Not your parents' revolution — how today's anarchists differ from 60s protesters
By: Victor Davis Hanson (Fox News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In the 1960s and early '70s, the U.S. was convulsed by massive protests calling for radical changes in the country's attitudes on race, class, gender and sexual orientation. The Vietnam War and widespread college deferments were likely the fuel that ignited prior peaceful civil disobedience.
Sometimes the demonstrations became violent, as with the Watts riots of 1965 and the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Terrorists from the Weathermen (later called the Weather Underground) bombed dozens of government buildings.
The '60s revolution introduced to the country everything from hippies, communes, free love, mass tattooing, commonplace profanity, rampant drug use, rock music and high divorce rates to the war on poverty, massive government growth, feminism, affirmative action and race/gender/ethnic college curricula.
The enemies of the '60s counterculture were the "establishment" — politicians, corporations, the military and the "square" generation" in general. Leftists targeted their parents, who had grown up in the Great Depression. That generation had won World War II and returned to create a booming postwar economy. After growing up with economic and military hardship, they sought a return to comfortable conformity in the 1950s.
A half-century after the earlier revolution, today's cultural revolution is vastly different — and far more dangerous.
Government and debt have grown. Social activism is already institutionalized in hundreds of newer federal programs. The "Great Society" inaugurated a multitrillion-dollar investment in the welfare state. Divorce rates soared. The nuclear family waned. Immigration, both legal and illegal, skyrocketed.
Thus, America is far less resilient, and a far more divided, indebted and vulnerable target than it was in 1965.
Today, radicals are not protesting against 1950s conservatism but rather against the radicals of the 1960s, who as old liberals now hold power. Now, many of the current enforcers — blue-state governors, mayors and police chiefs — are from the left. Unlike Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley in the '60s, today's progressive civic leaders often sympathize with the protesters.
The '60s protests were for racial assimilation and integration to reify Martin Luther King Jr.'s agenda of making race incidental, not essential, to the American mindset. Not so with today's cultural revolution. It seeks to ensure that racial difference is the foundation of American life, dividing the country between supposed non-white victims and purported white victimizers, past and present.
In the '60s, radicals rebelled against their teachers and professors, who were often highly competent and the products of fact-based and inductive education. Not so in 2020. Today's radicals were taught not by traditionalists but by less-educated older radicals.
Another chief difference is debt. Most public education in the 1960s was bare-bones and relatively inexpensive. Because there were no plush dorms, latte bars, rock-climbing walls, diversity coordinators and provosts of inclusion, college tuition in real dollars was far cheaper.
The result was that 1960s student radicals graduated without much debt and for all their hipness could enter a booming economy with marketable skills. Today's angry graduates owe a collective $1.6 trillion in student loan debt — much of it borrowed for mediocre, therapeutic and politicized training that does not impress employers.
College debt impedes maturity, marriage, child-raising, home ownership and the saving of money. In other words, today's radical is far more desperate and angry that his college gambit never paid off.
Today's divide is also geographical in the fashion of 1861, not just generational as in the 1960s. The two blue coasts seem to despise the vast red interior, and vice versa.
Yet the scariest trait of the current revolution is that many of its sympathizers haven't changed much since the 1960s. They may be rich, powerful, influential and older, but they are just as reckless and see the current chaos as the final victory in their own long march from the '60s.
Corporations are no longer seen as evil, but as woke contributors to the revolution. The military is no longer smeared as warmongering, but praised as a government employment service where race, class and gender agendas can be green-lighted without messy legislative debate. Unlike the 1960s, there are essentially no conservatives in Hollywood, on campuses or in government bureaucracies.
So the war no longer pits radicals against conservatives, but often socialists and anarchists against both liberals and conservatives.
In the '60s, a huge "silent majority" finally had enough, elected Richard Nixon and slowed down the revolution by jailing its criminals, absorbing and moderating it. Today, if there is a silent mass of traditionalists and conservatives, they remain in hiding.
If they stay quiet in their veritable mental monasteries and deplore the violence in silence, the revolution will steamroll on. But as in the past, if they finally snap, decide enough is enough and reclaim their country, then even this cultural revolution will sputter out, too.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno.
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A clear warning for America. This one is for our readers.
Trump and his supporters are off topic.
most recently "The Case for Trump"
Seems Trump and his supporters aren't actually off topic.
They are.
Would you like to address the topic?
I marched against the war in Nam at what would eventually become my Alma Mater back in the sixties. Joined the SDS and was tear gassed for my anti war efforts. Luckily I didn't attend Kent State.
The far right wing hawks called us anarchists as well. Seems some things never change.
That makes perfect sense to me. I sensed that.
Did you ever have children?
Thats because some of you were.
Ever call a Soldier, Sailor or Marine a baby killer?
Ever spit on one?
That was probably one of the worst home-comings ever in history. My ex father in law is still haunted by being in that war and then returned home to people like that. I will never fathom the reasons for that behavior. Like somehow people sent [many drafted] to Vietnam was somehow their fault.
My uncle returned from Vietnam to the Detroit riots and had to protect the family home; they were only one of a handful of white families in the neighborhood even at that time. After studying the history of the mid-60's riots, I see a pattern emerging and it's simply tragic. We learn history as to not repeat it, but some didn't get the memo I suppose.
I still don't understand how people's mentality changed that drastically from the Korean War to the Vietnam War. I understand that the circumstances were different in why we [Americans] were in each; however, the mentality of those that remained in America changed so much in a mere decade. It amazes me. My grandfather told me horror stories about his time in Korea; heart-breaking and unimaginable. I still have my personal theories on Kennedy, his assassination and Johnson taking over, and almost immediately sending people to Vietnam; as I'm sure many people do.
No doubt .... unforgivable what they did to those Vets. I can tell you the Korean Vets didn't have it much better when they came home. The VFW wouldn't let them in at first since it was not a declared war. My Dad never joined the VFW because of that slight and neither have i. Fellow Vets treating other Vets that way. Unconscionable!
I was in later than that but was still called baby killer on campus a few times in the later 70's. I know, pretty stupid eh but I considered the sources, as in not at all.
Those nimrods were in the same class as the people rioting and looting today.
That is, the more or less worthless class .....
None that lived.
Why would you ask a personal question like that?
Just interested in your life after your activist youth. Having a family sometimes changes peoples views. It seems that, like me, your views haven't changed with time.
Had a few friends who survived Nam but they were never the same again. That thousand yard stare and that propensity for violence was worrisome and lethal to friends and family.
So we made them cops. Then we made vets from any war cops. folk who have been trained to kill probably should not become those who should be protecting and serving We the People.
My grandfather never felt the need to join the VFW, maybe that's why I never knew about that; he got married to my grandmother shortly after his return from Korea and worked for 40 years in a steel mill. So, beyond that, I don't know what kind of treatment he received upon his return.
My former father in law has both; granted, he's in his 70's and his mind has begun to fail [dementia] but still has that 1000 yd. stare. He was forced to seek help after he tried drowning his second wife.
I knew a few like that as well but by and large they got on with their lives. Started and raised a family and were otherwise productive members of society.
Several Vietnam Vets in my family and more than several that are friends that i NEVER felt uncomfortable around. Most of the combat Vets had demons they are still dealing with today but nothing of major concern. YMMV but like all of us they all had "challenges" in life, some more than others but i have never categorized most of them as dangerous to anyone else.
Some never get over taking a human life and it drives them insane.
Some enjoy killing and have problems as civilians.
Used to be a paramedic who was often tasked with patient transfer between federal prisons and federally funded medical facilities. Transporting convicted murderers.
Talked to some of them and they all said that they were just doing what they were trained to do. Some said that they were victims of a cover up.
Damn lucky that I didn't just disappear for even talking to them.
Good thing that the warden and the garrison commander were golf buddies.
(I eventually just kept the level 3 vest they had me always wear and nobody cared.)
Many who have experienced extreme combat prefer to just forget.
Agreed. That's partly why I think that sometimes when the brain blocks something out, because of something traumatic, I think it's best to leave it that way. I see a therapist on occasion that feels the same way. We have biological mechanisms in place for a reason and if the brain "says," "Hey! You can't handle the truth... BLOCKED," I believe it's reasonable to leave it blocked.
In relation to the article, which is about the progressive movement and what it has become, it seems the mayor of Portland has now been dissed by the very mob he did so much to protect and comfort:
"Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler faced a hail of boos as he addressed Black Lives Matter protesters amid unrest in his city Wednesday night.
The mayor made his way to the steps of the Multnomah County Justice Center to address thousands as some chanted “Tear gas Teddy” and “Do your job!,” according to video posted on social media and local outlets.
“I stand with you,” Wheeler told the crowd amid jeers."
Pathetic Portland mayor Ted Wheeler
So, they're turning against their so-called leader now? Who could've seen that coming? /s
They've done it to other mayor/enablers as well. Let's face it these are just vicious hateful thugs.
My point exactly. Should've seen it coming.
Starting with Cheryl Selby:
"Liberal mayor of Olympia, Washington Cheryl Selby doesn't seem to be cheering on the violent protests in her city anymore, now that they are literally on her front porch.
Selby, a vocal Black Lives Matter supporter, is now lashing out at protesters, calling them domestic terrorists after her house was vandalized."
trendingpolitics.com/democrat-mayor-who-cheered-on-protests-gets-house-vandalized-decries-domestic-terrorism/
But wait................there's more
And the dumbass thing that goes with this? She not long ago approved a $14million cut in police funding. One of the ways she actually was trying to appease them. These idiots are dumb as hell.
Dumb & vicious!
I find that funny
a vocal Black Lives Matter supporter, is now lashing out at protesters, calling them domestic terrorists after her house was vandalized."
It's always the way. It's a "peaceful protest" until their house or business is effected.
I'll go one better, one of the most vile leaders of the left takes great offense when she gets a bit of her own medicine:
What a candyass LOL
Don't you want to cry? She rails against the nation and calls everyone racist as she is doing there and btw, they are giving her an hour to rail against a fellow representative!
It's misogyny don't ya know!
She told us how it's going to go down:
"People try to identify who is the most likely person to turn out, and what we did is that we changed who turns out. And that changes the whole electorate."..AOC
Somehow she may be right on that one!