by Joe Vannicola

Created on: April 26, 2008   Last Updated: March 13, 2009

So there I was,driving home with a load of groceries while listening to Rush Limbaugh. Now, don't labor under the misconception that I'm a "ditto head". I listen to his show because he does have some good points,like less taxes and less government interference in our lives. Plus,Limbaugh provides his audience with important information the liberal media tries to sweep under the rug. But there are other issues where he and I part company.

What really stuck in my craw however,was when a female caller was berating herself by saying how ashamed she was because of her liberal political beliefs when she was younger. This woman went on to say that liberalism was a sickness(or did she say an evil. I really can't recall)and that's when my eyes rolled into the back of my head in exasperation. Which by the way is not the smartest thing to do while driving down a busy highway(just wanted to throw that in there).I mean,this caller was practically begging Rush to forgive her for being a part of the late sixties/early seventies radical movement,which advocated tearing down the old,out of touch establishment and rebuilding a new form of leadership.

Well,hell, many of us in our late teens and early twenties witnessed the killing of political radicals as well as the brutalization of the war protesters on TV's nightly news and in the newspapers. We felt that the older generation was out of touch with the changing times,so it became instilled in our collective conscience that a major change was in order.We became radicals and protested,intent on changing our society.

Was our generation simply a gaggle of self deluded,drug induced,long haired morons? Not all of us.This was a label,a stereotype slapped on us by the media and the conservatives in an attempt to identify our generation. Although there were those of us who experimented with mind altering substances,others like myself were merely young and idealistic. From our point of view the so called adults were botching things up.Yet when our generation dared to speak up,we were told to keep quiet and fall in line with the status quo.In the meantime,we saw the older generation happily complacent as long as their bellies were full and their material possessions plentiful as they damned and blasted the supposed drugged out hippie culture while they freely imbibed alcoholic beverages from their well stocked liquor cabinets.

Seeing this hypocrisy, we radicals protested in order to be heard because we felt the adults weren't listening. We

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