60's Change the World?
by Marc Rotterman
Issue 94 - October 24, 2007

In case you missed it … this is 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Love” -- the Counter Culture’s coming of age.

The History Channel, MTV, classic rock stations, NPR, Rolling Stone Magazine and many of the elite news media outlets have waxed poetic about the good old days of the sixties.

Revisionism abounds from the “Left” -- when they take a narcissistic, nostalgic look back at the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco and the consequences of the culture of "sex, drugs and rock’n roll." Consequences that one could argue we are still living with today in 2007.

The clarion call to kids from across the country was a song written by musician Scott McKenzie in 1967. One of versus went… "If you're going to San Francisco…be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...For those who come to San Francisco…Summertime will be a love-in there."

LSD guru/drug pusher Timothy Leary called on the nation’s youth to "turn on, tune in and drop out."

It is estimated that as many as 100,000 young people heeded both Scott McKenzie’s and Leary’s call and headed to the “ New Garden of Eden” San Francisco.

Fueled by the hallucinogen LSD, meth and other mind-altering drugs, the disenchanted of the baby boom generation set up shop in Haight-Ashbury and set out to change consciousness and “establishment guidelines” on sex, drugs, religion and race relations.

One need only dig up an old high school or college year book from that era to see the peripheral impact the “hippy culture” had on the youth of that time, their clothes and the length of a young man’s hair.

But more important, the sixties generation of the “Progressive Left” saw themselves as pioneers -- charting a course for a “ New World.”

Many of the radical left’s so-called leaders complained that the World War II generation had made a mess of things -- particularly when in came to the War in Vietnam. They wanted us out of Vietnam -- NOW.

Sloganeering became the mantra of the day.

It was a time for “flower power” and to "give peace a chance."

Things were “very heavy man,” and of course you were encouraged to "tell it like it is." And lest we forget…never trust anyone over 30.

“Peace symbols” were the bumper sticker of the day.

The true believers on the “left”- many of who today hold tenured professorships on our college campuses -- credit the heady times of the sixties for producing the mainstreaming of the gay rights movement, environmentalism, and the women rights movement/ feminism.

But it was also a time -- as David Horowitz and Peter Collier co-authors “Destructive Generation -- Second Thoughts about The Sixties,” correctly point out that “when the “System”- that collection of values that provided guidelines for societies as well as individuals - was assaulted and mauled.”

1967 also marked the beginning of RAGE in America.

Anti-war protests swept across college campuses that summer and deadly and destructive race riots broke out in both Detroit and Newark, N.J.

It became common in some circles to believe that America was presumed guilty and untrustworthy. (Sound familiar?)

One could argue that contamination of the sixties is still with us…

Today we are still a nation of special interests -- splinter groups and political correctness. We have made progress in the area of race relations, but we are still failing the inner city.

As former Speaker of the US House Newt Ginrich often points out -- currently the Detroit Public School System only graduates 22% of its entering freshmen on time and it fails to serve 78% of the young people of Detroit.

And if you are an African American male in Detroit in your 20’s, who has dropped out of school -- you have a 60% chance of going to jail and 73% chance of being unemployed. How tragic.

And the social experiment of “Free Love” has been a disaster -- creating a culture where out of-wedlock births are at an all time high.

The specter of our experience in Vietnam still haunts our foreign policy and the “scourge of drugs” continues to ruin lives.

Did the “Summer of Love” and the phenomenon of the “sixties revolution” change the world?

Yes -- without question --but on the whole, not for the better.

Marc Rotterman worked on the national campaign of Reagan for President in 1980, served on the presidential transition team in 1980, worked in the Reagan Administration from 1981-1984, is a senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, NC and a former member of the board of the American Conservative Union.