by Theodore Douglas

Created on: June 29, 2009   Last Updated: July 10, 2009

Americans have a curious memory of the 1960s. Look at the 2008 election. Commentary that sought to link domestic terrorists from the late '60s and early '70s to Barack Obama indicates just what we remember from the period. The 1960s are often portrayed as a time of rebellious youths who violently attacked the system or engaged in drugs and sex while ignoring the "real world." We as a nation have forgotten the real, lingering problems of the decade.

When the 1960s get labeled as a decade of rebellion, why is it that so rarely we discuss what those kids were so angry about? Many were asking serious questions about a system that legitimized violence on a large scale in the name of democracy while knowingly ignoring serious class and racial inequalities within its own border. There concerns were, essentially, about the nation's promise falling woefully short of its reality. Some protesters, others turned to alternative lifestyles and completely shut themselves off from the system. Instead of discussing those concerns, the nation fell into the rhetoric of law and order as the decade ended.

We have labeled the '60s a decade of opulent liberalism and spoiled kids' rebellion while the obvious truth stars us in the face: the legacy of the 1960s was not one of liberalism, but conservatism, as if admitting that obvious truth would somehow make the Reagan Revolution implode. While far right groups like the John Birch Society worked from the bottom-up to create a support base for conservative candidates, men like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and William Buckley worked to give conservatism a good name (Goldwater doing the worst job of it, by far). Reagan, running for governor of California in 1966, understood how the kids protesting at Berkeley at other schools around the state could be used to draw support from citizens concerns they threatened something far more sinister his way. So he attacked them as spoiled kids ungrateful for the education they were getting and basically told them to shut up or drop out. Once in the governor's mansion, he cracked down on protesters without a moment's hesitation to consider what they were protesting. Many voters, like Reagan, could have cared less as long as they stopped.

Richard Nixon saw the power in this law and order rhetoric and, once the streets of Chicago erupted in violence during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, used it to paint the Democrats as the party of chaos and violence, Republicans as the nation's answer

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>