Posted on 11/22/2018 9:55:53 AM PST by Politically Correct
Did 1968 win the cultural war?
Fifty years ago this year, the '60s revolution sought to overturn U.S. customs, traditions, ideology and politics.
The '60s radicals eventually grew older, cut their hair and joined the establishment. Most thought their revolution had fizzled out in the early 1970s without much effect, as Americans returned to "normal."
But maybe the '60s, not the silent majority, won out after all. The world a half-century later looks a lot more like 1968 and what followed than what preceded it.
Most of the political and cultural agenda from that turbulent period -- both the advances and the regressions -- has long been institutionalized. The military draft, for good or bad, has remained defunct. There is greater transparency in politics, fewer smoke-filled rooms. Disabled children, once ostracized and/or dismissively labeled "retarded," are now far better integrated into society and treated more ethically as special-needs kids. The rights of women, minorities and the LGBT community are now widely accepted.
Yet lifestyles have been radically altered -- and often not for the good. Before the late '60s, most Americans married before having children; afterwards, not so much. One-parent households are now far more common.
Other legacies of the '60s include couples marrying later and having fewer children. A half-century later, these social inheritances often mean prolonged adolescence, older parents, delayed or nonexistent home ownership, and more emphasis on leisure time than on household chores.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
BFL
Before 1967, I considered myself a Democrat, but only because my parents were Democrats. However, I had no interest in politics, which I saw as an unappealing world of stuffed shirts and smoke-filled rooms.
But I was increasingly turned off by the drug culture, sexual promiscuity and permissivism, the anti war demonstrations and leftist hooliganism on college campuses. And I increasingly disliked the pop music of the day finally ditching it entirely when I found a station that played only "oldies"--along with conservative-leaning commentary.
At the same time, I was discovering conservative thought through Russell Kirk's op-ed pieces in our local newspaper, the "Life Lines" radio commentaries sponsored by the oil magnate H. L. Hunt, and the "One Reporter's Opinion" commentaries by our local television news anchor George Putnam.
In early 1968, President Johnson's timid response to the Pueblo incident--and Governor Ronald Reagan's statesmanlike response to Johnson--made me seriously question whether I was really a Democrat, and on March 31, I declared myself a Republican.
VDH is right, of course. The hippies of the ‘60s most definitely “won.” Most if not all of their customs, habits and goals are now widely popular: drugs, sexual immorality, profanity, casual attire, disrespect for Christianity, tradition, etc. They most definitely won the battle, but will they win the war? Is the new culture sustainable? One could argue that it’s not sustainable and the main reason for that is that it is culture centered on self-gratification rather than on family. The family is the basic building block of society. Does the hippie culture of drugs, sexual immorality & disrespect promote families or damage them?
None of it affected me directly, except for the fantastic music on the radio and the interesting television programs I saw, as the world began to open up to me as I became a teenager myself.
I remember the girl who held up the sign that said "Bring Us Together" at a Nixon rally; IIRC, Nixon met with her after seeing the sign.
I wasn't political at all, at that age, but some of my friends were. All very liberal, of course, but I had never heard that word at that time. They were "anti-war hippies," that's all I knew.
I tried to grow my hair long but it just looked bushy and unkempt. I suppose if my mom had let me keep growing it, I would have looked a little like Jerry Garcia, I have that kind of hair.
Not that many boys at my suburban school grew their hair real long, only a few. All the girls did though. At that time, and going into the early '70s, high school girls wore miniskirts that were so short they were virtually one-piece bathing suits. There were so many beautiful girls at my school it was unbelievable. Now they're almost all fat.
My first political thought I remember very well. It happened when I read about some soldiers returning from duty, and going through JFK airport in NYC. Some hippies spat on them and called them baby killers.
I hadn't thought very much about the military, other than that I liked military technology like radar and missiles. Where we lived when I was little, in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, they played the Army PR series called "The Big Picture" on Saturday mornings at about 6:30, and I used to get up real early so I could watch it.
Anyway, the story about the hippies spitting on the soldiers made a real impression on me. My first thought was that the war wasn't their fault, personally, and it was stupid and unfair to spit on them.
But then, as I thought about it more, it really seemed wrong to me. I started to perceive the hippies and the anti-war protestors as more and more silly and self-serving.
I didn't start to become an actual Conservative until about five or six years later, when I found about 50 National Review magazines spilling out of an overfilled dumpster at Clemson University in South Carolina. I was hungry for things to read at that time, so I scooped them all up (without knowing what they were) and took them to my apartment and started reading them. Of course, that was it for me.
A girl I knew in college, a few years before that, had introduced me to Ayn Rand, but I didn't really identify her writings (which I think I read most of, including many issues of The Objectivist) as Conservative, but her words sort of prepared the ground, you might say.
Yes. Next question?
The 1960s college radicals were a tiny sliver of youth culture
The vanguard of progressivism has always been what it is
Dominated by two religious groups
The influx of minorities slowly creating a non white nation has done their bidding
By design
I warned of this 18 years ago here and was shouted down by the neocons and bushbots who thought themselves conservative
Its too late now
Trump is but one man and one finger in the dike
Look at Texas
Look at Florida
Look at Virginia
Look at North Carolina
Look at Georgia
We gave it all away for fear of being called racist and that includes this very forum....at least half
Plenty are still here pretending they never said what they said back then
I was 19 in 1968 and saw the riots, hippies, black militants, drug proliferation, chaos on the campuses and degeneration of religion into feelgood and realized all that was alien to me.
Communism was on the march worldwide. The New Left in America was its ally.
Then I discovered a conservative named William F. Buckley Jr. and started reading his stuff. I became a conservative that year. The thrill of reading Buckley’s works and deciding, “it’s OK to be conservative” is with me to this day.
Oh yes, 1968 was also the year of gun control laws and the prevailing view that citizens ought not be allowed to own handguns and that there must be national gun registration and federal licensing of owners. Lyndon Johnson that worthless b@stard wanted to disarm us not for safety but class warfare revenge against his political opponents.
Today it’s world Islam on the march and the same Lefties ally themselves with it. In that sense, 1968 is still with us.
“...I found about 50 National Review magazines spilling out of an overfilled dumpster at Clemson University...”
Same here! I found a stack of National Review’s about to be thrown out. I devoured the contents and that cemented my conservatism to this day. I even read it while in Vietnam.
William F. Buckley Jr. started and sustained the conservative movement in this country from 1955 on. As bad as things are now, it would be much worse without his influence.
Yes, indeed.
I remember well articles in NR describing the rise of political correctness and multiculturalism on college campuses, in parallel with the adoption of those ideologies in European countries in the early 80s.
NR under WFB was very nice.
Thanks for what you did there. I missed the draft literally by a few months; I turned 18 in June of 1973.
I didn't realize I might very well have ended up going to the war that some of my high-school classmates were protesting. I was so preoccupied with other things, I wasn't even aware of the draft possibly affecting me.
Vietnam was such a constant thing with us back here. My family watched the 6:30 national news every night, on a small TV that was perched at one end of the dinner table. My parents didn't say too much about the war. My father had been in the Army in the early 1950s, but hadn't gone to Korea.
The main thing I remember was the nightly casualty counts. 32 Americans, 106 ARVN, 1261 VC. Every night, the numbers fluctuated but the ratios were like that.
I also remember when the USAF (or maybe it was the Navy) blew a bridge in North Vietnam using a single TV-guided "smart bomb," as they called it. I thought it was incredibly cool, and would make us unbeatable. It was shown on the evening news one night.
The Tet Offensive was a huge thing. All three news networks seemed to coordinate their coverage to make it look like a desperate situation for us. Khe Sanh, I remember the footage from that. It looked like a repeat of The Alamo. Now we know it was all MSM manipulation.
Of course they’ll lose the war. The real question is what vital culture wiil win. It certainly does look from here like vigorous Christianity will never reassert itself. Islam, or perhaps NeoGreco-Roman Paganism will succeed America’s Weimar stage.
BFL
“This is Melvin Munn from Dallas Texas with Life Line”...
I had to play those tapes on the local radio station where I worked in high school and hated it, what a redneck jerk he was! Except for when he started making a lot of sense...
If “everybody was a liberal” in their youth then a good half of us have seen the light (or heard the tape)...
I realized that either the hippies and yippies were truly right, or I was being led down a path of dumb ideas that everyone else I knew and respected rejected. So I joined the side that was winning instead of the side that was whining.
But it’s hardly surprising our generation changed American life and culture, every generation does.
Two tours later I got out and after only a few months this returning vet went seriously conservative and was the odd man out on campus while taking advantage of the GI bill.
Now wondering if we will have to secede from the leftists.
The “Soixante-Retards” in France basically wound up taking over the French government years later. Ditto for the other European radicals throughout Western Europe.
Ironically, it’s the countries that were behind the Iron Curtain then, that don’t have these problems.
I discovered him at about the same time. Although I found his fake English accent annoying, I started reading his magazine National Review as well as Human Events.
I wonder if leftists and the metoo mov7 will ever admit that the sexual revolution of the 60s hurt women.
Islam will put an end to the dissolute "anything goes" liberalism that defines modern Western culture.
Progressive Leftists will be in for a big surprise when this happens.
It was in 1968 that I learned to hate the MSM, starting with the treasonous Walter Cronkite.
I flew helicopters in Vietnam. If we were taking a rest break near a ville, ten Hueys & crew, and media people showed up & started asking questions, we silently stared at them until they left. Bastards!
It was the 1972 Easter Offensive when North Vietnam dumped all pretense of `people’s war’ and invaded RVN with tanks and APCs. Proud to say I helped carry ARVN rangers, our grunts, & enough M72 LAW rockets to kill the hell out of their damned tanks. Vo Nguyen Giap the NVA `strategic genius’ didn’t know jack about tank tactics and lost hundreds of T-54’s.
But the damn media called it a `successful surprise attack by the NVA; maybe now Nixon will negotiate’. Again, the no good bastards!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.