Posted on 07/01/2004 8:34:16 AM PDT by qam1
I’m a baby boomer and that’s a curse. You see I’m stuck with the idiots from the sixties till my dying day as they whine and moan about injustice and mentally dwell forever in the days of tie-die shirts, incense, and free love.
The news media, now controlled by baby boomers, keep the myth alive that everyone from that era got high and protested in the streets disgorging their revolution to enforce a “new America.” They were revolting all right. The very sight of them turned my stomach.
The truth is that those who perpetrated the anti-war protests didn’t really care about the Vietnam War except for how it affected their draft status. They had no compassion for the pro-freedom forces in South Vietnam who were sacrificing everything to try and stop the takeover of their part of that country by a very brutal communist regime. As the protesters carried their Mao signs and chanted “Che, Che,” their purpose was to rip apart traditional America and rebuild it on the ideals of Mao and Che. What ideal was that? Communism.
The tragedy of the sixties was that so many young people simply didn’t understand that their chants and posters and the promised “new vision” were really in support of a communist America. Nor did they understand that their actions were helping the communists to sentence millions in Southeast Asia to the gulag. Worse, those baby boomers had no sense of the brutal reality of life under communism. Most still don’t.
Case in point is Country Joe McDonald. He and his group, “The Fish”, performed the song that became one of the anthems of the Woodstock Generation. It was called, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag.” Usually, Country Joe would start the song by shouting to the crowd, “Give me an F!” The other three letters of the cheer would follow as Country Joe would ask, “What’s that spell?” The crowd would respond by shouting the well-known profanity. Country Joe would then begin the catchy rag which asked “One, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam.” It was all so, well, revolutionary.
Country Joe became a major voice in the “revolution.” So what was Joe fighting for? He did help force America to abandon an anticommunist ally; resulting in its becoming an enslaved nation. Is that what he wanted? Is that what he hoped would happen? Is he happy now? Apparently Country Joe doesn’t have a clue.
Recently he was invited to Hanoi to receive a World Peace Music Award. However, Country Joe says he won’t go because “as a hippie protest songwriter I could not exist in Vietnam.” Why on earth not? Isn’t Vietnam now exactly the communist paradise he and his buddy protesters wanted it to be? Apparently Joe misunderstood back in the sixties.
“Communism tends to be totalitarian, and I am not for that,” says the self-proclaimed revolutionary. Even worse, his complete ignorance of communism’s principles is shocking. “My parents were American Communists for some time, but they left the Party because of a lack of democratic positions by the Party,” he naïvely admitted.
Like a lot of the baby boomer generation, it seems that Country Joe McDonald just got a thrill from protesting. He had no idea what he was against or for. It was just a social event to go down to the local protest, carry a sign, and meet some “groovy chicks.”
The consequences of his actions? His nation suffered worldwide disgrace and millions of innocent Vietnamese remain enslaved to this day. Oh well, it was “kool.” The whole pathetic lot of ‘em make me want to barf!
Tom DeWeese is the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center. The center maintains a website at www.americanpolicy.org.
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I am a members of this "me, me, me" generation and I would like to barf myself when I see the Clintons, Kerry, the protestors, the media, and rest of the liberals whining. Nothing but a bunch of socialist which BTW, saw an article that said "socialist" is a nice word for "communist!"
At least P.J. O'Rourke grew up and learned the error of his ways...
Barf To The Top
I'm a boomer (1945) and witnessed all of what the writer did. And I can testify that he is RIGHT ON. I'm embarrassed to be a boomer and bitterly resent "my" generation for what it has done to our nation.
Thank you for posting this.
I wondered if someone could tell me the meaning of the peace sign? I had heard it has another meaning.
Enslavement, reeducation camps, genocide of the Montagnards, the rise of Pol-Pot - yep - they got what they wanted - too bad they could not be there to experience what they demonstrated for. Lenis's "useful idiots"
"Nothing but a bunch of socialist.."
agreed - and you know they just LOVE Bush's forced Socialism Medicare program, although they'll never admit it.
It was the assumption, then and now, that every longhair was anti war that made them seem a majority.
The lefties were loonie all right, but they did know how to party.
So9
Yes it does. In Hawaii it means "I'm enjoying two-finger poi."
To someone like Rosie and Hillary, it means something entirely different and unsanitary and disgusting.
I resent all the crap laid on the baby-boomers. I am one. I've never owned a tie-dyed anything, never smoked pot and never protested anything except the idiot that was in the White House between the Bushes. I served 20 years in the US Army and since retirement have worked steadily in the military-industrial complex. I'm sure there are many many more who feel the same. To let a few loud-mouthed fools paint the majority is reckless and foolishly ill-informed. I would like to hear someone tell Rich Connolly, Dave Seaman and many others who gave their lives in Vietnam while I was there that they were a bunch of whiney baby-boomers. This guy needs to get a grip and realize the world does not revolve around the self-absorbed idiots the media likes to hold up to the rest of us. < /rant>
I saw the movie "BEYOND BORDERS" last night. I don't recommend it. It's depressing and preposterous. But I think it was honest in its portrayal of what has happened to Cambodia. What a horrible, horrible place. And it could have been so different.
Gen-Reagan BUMP here (1972)
As a trailing edge boomer, I much prefer the term "Generation W."
My personnel favorite is the one with a B-52 as the center piece of the peace symbol.
.....a ??FEW?? loud-mouthed fools.......??? What planet do YOU live on?
Most American Communists seem to believe this - that some form of "Democratic Communism" is possible, and that the totalitarian forms Communism has taken in every country where it has been tried are a result of the cultural ideals of the nation in question, and not any fault of Communism itself.
Somehow it never occurs to them that an ideology based on redistributing wealth at gunpoint just might tend to create a hierarchy controlled by the guys with the biggest guns.
Compared to the rest of us their are only a few that fit the mold of what many see as "spoiled baby-boomers".
Give me a break! President Bush did NOT start Medicare!!! The program is going to be around whether you like it or not and he is trying to fix it after being handed the mess!
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