The general decline in standards today

[2jakes]

I agree that there were very few real hippies and the ones that did exist, existed before the mid 1970s...or before the end of the war in Vietnam. After 1974 or 1975, the real "hippie movement" was over.

I think hippies had very little lasting effect on the culture of our nation because there were so few of them, they had so little economic power and because their duration (as hippies) was so short.

I think to have an adult recollection of real hippies...or to have a personal knowledge and understanding of the circumstances in our country that gave rise to the hippie movement, one must have been born on or before 1960. And to really understand the movement, one needs to have been issued a Vietnam-era draft card.

Finally, I think that many of the people here who post most disparagingly about hippies are too young to have ever actually met a real one...except possibly as a child.

AF

I remember the sidewalks of Haight-Ashbury being crowded with "hippies". With my military haircut...I was like Claude Rains
Or at least that's the feeling I felt, which was ok with me.
I remember the beatniks in the cafes during the '50s. And with my boy-scout haircut attitude...I was still invisible to them
& that was ok too....to each his own

 

[Dennis Young]

And that is the most salient point. After they came back they thought everything was going to be fine and watched the problems develop.....

Yep.

All those college students marching, carrying pictures of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi Minh, coupled with waving of the North Vietnamese flags. Ever wondered what happened to them? They are now part of the "establishment" of the Democratic Party in Washington D.C. The Democratic party of JFK is no more.


Hillary Clinton herself is one, who sat at the feet of Saul Alinsky and learned the "Rules for Radicals" from the master himself.


The New York Post reported that Kathy Boudin, a professor at Columbia University, was named the 2013 Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at NYU Law School. In 1984, Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground, a violent, oafish association of upper-class “revolutionaries,” pled guilty to second-degree murder in association with the infamous 1981 Brinks

The most famous Weather Underground bombers-cum-professors are, of course, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn
Or take former Black Panther party grandee Ericka Huggins, who is now a professor of women’s studies at California State University, a professor of sociology at Laney and Berkeley City College. In 1970 Huggins was brought to trial on charges of “aiding and abetting” the murder of Alex Rackley.


Former Weather Underground member Eleanor Raskin, who fled after being indicted for bomb making in the 1970s, is an associate professor at Albany Law School.


And this is just scratching the surface. These are the more well-known radical hippies that are teaching America’s youth today. There are thousands of lesser known followers of a similar type of radical theory that are teaching in our universities today.

So when people ask what has happened to our nation, what happened to traditional family values, or why does there seem to be more degradation, less honor and less repect for one another today, I immediately point to these sorts of influences. People learn from others. If they aren’t being taught good values at home, they’ll get it from someone else they admire and respect, be it celebrity or college professor.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Agree 100%. Though we had 'real' hippies here in Alabama. But I agree with your point.

Here’s the thing about the so called radicals of the thirties. The forties, fifties and early sixties were a time of traditional family values. The forties generation has been (rightly imo) called the greatest generation. Without that generation our nation most likely wouldn’t have survived. They came out of the depression stronger than steel and as a result were able to beat back the threat of Nazis and Communists.


It was AFTER this, that things began to spin out of control.

This gets back to the point I made several pages ago -- "Love thy neighbor as yourself." The radicals of the thirties weren't out to feather their own nests, or simply to promote their own best interests. They had a long-range agenda in mind -- to break down the system that had clearly failed with the Depression, and replace it with one that was built on serving the needs of ordinary people, not simply a small core of the elite. That was what drove them to accomplish what they did.

Many of these radicals were actual card-carrying Communists -- and in those days you could sit on a park bench reading the Daily Worker, and very few people would give you a hard time about it. In the late thirties, being a Red was borderline mainstream. But most of the radicals who weren't card-carrying commies were what would eventually be called "communitarians," that is, people who put the well-being of the community on the same level as the well-being of the individual.

This was a concept which was widely taught in high school civics classes from the Prorgressive era of the 1900s forward -- and the generation that grew to adulthood during the Depression had been inculcated with it from childhood. They understood that the world was bigger than they were, and that the only real strength the individual had stemmed from being part of a strong community. The individual was part of a family, the family was part of a neighborhood, the neighborhood was part of the community, and so on and on. This philosophy found its ultimate expression in Wendell Willkie's wartime book "One World," and it's the great tragedy of the postwar era that "one worlder" became a term of derision instead of a worthy goal.

The hippies, for all their marching and complaining, never understood or even particularly cared to understand what "community" really meant. They never understood what real solidarity meant. They were in it for their own short-term interests, and when they got what they wanted, they moved on. I don't think of them so much as a threat as just another manifestation of bourgeois self-absorption.

 

[Dennis Young]

I remember the sidewalks of Haight-Ashbury being crowded with "hippies'. With my military haircut...I was like Claude Rains
Or at least that's the feeling I felt, which was ok with me.
I remember the beatniks in the cafes during the '50s. And with my boy-scout haircut attitude...I was still invisible to them
& that was ok too....

Exactly. It wasn’t the straight-laced conservatives who were spitting on Vietnam GIs when they came home. It was the filthy hippie radicals.

 

[jamespowers]

I remember the sidewalks of Haight-Ashbury being crowded with "hippies'. With my military haircut...I was like Claude Rains
Or at least that's the feeling I felt, which was ok with me.
I remember the beatniks in the cafes during the '50s. And with my boy-scout haircut attitude...I was still invisible to them
& that was ok too....

My friend tells me about his experience coming out of VMI to the whole Summer of Love thing out here. He had the military haircut and the clothing. They cleared a path for him. :rofl:
You were invisible to them but you could still smell them. Invisibilty has its limitations.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Shaping the minds of youths and further shaping the news through J schools does not seem to be accomplishment free. Polls taken of news outlets clearly show that over 85% of the news readers think the same. There is some effect to the propaganda.

Except that the propaganda isn't actually "radical." It proposes no real change to the status quo. There's nothing particularly militant about it, or even particularly outrageous, other than perhaps the fringe characters the radio talk show quacks trot out to whip up their listeners. I live in an extremely, shall we say, NPR area of the country, and know many dozens of aging Woodstock-era baby boomers who carry on the fight, man. Their views are about as threatening to the holders of Power as a bucket of dishwater. Their idea of militant activism is to put a sticker on their car and wear a ribbon pin on their coat lapel. Power to the people, man, but make sure I get seats down front for the opera. My cat is more radical than they are.

 

[Dennis Young]

Many of these radicals were actual card-carrying Communists -- and in those days you could sit on a park bench reading the Daily Worker, and very few people would give you a hard time about it. In the late thirties, being a Red was borderline mainstream. But most of the radicals who weren't card-carrying commies were what would eventually be called "communitarians," that is, people who put the well-being of the community on the same level as the well-being of the individual.

True. I could be mistaken, but in those days though the world had yet to learn about the cruelty of the Soviet Union and Stalinism. So a lot of Americans did flirt with communism. And many got blacklisted in the 50s for that.
Now some communists might have truly hoped to overthrow the Capitalist system back them and knew exactly what was going on. But I think many just looked at Communism like we do a 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] party today. Some folks even flirted with the Nazi party (though practically all those people were anti-Jewish racists determined to create a Fifth Column for Hitler).

 

[jamespowers]

Except that the propaganda isn't actually "radical." It proposes no real change to the status quo. There's nothing particularly militant about it, or even particularly outrageous, other than perhaps the fringe characters the radio talk show quacks trot out to whip up their listeners. I live in an extremely, shall we say, NPR area of the country, and know many dozens of aging Woodstock-era baby boomers who carry on the fight, man. Their views are about as threatening to the holders of Power as a bucket of dishwater. Their idea of militant activism is to put a sticker on their car and wear a ribbon pin on their coat lapel. Power to the people, man, but make sure I get seats down front for the opera. My cat is more radical than they are.

There are a lot of "fringe characters" in colleges and in places of power. Seeing those nuts just makes you wonder what the quiet ones think. :doh:

 

[LizzieMaine]

As I say, though, fringe characters in college generally only influence other fringe characters in college. Academia is a closed loop.

As far as journalism goes, I spent fifteen years of my life in it, and I was generally the leftiest person in whatever office I was working in. I still have many friends who work in both the broadcast and print media, from the networks on down to the weekly shopper, and most of them have extremely middle-of-the-road white middle-class views. Some are even sho-nuff Mallard Fillmore conservatives. One former colleague -- and a good friend when we worked together -- went on to run what was for a time the most popular right-wing political website in the state before getting a state job with the Department of Corrections.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some folks even flirted with the Nazi party (though practically all those people were anti-Jewish racists determined to create a Fifth Column for Hitler).

These were mostly Irish Catholic followers of Father Coughlin. You could walk thru Irish neighborhoods in Boston in 1940 and see Nazi flags openly flown to show support for Hitler's war against Britain. These Coughlintes were greatly diminished by the war, and later emerged as the early hard core of the John Birch Society. Their children and grandchildren became the main power base for Pat Buchanan in the '80s and '90s.

As for the Communist Party USA, there were a lot of factors at work in its popularity. One was its uncompromising stand on labor rights, another was its stand against Hitler -- until the Hitler-Stalin Pact slipped the rug out from under them -- and a third, and often overlooked, was its militant stand on civil rights. Thruout the thirties, the CPUSA was the most active, and most vocal organization in the country working to overthrow Jim Crow -- they weren't just looking to accomodate, they were looking to do away, immediately, with racial discrimination at all levels. This appealed deeply to a lot of people who understood what the racial question implied about America, and a lot of people who joined the Party did so specifically because of its position on that question.

This wasn't just a strategic position designed to get recruits. The Party, in this era, understood that America's working class has always been deeply divided along racial lines, and that white workers and black workers have been set at each other's throats for a very long time, all to the benefit of capital: if you can pay a black worker less than a white worker for more work, you can force the white worker to accept less pay for more work as well, while simultaneously forcing the white and black workers to hate and distrust each other. Nice little racket, but the Reds understood better than anyone else at the time what was really going on, and preached relentlessly against it. This stand went even into the Party itself -- there was a determined effort to purge from the Party any member who displayed an attitude of "white chauvinism."

As I say, the Hitler-Stalin agreement shook the CPUSA badly, and it lost most of what it had gained during the thirties. It also led party secretary Earl Browder to seriously question Stalinism, and even though the Party returned to an anti-Fascist line after August of 1941, Browder continued to question the hard-line Stalinist attitude. By the middle of the war, he was leading the party in a very different direction, one which stressed that the Left and the Right would need to both trust each other, to be willing to compromise, and be willing to cooperate to maintain continued progress after the war was over. This position got him purged in 1946 after a rebellion by hard-line Stalinists who led the Party in a very different direction into the Cold War period.

Browder is one of the most interesting figures of the thirties radical left, and his legacy is a lot more complicated than what you'll find on Wikipedia. I think, despite his obvious faults -- which include smoking a ridiculous calabash pipe to try and convince the Stalinists that he was one of the boys -- that he was far more a positive force in his time than a negative one.

 

[jamespowers]

These were mostly Irish Catholic followers of Father Coughlin. You could walk thru Irish neighborhoods in Boston in 1940 and see Nazi flags openly flown to show support for Hitler's war against Britain. These Coughlintes were greatly diminished by the war, and later emerged as the early hard core of the John Birch Society. Their children and grandchildren became the main power base for Pat Buchanan in the '80s and '90s.

Don't forget the German American Bundt that drew in plenty of German Americans and managed to get itself discredited fairly quickly.

 

[jamespowers]

As I say, though, fringe characters in college generally only influence other fringe characters in college. Academia is a closed loop.

As far as journalism goes, I spent fifteen years of my life in it, and I was generally the leftiest person in whatever office I was working in. I still have many friends who work in both the broadcast and print media, from the networks on down to the weekly shopper, and most of them have extremely middle-of-the-road white middle-class views. Some are even sho-nuff Mallard Fillmore conservatives. One former colleague -- and a good friend when we worked together -- went on to run what was for a time the most popular right-wing political website in the state before getting a state job with the Department of Corrections.

College being a "neccessity" nowadays, more children are effected by the closed loop than ever before. That started in conjunction with the GI Bill. Over the past 70 years plenty of youths passed through the gaunlet of hippisms.

Wow! You have had the complete opposite experience with journalism than I have out here. lol lol Having written for a local newspaper, I was the ONLY person who had my point of view---all the way up to the top. I got tired of being the excuse for "we are not all one-sided---there is James over there. lol lol See ya. Now you are completely one-sided.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Don't forget the German American Bundt that drew in plenty of German Americans and managed to get itself discredited fairly quickly.

Fritz Kuhn was one of the most epically stupid men ever to clutter up the political landscape. Opening a summer camp for Hitler Youth on Long Island was not the way to keep a low profile.

 

[jamespowers]

Fritz Kuhn was one of the most epically stupid men ever to clutter up the political landscape. Opening a summer camp for Hitler Youth on Long Island was not the way to keep a low profile.

Nothing about him was low profile. Low brow but not low profile.

 

[jamespowers]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/travel/tourists-arrested-rome-colosseum/

 

[LizzieMaine]

And people wonder why I don't like tourists.

The article underneath that one about the tourists taking porn pictures at various historic sites is a real pip too.

 

[Bushman]

I've long heard from tourists coming from other countries that they find American tourists to be.... loud and obnoxious - to say the least. When I hear stories like this, I can't say I blame them for having that viewpoint. I've often found Americans to be loud and obnoxious in America, can't even imagine the disruption on a beautiful Sunday morning in Paris when a family of Americans comes to the cafe.

 

[jamespowers]

And people wonder why I don't like tourists.

The article underneath that one about the tourists taking porn pictures at various historic sites is a real pip too.

They were truly morons----and they figured nothing was wrong with doing that-----just plain stupid. Where do idiots get enough money to travel that far?
Well at least we aren't alone. Russia, Canada, Australia and Brazil produced morons who did the same thing. It seems people from places that do not have a long history in a country have no respect for those that do or their relics and architecture. :doh:

I didn't see the porn story but NOW I do. :doh: The decline in standards is getting worse......

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Fritz Kuhn was one of the most epically stupid men ever to clutter up the political landscape. Opening a summer camp for Hitler Youth on Long Island was not the way to keep a low profile.

For what it's worth even Hitler regarded Kuhn as a moron.

 

[jamespowers]

For what it's worth even Hitler regarded Kuhn as a moron.

A useful moron.