I’ve heard it argued that a person’s attitude toward the 1960s offers a big clue as to their current political bent. It was:
Positive=Democrat
Negative=GOP
Do you agree with this, by and large? (It fits me FWIW-Democrat with positive view of the 60s)
Interesting… I can see it, but I think the correlation is loose, and has exceptions.
Liberals celebrate the advances of the civil rights era, yet mourn the assassination of JFK (and RFK) and strongly disapprove of the war in Vietnam. To many of us (I am a liberal and damn proud of it) it was an era of great promise, much of which was not realized. The military-industrial complex and the entrenched powers were too strong, and derailed our progress.
I would guess that conservatives would see the era much the same way: a lot was good, and a lot was bad.
Still, we got to the moon, and that is a gigantic plus. A thing to be celebrated. It was a very good era for technology!
What about those of us who don’t really have strong opinions? I mean, from what I’ve read and seen, it sounded like a very angry decade that people my parents’ age tend to get really worked up about.
Trinopus-I think the theory WRT 'nam is: liberals laud the protests, conservatives loath them.
“The '60s” is a historical period, not an ideology. Does “for it” mean you wish you were still living then and “agin’ it” mean you’re glad it’s over, or what?
Anyone who has significant firsthand experience of the Sixties is now retirement-aged, a demographic that heavily favors the Republicans. So a correlation will be hard to find there. And anyone who doesn’t have firsthand experience, it seems hard to believe that their opinions would have any real relevance.
The French have a word for those that treat the spirit of the 60s as an ideology, the “soixante-huitards”: or in the prerogative, the soixante-huitard artarrdés (which is quite humorous: they are decried for wanting to return to a bygone era by reactionaries). It’s fairly interesting to note the true contentions of the era. Quite a degree of revisionism has occurred in popular culture. Growing up, I certainly thought that the focus was on free sex and drugs (though I figured that was as an alternative to war). In reality though, the issues were more substantive.
If I encounter someone that blanket opposes the spirit of '68, I ask them whether Spain should still be celebrating Hitler’s birthday in Churches.
I don’t buy it. It might be true for the boomers who lived through it but not for all.
I, for one, as a democrat, think the 60s ‘ideology’ (still a bad word for it) was destructive and largely unproductive. It’s EASY to oppose and attack. It’s soothing even. But it’s much harder to work and co-op.
And, of course, the simple fact is that what’s considered the ‘60s ideology’ was a very small part of society as a whole. For all that the mass market idea is marches, peace love dope and such the vast majority of people, young and old, just got on with their lives and weren’t too involved in such things.
Hey, I resemeble that remark. I’m not retirement age, and I had first hand experience with the 60s, and I rarely vote Republican these days.
Keep in mind, kids, that “the 60s” lasted roughly through the Watergate scandal and/or the end of the Vietnam War, which takes us up to about 1973. That’s the yeart I started college, so I think I qualify as someone who was there.
As to the OP, I think those who say it doesn’t apply to most young people are correct. For anyone 30 or younger, I doubt they even have any real idea of what it was like. Just like I don’t have much of idea of what it was like for folks who lived through WWII.
For it=Applaud the results (women’s movement, Civil Rights, gay rights, left Vietnam)
Against it=opposite of above
I daresay those against it would offer a completely different list of results. (But, they would actually be thinking of those listed above.)
If it feels good, do it?
Don’t trust anyone over thirty?
Bad ideas.
One common theme of the Sixties was the idea that every group had a voice. And did they exercise that! All the way from the Black Panthers to the Grey Panthers.
I, also, heard the “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll” message as the solution. But I’ll cut myself some slack given my tender age. What teen wouldn’t be drawn to such an easy fix?
Seeing the failure of so many ideas implemented to elevate us all has definitely made me a more thoughtful and more moderate person.
I’ve had time to watch the political/social swings that take place every twenty years or so and sometimes I just scratch my head and wonder why humans can’t ever seem to hit that heathy spot of all things in moderation.
But, they have not failed to elevate us, though they might have failed in other respects. Ours is now a far more elevated culture, morally and even mentally, than it was in the 1950s.
You know how “liberal” is practically a dirty word these days? Well, back in the mid-sixties, ‘conservative’ was the dirty word. Johnson beat Goldwater 60-40. It wasn’t just the results etv78 lists: Medicare came into being. Poverty was discussed as something that we might work together as a nation to fight, not as a moral judgment on the poor (The Great Society). We started to recognize that we were polluting the air and water, and here’s an amazing thing: people actually accepted factual evidence, and acted on it! We passed laws to make the air and water cleaner, and they worked. In a surprising twist, businesses actually managed to survive this enormity of demonic regulation.
Taking “the sixties” as a period starting, oh, roughly in 1961 and going through Watergate, it was a time of enormous social change. At the beginning of the sixties, in most parts of the country, ‘nigger’ was a very common and reasonably acceptable term among whites, as were many other assorted terms for various ethnic, national or religious backgrounds. People who were in favor of civil rights were called “tolerant.” Think about that. We were “tolerant” because we didn’t think African Americans were lesser humans.
The women who, had they been born in 1960 or later, would have become doctors, lawyers, executives or engineers, mostly became instead secretaries, nurses, or teachers. Business men having mistresses was such a widely accepted part of life that movie comedies were made based on that premise, and happily married women laughed. But reliable birth control was only newly available, so “nice” girls were only starting to discover that recreational sex was possible, and nice boys discovered that they didn’t have to go to a hooker to get laid.
I was born in 1956, so I was a kid during the sixties, although I was fairly politically aware for a kid. A lot of the hippie ideology of the sixties was silly and/or self-indulgent crap - old rationalizations wrapped up in new rhetoric, and topped off with the eternal “You can’t understand!” whine of youth to its elders.
But there was a lot going on during the sixties that had little or nothing to do with the hippies. People were serious about public service, and there wasn’t the current assumption that government was either incompetent or corrupt, and probably both. In particular, middle-aged women woke up and realized that they wanted more from life than obsessing over the details of housework and gossip, and they went out and got it, or at least what they could, given that they had spent the past couple of decades being SaHMs.
Here are the lyrics of an honest to god hit (Wives and Lovers) from 1964:
[QUOTE= B.Bacharch and H. David]
Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your make-up, soon he will open the door,
Don’t think because there’s a ring on your finger, you needn’t try any more.
For wives should always be lovers too,
Run to his arms the moment that he comes home to you.
I’m warning you,
Day after day, there are girls at the office and the men will always be men,
Don’t stand him up, with your hair still in curlers, you may not see him again.
Wives should always be lovers too,
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you.
He’s almost here, hey, little girl, better wear something pretty,
Something you wear to go to the city,
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music, time to get ready for love.
Time to get ready for love, yes it’s time to get ready for love,
It’s time to get ready, kick your shoes off, baby…,
[/QUOTE]
Things changed a lot in the 60s. And the conservatives looked at it and said “Never again.” They’ve spent the past 40 years building the magnificent edifice that is today’s Right Wing, and whose single greatest value is party/ideology over all.
I guess everyone’s a liberal now, since we all love Mad Men.
And, yes, I am taking into account here all the widespread drug problems and everything else that the '60s ushered in. On balance, all pluses and minuses added up, ours is a more elevated culture now than it was pre-'60s.
Please explain that point for those of us who don’t watch it.
It’s all about life in the 60s. But it was mostly a joke, because there isn’t much counter culture stuff in it. Yet.
We’re all routing for Sally to go all hippy on her mom at some point.
BTW, I was born 1978, for reference. I’d (culturally) date the “60s” from Brown to the fall of Saigon.
“The 60s” is all about white people. Only a few black people, like Richie Havens, were there. It started with the free speech movement in Berkeley.