The Sixties: The Years that Shaped a Generation

PBS ^ | 9/29/2005 | PBS

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"It was the age of selfishness. It was the age of self-indulgence. It was the age of anti-authority. It was an age in which people did all kinds of wrong things."

- Ed Meese III, U.S. Attorney General, Reagan Administration

"It was absolutely exhilarating. It was the greatest time to be alive ever, for sure."

- Charles Kaiser, Author/Historian

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the drunken cow that hit it spent six seeks in the hospital and i wanted to put right her back there when she got out!!! but that's just me.

Your girlfriend, or the cow....

[fire_eye]

Yeah, they "shaped" me, all right.

Then they came for my guns, and I woke up.

Payback is a bitch, hippie scum.

[wingman1]

"Not the best moments you remember..."

The remembering of fear is not a good moment. However, fear, is not a stranger to anyone who was of draft age during the Vietnam War. Any honest person would say that.

There are very few parallels between the present day WOT and Vietnam.

There was a total lack of leadership in the 1960s. Poor leaders should not expect conscripts to willingly join in an "undeclared" fray. Read MacNamara's book and also see how Nixon's 1973 "Peace With Honor" allowed NVA units to remain in the south.

In one of your latest posts, you mention the "killing fields". If you wish to understand the 1960s, please don't avail yourself of hindsight. Those of us who faced the draft did not have that capability.

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Some of us hippies headed right

Lucky for us, more than turned the other way!

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However, everybody was politically naive. No conservative talk radio. No internet. Just Walter Crankcase every night on the news telling us That's the Way It Is. We just stumbled around in the dark until the Reagan era. Hey, we couldn't stop smiling for an entire week when he was elected.

Future generations will thank you for that! I'm still smiling!

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Then I took a macroeconomics class and learned what the liberal social agenda was REALLY all about.

If Economics 101 and (real) world history was mandatory in high school, there would be no democrat party.

[Cogadh na Sith]

Any similarities are in the minds of middle aged leftists and media people that hate the miltary.

OK, I'm glad to hear that.

You know the stakes in this war. I hear the same crap from those same people now, it makes me think they were full of it then, too.

Nobody wants to fight their war, but some guys do it anyhow.

[woofie]

One quick story ...

I was in/watching a riot going on in 71 or 72 at the University of New Mexico..tear gas ,police,etc. etc. ....In the middle of the whole thing a guy was selling ice cream and doing quite well

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Cincinnati based band.... are you a member?

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I remember rooting for the Chicago cops every time they whapped another long-haired hippie protester with a billy-club.

HaHa! Rooting for the home team, eh?

[tertiary01]

It was great growing up in California in the Sixties. Surfing, hunting and fishing, dragging the main. It was really a carefree era.Then the liberals such as Boxer came and ruined it all.

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I was in/watching a riot going on in 71 or 72 at the University of New Mexico

In? Watching? So you were the guy selling ice cream Ben/Jerry?

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It was great growing up in California in the Sixties. Surfing, hunting and fishing, dragging the main. It was really a carefree era.

So I take it you were not part of the "mainstream"?

[tertiary01]

There were lots of fun alternatives to the mainstream.

[bethtopaz]

And many still are.

[ExtremeUnction]

I was 18 in 1967. I was going to be drafted, so I signed up with the Marines. I served in Vietnam in 1967-1968. When I got out, I married my childhood sweetheart. I went to college, got a job, raised a family, and we prospered. I never considered that the silly fringe protesters were important to history. I ignored them. Today, My children are succesfull, and my three granddaughters seek the same. The oldest wants to go to Annapolis. We are an American family.

[Cogadh na Sith]

There are very few parallels between the present day WOT and Vietnam.>

I'm heartened that people see that--especially the people that have seen both.

There was a total lack of leadership in the 1960s. Poor leaders should not expect conscripts to willingly join in an "undeclared" fray. Read MacNamara's book and also see how Nixon's 1973 "Peace With Honor" allowed NVA units to remain in the south.

Yes, and now The Left complains that we didn't allow the Iraqi Army to remain!

Every war has been, and is, a gigantic mess. War is chaos with 'leadership' always lagging the initiative of guys like you out front.

My dad was drafted for Korea. It was a giant undeclared mess. I volunteered and 40 years later, to the day, I was there patrolling the DMZ facing the sons of the guys my dad fought!

In one of your latest posts, you mention the "killing fields". If you wish to understand the 1960s, please don't avail yourself of hindsight. Those of us who faced the draft did not have that capability.

Since 1917, Communism had always led to the killing fields of Siberia, Poland, The Ukraine, Georgia. It wasn't a 60s phenomena.

At least now we know what a totalitarian religion like Islam has in store for us if we lose.

[BikerTrash]

there is NO substitute for cubic inches...

I sadly report that my nephew's bottle fed 340 in my old 'Cuda is slightly quicker in the quarter than me and my boy's 505 Sixpack Challenger. However, stretch the race out a bit and he's stuck in the rear mirror for good.

Obviously, the thing to do here is put nitrous on the stroker. Good wintertime project...

[Black Tooth]

It was great growing up in California in the Sixties. Surfing, hunting and fishing, dragging the main. It was really a carefree era.Then the liberals such as Boxer came and ruined it all.

Another out of stater. Boxer is from NY.

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1968 is often described as "the year that changed the world." The Vietnam War had taken more than 15,000 American lives. With Johnson announcing his intentions to decline the Democratic Party nomination, it seemed that anything was possible. As the youthful hope and optimism of the earlier years faded away, rage and violence were now spreading to college campuses across the country and around the world. Student protests at Columbia University raised the scale of these conflicts. In France, workers joined with students in a general strike that nearly brought the government down. In Mexico City, students who challenged the authoritarian government were slaughtered in the worst single disaster of 1968.

The worst single disaster of 1968 was Mexican students getting mowed down? I didn't read that in my history book!