Posted on 11/15/2006 11:58:58 AM PST by atomic conspiracy
Hippies still trying to ruin the country By Jenean Mcbrearty CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.
Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives. No matter what they rename themselves, however, their agenda hasn't changed.
They still want utopia, and it wouldn't be worth mentioning except that their naivetŽ has aged into a persistent denial of reality that may have devastating consequences.
For example, consider their continued belief that America's armed forces are neo-Nazi stormtroopers who delight in burning babies to further the aims of imperialistic corporations.
Such nonsense, now treated as legitimate by the left-leaning media, denigrates the patriotic values and sincerity of half the nation. It undermines the war effort, insults the dead and the survivors of battle and their families, and supports the aims of the enemy. Translated into immigration or national defense policy, it is an invitation to the world to destroy our country.
Yet, this Vietnam-era idŽe fixe about the military, despite 40-plus years of proof to the contrary, is understandable when analyzed in the context of the flower children's religious zealotry.
To renounce their military fictions would mean facing bigger, more important truths: Marxism doesn't work. Love is not all you need. Western culture is worth defending because it protects freedom, tolerance and the greatest material good for the greatest number. Government can't solve every problem. The American taxpayer has no obligation to support the rest of the world's exploding population.
Without the military-industrial complex to blame for humanity's ills, the lefty loonies lose their basis for faith in a socialist utopia. Terrorism is tortuous for them only because it forces them to pursue the political goals that will allow them to redistribute America's wealth by pulling the nation together and relying on the hated military for protection.
Oh, the unfairness of irony.
Thus, lefty loonies deny that terrorists have declared war on America, while insisting that we can win the war through negotiation. They seem to believe the terrorists will spare them because they are nice.
The truth is that there is no way out of our modern warfare dilemmas.
Is it possible to protect non-combatants, given modern weaponry in total war?
Are people who make weapons innocent citizens of their warring governments, or integral non-uniformed soldiers and legitimate targets?
Must we surrender our country to our enemies because our weapons are too terrible to use?
Whose life is more important: the 12-year-old Iraqi firing an Uzi or a soldier from Kentucky?
Which is more sacred: a mosque hiding a weapons cache or a plane of tourists?
Do we want a military strong enough to protect our homeland? Are we willing to pay the price of survival?
It's crucial that we come to terms with war questions because we will have war with Iran and North Korea. It will come down to their children or ours, their soldiers or ours, their countries or ours.
For aging hippies, it's easier to keep blaming old enemies than to confront new ones, especially the young and ruthless. Hating a military-industrial complex is safer and less tiring. It's less complicated -- and less dangerous.
Abstract institutions neither bleed nor shoot back. Demonstrations, marches and sign-carrying don't accomplish much these days, but they are a lot more fun and allow the fiction of activist moral superiority to persist.
Their BAWL (Buddha-Allah-Wicca-Lenin) is better than some old Judeo-Christian God.
In their heart of hearts, lefty loonies do want America to lose in Iraq and every military theater. They want outside enemies to accomplish quickly the demolition of American capitalism, using the violence the lefty loonies are too old, too scared and too well-invested to use.
After all, lefty loonies want their social justice and their pensions, too.
Luckily, no one lives forever. Luckily, there is Generation Jones to take up their slack. America is too great to go down without a fight.
Yet, please be compassionate toward aging, albeit dangerous, erstwhile flower folks. Understand their pain when communism failed. Understand their desire to enforce perfect harmony. Understand their insistence that we love humanity except those in uniforms.
Just don't vote for them in 2008.
For more on the relationship between leftist politics and the 60s counterculture, see Thomas M. Frank's landmark cultural history, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. This is a damning indictment of the media-industrial complex and Frank's status as a major liberal only enhances the credibility of this particular message. That message, supported by some remarkable documentation, is that the 60s counteculture was largely an invention of the advertising industry, not an authentic social movement. He also documents the crucial role of radical political memes in the counterculture, and maintains that the counterculture remains the chief influence on the internal culture of the mass media to this day. In short, the left as we know it today is little more than an advertising gimmick run amok.
Wow, I cannot believe the Lexington Herald-Liberal actually printed this!
America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.
Would make a great tagline
The only generation whose nostalgia has a body count.
No. These people need to be removed from office, campus, and polite society. Confine them to "collectives" where they can talk about how great they were while taking new LSD with extra fiber.
Awesome article! Perfectly sums up the hippie mindset. However, it could have also mentioned that even though the Flower Children are getting closer to their graves, many of them (Especially those who are teachers) are trying to encourage America's misguided youth to follow in their footsteps. That's something else for us to be concerned about.
Don't trust anyone over 50.
My husband is a professor in a local college, so I am often exposed to the "intellectuals" and "academics" who haunt the halls. Once every couple of months, we attend readings by guest writers or poets. Since the head of the English department is a Viet Nam vet, the vast majority (I can only think of one exception) of the guest authors are also Viet Nam war veterans, all rabidly leftist, all writing about what a terrible thing the US did to the people of VN, all pining for the days of protest and revolt, all blaming GWB for all the ills of the world.
The most recent reading featured a husband-wife team. The man was a vet, the woman was a poet from Nicaragua, having survived the turmoil that took place there during the 80s. The man, who was born and raised in a free country, wrote about rebellion, about how terrible his country was/is; the woman, who was truly oppressed and was threatened with violence and death on a daily basis, wrote about love and about being a woman. No calls for rebellion, no blame, just a joy in life.
During the question and answer session, one of the more "enlightened" students in the audience (the only thing worse than an intellectual professor is a self-important enlightened student) asked the man how it was possible to get "the truth" out in these times of oppression. The man, gladly taking that flag and running, spoke of the vast censorship that is now taking place and of how poets who dared to speak "the truth" are not being killed, yet, but that the time is not far off.
I just shook my head. I dared not say much to my husband, as our political differences cause great stress between us, but I was stunned at this guy's lack of reality. What censorship is taking place? (He later said that the censorship was that he could no longer get any real news on the network news casts, that he had to turn to the internet for news. Whatever). When are poets going to be killed? It was like he really really wanted to be a martyr for his "cause," and his cause is really dangerous, and look how noble and brave he is speaking "the truth" in the face of all of this oppression. But he sounded ridiculous.
I suppose the students in the audience were nodding along, also feeling "the cause," but hopefully someone was listening critically. These guys sit in their college offices, trying to resurrect the rebellious '60s, trying to do something so dangerous to their government that they might be killed for it, trying to do something important.
Meanwhile, the one who had actually been oppressed and threatened wrote about love and the joy of life.
Okay, what the heck is "Generation Jones"?
Bump!
"Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives."
Bingo! And there are more and more living in the park right outside my window. "GET A JOB," I feel like screaming.
Let's not forget the gifts that the flower children left us; rampant drug abuse, venereal disease, widespread divorce and the breakdown of the family, millions slaughtered in the killing fields of Vietnam and Cambodia, 40 million abortions, the welfare state....
Somehow, I don't think that Ward Churchill and the seven aging hippies in Seattle who actually believe this are really capable of "ruining the country."
Perfectly describes the hippie generation. Wasters then, wasters now. Except now they wear a suit now and then instead of tie dyed t shirts and ripped jeans. They're still doing pot and trying the free love route. IOW, they're the PIGS with no morals or integrity.
Good one!
As a grown up hippie I wonder how many were like me and turned to the right as they got older....The lefties seem like younger folks ...those of us who lived through the 60s are dead or nuts or grown up
"-- During the Vietnam War, seven million men volunteered for the military; only two million were drafted. Burkett's research indicates that 75 percent of those who served in Vietnam itself were volunteers. They were the best educated and most egalitarian military force in America's history. In WWII, only 45 percent of the troops had a high school diploma. During the Vietnam War, almost 80 percent of those who enlisted had high school diplomas, and the percentage was higher for draftees--even though, at the time, only 65 percent of military-age youths had a high school degree. Throughout the Vietnam era, the median education level of the enlisted man was about 13 years. Proportionately, three times as many college graduates served in Vietnam than in WWII."
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