "Can We Revive '60s-Era Ideals?" he says. "Those of us who came of age in the 1960s were optimistic. We actually believed that peace, democracy and justice could be achieved. We naively thought it would only take a few years of dedicated struggle. None of us in the 'movement' believed that 40 years later we would be fighting another disastrous war abroad, fighting yet another imperial president, one who spies on American citizens, and living in a country..." (laughing) While Robert Kennedy was wiretapping Martin Luther King (laughing), "and living in a country in which minorities are still not equal. ... In the '60s, though, we didn't really worry about getting a job, about finding health insurance or about saving for retirement. We weren't fearful of crime walking our city streets. We felt free to demonstrate, protest and work inside and outside the system for our idealistic goals. ... Some of my fellow '60s activists have dropped out over the last 40 years.

"But there is still a hard core of us in human services, mid-level government positions, the halls of Congress, foundations and other places in society. We have not lost our zeal. For us, the question is whether today's youth can overcome their own generation's doubts and current cynicism. Peace, democracy and justice still demand the same noisy protests as they did then. ... Our hope is that the spirit of the '60s still lives or may be reborn. If so, we will achieve more progress this time around if we learn the '60s' hard lessons. It still must be the youth who provide the energy and leadership. But we all need to rediscover the idealism and the determination we had back then." Yeah, Dick, you guys have come close to destroying a country, and you haven't gone away. Who do you think is leading the Democrat Party's presidential nomination race, Dick? A sixties radical: Hillary Clinton! With her husband Bill, and it is their last gasp. This is your sixties-era generation, anti-war left's last gasp, Dick, to embrace, get your arms around this country and bend it, shape it, form it, and flake it, in whatever image you want, because after this election, even if Mrs. Clinton wins, and serves two terms -- after that, the Baby Boomers are out. In fact, she may not make it beyond the first term, given what she's going to do to the country. That is, if we still have the right to vote after her first term.

[Larry Lucido]

Hey! Stay the hell out of my kitchen!

[harpo11]

Not at all needed or wanted another dishonorable leftist '60's. There was nothing to commemorate except for the brave American boys who were spilling their blood and guts in Viet Nam while the slimey leftist unkempt pigs spate on them, if our courageous soldiers were able to make it home from that sweltering hell hole.

As far as I know, the Clinton's are all about the '60's, and all that was bad about the '60's. They are so last century, and Mrs. Clinton's mentor was really way far out there, Alinsky.

Forget about it. Grow up already middle-aged hippies and put the pipe dreamin' trippin' the light fantastic where it belongs, on the ash heap, er ah, dung heap of history.

[Ukiapah Heep]

Sure they can. And they should. They should go to their (want to be) Islamic overlords and explain peace, love and drugs to 'em. Then prepare to be peacefully slaughtered while we watch peacefully. This would do everybody a favor. It would be a win-win-win situation.

[CindyDawg]

Like that’s cool. Don’t trust anyone over 30 though. Yall see the pretty colors on the screen? Peace.

[CindyDawg]

Mayberry

[Jaysun]

Some of my fellow '60s activists have dropped out over the last 40 years. But there is still a hard core of us in human services, mid-level government positions, the halls of Congress, foundations and other places in society.

This is one of those cases in which you thank God for making it so that all men eventually die.

One day soon we will be rid of you, stupid hippie. You didn't do good and all of your destructive "progress" will soon be undone. Praise God.

[2111USMC]

We had those!

Avacado was the in thing.

[rabscuttle385]

Politically, 1968 began in Chicago in 1967. The country at the time faced ... the imperial presidency in which all executive, legislative and judicial power was being gathered into the hands of the president.

Perhaps this aging Hippie is pondering Nixon. However, in 1967, the president was a Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Those of us who came of age in the 1960s were optimistic. We actually believed that peace, democracy and justice could be achieved. We naively thought it would only take a few years of dedicated struggle.

Too optimistic, if you ask me.

Humanity is imperfect. We are mired in a thing called "sin," and the only redemption is through Christ. But, of course, abandon God, and your only hope is through humanity itself.

In the '60s, though, we didn't really worry about getting a job, about finding health insurance or about saving for retirement. We weren't fearful of crime walking our city streets. We felt free to demonstrate, protest and work inside and outside the system for our idealistic goals.

That's because they found ways of sucking off the truly productive folks. By definition, the liberals are nought but parasites.

For us, the question is whether today's youth can overcome their own generation's doubts and current cynicism. Peace, democracy and justice still demand the same noisy protests as they did then.

Some of us youth are actually doing useful things, like studying engineering and aiming for a job. Others, however, will follow in the paths of their Hippie professors, feeding off others.

Where is Eric Cartman when we need him?

[Repeal 16-17]

Can we revive ‘60s-era ideals?

Hell [insert multiple expletives here] NO!!!

Let me know when all of the Hippies are dead, so I can join in the celebration!

[NYFreeper]

Use this...

[eleni121]

60S "IDEALS"?

Never again

[Laptop_Ron]

This cracked me up.
“Still, some real progress has been made. Richard M. Daley is more enlightened than his father, for instance.”

More enlightened my a$$. The power base in Chicago just shifted and Daley shifted with it. His father had the unions, which at the time were a vote churning machine (that also supplied a steady stream of thugs when needed). The Chicago unions are no longer the path to power and Daley didn’t wield nearly the power that his old man did. Not even close.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Can We Revive ‘60s-Era Ideals? ***

Tune in Turn, drop out!

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll!.

I’ll Pass!

[IronJack]

None of us in the "movement" believed that 40 years later we would be fighting another disastrous war abroad, fighting yet another imperial president, one who spies on American citizens, and living in a country in which minorities are still not equal.

That's because none of you ever grew up. Your development was arrested at the same time Abbie Hoffman was. You see everything through a glass drunkenly, warped through a lens that fractured 40 years ago and on its best day didn't project a very accurate image of reality.

Get over it, Moonbeam. Woodstock has ended.

[PeterFinn]

The 60’s ideal of surrendering to the USSR would be a little difficult to pull off so the answer is ‘no’.

[rockinqsranch]

“They are also in education and the courts. These are the unseen hands that undermine what ever does not suit them. The shadow government.”

Thanks for that. I was wondering if anybody was going to touch on that fact, or if I was going to have to do it. Yes, these people comprise the underground of tenured Bureaucrats that clog the plumbing of progress and skew (or is that screw) the direction of our society.

[popdonnelly]

Ladies and gents, this author doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Take it from one who lived through it.