JRHS Writing BLOG

We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

The Sixties were an era in American history that has had one of the most dramatic influences on American morality. Not only has it affected how we view ourselves but also how we feel about life, death, music, religion, science, marriage, education, and sexuality. This cultural revolution 40 years ago is the main reason why American values and beliefs are being threatend in today’s society.

The birth of the Sixties occured right after World War II. Men were coming home from the battlefield and starting families. Large families. This is now known as the Baby Boom, about 79 million births occured between 1946 and 1964. (Compared to the 43.6 million born during the Great Deppression, this is a huge increase). The baby boomers were a generation so large that they formed their own culture instead of being assimilated into the existing one.

This increase in population led to a monumental expansion of universities, this furthermore led the universities themselves to create their own cultural enclaves. When the sheltered teenagers of the Sixties generation left their homes, parents, and comfortable lifestlye to go to college, they were easily influenced by their liberal and leftist faculty members. Once the wheels in these students heads had started turning, there was nothing that could stop them. Even rebelling against the people that had taught them. They rejected everything that had previously been called normal. Experimenting with drugs, alchohol, sex, and anything and everything else that had been forbidden.

One key factor that enabled this to happen was the prosperity of their parents, who had survived the Great Deppression. These children had been pampered and spoiled and thought that money never ran out. This continual supply of cash allowed them to travely freely, buy whatever they wanted, and organize rallies and other politcal gatherings that helped their cause.

Perhaps the most important event that occured during the Sixties was the Vietnam War. (Many people even go so far as to say that this war was the sole cause of the student frenzy, civil disobediance and violence of the Sixties). This was because the war in Vietnam was a convenient and powerful metaphor that the boomers used to express their belief that American’s culture, society, economy, and policy were corrupt. They expressed these beliefs by boycotts, rallies, protests, and anything else that enabled people to notice them. This lack of support may have even led to the American loss in Vietnam. Bui Tin, a former colonel of the Vietnamese army, said “The American anti-war movement was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable” (Bork, 19).

The behavior of the 1960’s affected not only the outcome of the Vietnam war, but how we live daily. Those angry students are the ones that are calling the shots today. They decide our laws and who goes to jail. They are the ones in office and running for it. They destroyed the generations before them, are we going to let them ruin ours?

Bork, Robert H. Slouching Towards Gomorrah. 1996. 

You seem a little put out.

It is apparent that you don’t like the way things are. It is apparent that you want someone or something to blame it on. So you pick an abstraction that you lable “The Sixties.”

Here is the problem. “The Sixties” didn’t do anything. “The Sixties” happened. It was merely a piece of a timeline. The events that occured during that time frame were caused by people. So, if you wish to critique specific actions (or ideas) of specific people, that would be more useful.

Blaming it on “Baby Boomers” and painting them with a broad brush is also lame. Your assertion that this group (if you can really call it a group. Like “The Sixties”, the “Baby Boomers” are really a defined demographic event, not a group) created their own culture rather than being assimilated is rather poetic, but unsupported.

What is it about “The Boomers” that influenced culture? You seem to believe that they were all fat, lazy rich kids who were duped by the nefarious influence of the evil “Liberal” professors. Where do you get this concept of the “continuous supply of cash?” Who are the “many people” that say that the Vietnam War was the “single cause” of anything. Do you really mean to say that “they destroyed” the generation before them? Lots of broad brush unsupported ranting. Very little facts or reasoning to back it up.

Your thesis seems to be that “The Sixties” were bad, and caused all our problems. If only those spoiled brats hadn’t blamed everything on their loving parents and rebelled against them, all our problems would be solved.

If it were only that simple. Be careful not to fall into the same trap you accuse your “boomers” of falling into. Stop blaming your problems on past generations sins. Instead, start fixing your own.

This is the Conventional Wisdom from the conservative perspective about the 60’s.  I largely agree, but think that Bork, in making his points vivid, oversells them.

I was considered quite liberal, even radical in the 1960’s at my high school, but wasn’t as far left as you (and Bork) imply.  The early examples of radicalism were certainly in place in the 60’s and they made the news, but the changes did not generally penetrate the boomer generation until the 70’s.  In 1969, hippies, yippies, potheads, and lite marxists existed, but they were few.