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.
Meaning of the Peace Symbol
The circle represents Global
The line going straight up and down represent the flag language letter, D in Disarmament.
The lines going out to the sides represent the flag language letter, N for Nuclear.
Full meaning; Global Nuclear Disarmament
As for Country Joe, he was just another stoned-out, fame-following rock star who rode the wave of hip disdain for the rest of us to a successful career. Lots of them were like that, including one William Jefferson Clinton. But Joe, at least, has dignity enough not to continue wallowing in a discredited political fantasy just for old times' sake. We should give him that much.
Most still don’t is the main problem. I can excuse teenagers and young adults from viewing the world with rose colored glasses, but these same ill-informed people from my generation maintain self imposed ignorance to this day about the reality of communism.
In my "Liberal" years at the age of 6 years old I really wanted Jimmy Carter to win,
Based on your home page, I peg you being born about the early 70's
Keep living and all those sixty era idiots will eventually die off and leave you about 20 years to be free of them. Of course you have to contend with all the liberals morons born since then.
BTW, that smoking ain't helping you outlive them.
Footprint of the Great American Chicken.
Remember how they all wanted to start their communes and live the life of paradise? Could someone tell me the location of any of those communes today?
The hippie protestors are the heart and soul (poor choice of words...) of the Dim party today - they hate that their brainchild (another poor choice) failed so miserably and it's a tossup which they will get over first - their failed policies (they are the true miserable failures), or AlGore's failed bid for the White House...
" he is trying to fix it after being handed the mess!"
Give ME a break - he could fix it by disbanding it or cutting funding, rather than socking it to us taxpayers to the tune of $540 BILLION.
Or are you even aware of how much this is gonna cost us?
And whatever happened to his promised reform of Socialism Security (that, again, is something he inherited but has yet to fix)? If it's not going to occur when we have a GOP President and a GOP majority in Congress, when will it ever happen?
And what they really don't realize is, that would be us, baby.
cheer up! soon the generation AFTER the boomers, but BEFORE the genX-ers are going to be running the media and when they start howling about how much of their income goes to the ponzi scheme called "social security" things will get interesting.
The genX-ers are mindless and will be ready to learn (if my own personal experienc holds true)
"“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."
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the Logic of the Left.
Nuff said.....
Your comments are right on the mark. I used debate the commies over on DU until I got sick of them. Almost all of them can't make the connection between the communist system and it inherent totalitarianism. They have genuinely convinced themselves that real Communism has yet to be tried.
Not to mention the millions who were slaughtered by the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge.
Thanks for the ping from a fellow Gen-Reaganer (1968) weened on Conjunction-Junction, What's Your Function; I'm Just a Bill; Land of the Lost; and "finished out" on Family Ties; Cosby (Bill, not Bing); and Little House on the Prairie.
It was the symbol for the "ban the bomb" movement in the early sixties in Britain. It was brought from there and used to represent the "peace movement" in the US. The only peace which resulted from this movement was the peace of the grave suffered by the victims of totalitarian regimes. The irony is the participants in the movement feel they were on the the side of right and so feel not one iota of shame despite the lessons of history.
As a card-carrying boomer (cohort of '46), I joined the Navy in early 1967, and was stationed on an aircraft carrier during the Democractic Convention Riots of '68. My recollection is that when my shipmates and I watched the tv clips of the Chicago cops 'explaining their rights' to the rioters, we cheered the cops. How little did I know that eventually, it would be the rioters who would come to rule our country. How sad. How very, very sad.
No matter what military victories the American military and ARVN scored over the North and VC, there was no real viable political system or establishment to build or consolidate those victories.
The South was split with many factions spending as much time fighting each other as the North, corruption was rife, huge amounts of money was poured in to disappear.
A system that is rotten from the inside will never stand, and the South was rotten inside out.
In the late '60's at The Citadel we referred to it as "The Great American Chicken-foot."
By the way, I thought you might enjoy this.
You know your a child of the 80's WHEN....
You know you're a child of the 80's when...
You know what "Sike" means. (I still use this term--does that make me a nerd?)
You know the profound meaning of "Wax on, Wax off."
You know that another name for a keyboard is a "synthesizer."
You can sing the McDonald's "Hamburger, Filet-o-fish, Quarter Pounder, French fries..." song.
You know who Mr. T is.
You know who Fat Albert is.
You ever wore fluorescent, neon clothing.
You could breakdance (or wish you could).
You wanted to be "The Hulk" for Halloween.
You believed that "By the power of Greyskull, you HAD the power!"
Partying "like it's 1999" seemed SO far away.
You thought that Transformers were more than meets the eye.
You knew that knowing is half the battle.
You wanted to be on Star Search.
You can remember Michael Jackson when he was black.
You wore a banana clip at some point during your youth. (guilty)
You remember the garbage pail kids, and owned some.
You knew what Willis was "talkin' 'bout." (Willis saying the word, "butt" was the first time I ever heard it on TV, and I was shocked, because at our house it was a bad word.)
You knew "Rut row raggy" and "Zoinks."
You HAD to have your MTV.
You actually thought "Dirty Dancing" was a REALLY good movie.
You remember when ATARI was a state-of-the-art video game system.
You remember and/or owned any of the Care Bear Glass collection from Pizza Hut or the Muppets glasses from McDonalds.
Poltergeist freaked you out.
You knew who Ben Stein was before you could win his money... "Bueller?"
You carried your lunch to school in a Gremlins, ET, Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Strawberry Shortcake or A-Team lunch box.
You have ever pondered why Smurfette was the ONLY female smurf. ("Ya like what ya see?")
You know what leg warmers are and probably had a pair. (guilty)
You wore biker shorts underneath a short skirt and felt stylish.
You wore your Izod shirt with the collar up. (guilty)
You had a Swatch Watch with the Swatch Guard.
You remember when Happy Meals came in a box, not a paper bag. (they don't come in a box?)
You had Wonder Woman or Superman under-roos.
You owned, or knew somebody with, a Commodore 64.
You recorded songs off the radio with your boom box.
You wished you had a light saber.
Your arm was full of rubber bracelets.
You have ever said, "Gag me with a spoon" or "Where's the Beef?"
You have answered the question "Who you gonna call?"
with "Ghostbusters!"
You had to get up to change the channel. (part of today's child obesity problem)
You can still sing 1 to 12 from the Pinball machine on Sesame Street You thought the "Thriller" video was pretty cool.
You remember the first time you went into a video store to rent a movie.
You wore those wide, colorful shoelaces. (measuring tapes)
You have ever wondered what happened to Saturday morning cartoons.
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.