May 1968: 40 Years Later

City Journal ^ | May 1, 2008 | Christopher Hitchens and others

[moderatewolverine]

The lowest form of solidarity, I remember reading somewhere, is generational. What do you have to do, after all, to qualify as a “baby boomer”? Membership in that vast sodality means that you were in your late teens or early twenties during the sixties: an underwhelming achievement that required no more than being able to say “present.” As someone born in 1949, I prefer to consider myself not a mere sixties person but a soixante-huitard. If there didn’t happen to be French argot for this, I would still want to answer to the name “sixty-eighter.”

For me, this date-stamped association of memories and ideas and bygone struggles has almost nothing to do with the checklist recently evoked onscreen by Tom Brokaw, which ran the gamut from the Tet Offensive and the murder of Martin Luther King to the images of Haight-Ashbury and the mystic lyrics of Buffalo Springfield. That year was for me a rite of passage, a sort of ordeal, as well as a kind of joy and liberation.

[JustRight]

"Membership in that vast sodality means that you were in your late teens or early twenties during the sixties" If you were born in 64, you are a baby boomer. How do you get into your late teens during the 60s.

[mad puppy]

But the antitotalitarian ethos embraced by the best soixante-huitards remains an option, and I believe that it will have further opportunities to declare itself—in Cuba, to take one vivid and imminent example—long after the pseudo-revolutionary silliness has been forgotten.

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Silliness? Dude, you’re communist who is stuck in the 60’s. You shouldn’t call anything silly.

[Thrownatbirth]

not a mere sixties person but a soixante-huitard.

That's perfect for Hitchens - rhymes with "swank retard".

[calcowgirl]

I wonder how 1964 became an established year. Seems like 1958 was the end of the boom, with a few years of flattening before the big decline.

[CaliGirlGodHelpMe]

“In proposing that my Oxford college no longer ban female guests...”

Poor Hitchy - no matter how desperately he chases after egalitarian brownie points with his hail-fellow-well-met pose, he just can’t resist sneaking in the fact that he went to Oxford.

[Fiji Hill]

My reaction to the events of 1968 was completely different. I came from a family of Democrats, but was gradually becoming disillusioned, especially after visiting East Germany in 1966 and hearing the testimony of refugees from Communist countries. I also found myself in agreement with conservative writers such as Russell Kirk when they commented on current events.

My disillusionment with the Democrats rapidly increased in 1968, beginning with the Johnson administration's timid reaction to North Korea's seizure of the USS Pueblo, and I found myself in agreement with California Governor Ronald Reagan in his call for a bold US response. In addition, Johnson's announcement in March that he would not seek another term meant that the Democratic Party would likely lurch leftwards and abandon the struggle against the Communists in Vietnam.

These events contributed to my decision, on the afternoon of March 31, 1968, to declare myself a Republican.

[Tinman]

For later read and comment

[what's up]

what you looked for and hoped for was a resistance to both the Eastern and Western “blocs.”

That was his big mistake right there.

The Western bloc was the last, best hope for mankind and he should have embraced it, not resisted it.

[riverdawg]

The peak birth year (in absolute numbers and rates) in the U.S. was 1957. However, there were more babies born in 1964 than in any year from 1945 through 1953. After 1964, the number of babies born annually fell below 4 million and below 20 per 1000.

[calcowgirl]

Thanks.

I grew up knowing the “baby boom” as that largely attributed to Post-WWII and servicemen returning home, marrying, and making babies. As such, the 1957 number aligns with my thinking as being near the end of the boom. I didn’t even know that it had since been popularly characterized as extending into the 1960s. Ya learn something new every day!