We failed.

[sinkingfeeling]

I'm a child of the sixties. I was a wanna be hippie, because I was really a married college dropout when the Summer of Love took place. I gave up my scholarships to Ohio State and went to key punch school for a few weeks before taking a job so that my husband could continue in college and keep his deferment.

Vietnam was going hot and heavy. Campus protests and the anti-war movement was on. I watched as the Ohio National Guard surrounded the ROTC building on campus. This was just days prior to the killings at Kent State, my sister's school.

With the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, anti-establishment and people first sentiments ruled my age group. I started buying 'Mother Earth News' and wanting to flee to the wilds of Montana to live by self efficiency. I wanted to 'Drop Out' and be off the grid. Practical Idealism.

However, I didn't. I found myself divorced and a mother at age 21. My ex-husband was in the US Air Force and in Thailand. I had to feed and take care of my son. I was in 'data processing' and eventually would be hired by IBM Corporation.

But I thought we'd change the world. We'd take over the governing and end the unfairness and stop the military-industrial complex dead in their tracks. How could anybody have gone through the pain of Vietnam and not wanted to end wars? I wanted a world that lived in peace and recognized the humanity of all of us. What happened?

My generation failed to transmit those moral imperatives to our children. Somehow they listened more to the TV ads telling them they needed to consume and buy this new gadget and that new 'toy'. They became 'entitled' to good grades, good colleges, and well paying jobs. Money, lots of money, became the god of this nation. Now some believe we must fight the rest of the world so that 'our' life styles won't have to change.

Anyway, I'm sorry. My generation failed to bring about the changes that seemed so clearly evident we needed in 1972.

[annabanana]

1. Maybe we were fated to RAISE the generation that would bring real change. .

My boys have approached the fight with a pragmatism and energy that knocks me back on my heels. There is no failure when effort is made in the right direction.

[blm]

5. What a tender and appropriate response.....

and still very realistic.

[AndyA]

2. There's no need for you to feel sorry.

You did what you had to do, and that's all any of us can really do. At least you realize there should be something better, and recognize that we don't have to put up with the status quo.

One person can make a difference, and I'm sure you did, even if you don't realize it, but one person alone can't be held responsible for what came of this world.

[Debau2005]

3. No you didn't!

My parents were not hippies, they were in the main-stream, believe the govt because they would never lie group. They didn't want to change the status quo or rock the boat, the saw all hippies as evil, dope smoking ne-er do wells.

Unfortunately for them, I have you to look up to. I admire and applaud what you did and your generation did. For me you DID change the world. It has given me the courage to go against the mainstream, and to stand up for what is right.

You are passing this fight on to us, the next generation. I hope we pick up the battle flag and advance it in your name.

My mother always said, I missed my calling, I should have been old enough to be a "hippie" in the 60's-70's. :hippie:

[blueknight]

4. i appreciate your opinion

but i think vietnam was so much bigger then protest could stop. this war caused SO MUCH GRIEF AND HEARTACHE that people simply cant forget.so many families torn apart forever. and,im sure, for a lot of these families all the protest did was increase thier pain. they seen the protesters as people who didnt care about their loss ( even though we know thats not the case). america lost its innocense because of vietnam, never to gain it back.

[Warpy]

6. Nixon happened

because we scared the hell out of the materialistic Depression babies who came before us. Nixon waged a war against us and we were outnumbered and outgunned. We failed because we had no chance of success.

We did, however, manage a few things. We managed to cement full rights for non WASPS and women, to make it socially unacceptable to be a bigot. That is no small achievement and should be one of the things we can be most proud of. Changing laws is easy. Changing a culture is nearly impossible, but we did it.

Ending war is more problematic because men love war so much--as long as they don't have to fight it themselves.

We were ill equipped when we were in our teens and twenties, just as we see kids now being ill equipped. However, we did what we could against massive odds.

I don't think we did that badly. We just didn't do it all.

[The Traveler]

11. "The righteous fight is far from over

hardly begun in the minds of some.

These words have long been squeezed of meaning,
but still they fall from many tongues."

You are so right. But now, clearly, it is time to re-master ourselves, dig down and find the fire again and join our children. The struggle for justice and knowledge and compassion has never ended and never will. But we can beat back the darkness another yard or three.

[charlyvi]

7. An African American is running for President.

A woman was almost running. A woman is running for the Vice Presidency. Do you honestly think any of this would have happened without our work during the Sixties? Most Americans are against the Iraq War. For the most part, they are moral people.

The backlash Republican party has been trying for 40 years to take us back, but they haven't been able to do it. Why? Because there are too many people who realize the gains we have make, who don't want to go backward. They are moral people, for the most part. So I, for one, am not apologizing because the world isn't a perfect moral universe. We did what we could, and the results are nothing to apologize for. We did not fail.

[liberal N proud]

8. Don't be so hard on yourself

If the policies and attitudes of the 50's would have been allowed to stay in place would Hillary Clinton gotten as far as she did in the Primaries?
Would Barack Obama be the nominee? There are so many civil rights advances made in this nation because of the attitudes of the hippies. The changes may not have been as dramatic and immediate as you all had hoped. But take from this 70's child, you did much.

[cynatnite]

9. We owe you...

Everything you and your generation have done and sacrificed for us should be honored. Thank You!

[Occam Bandage]

10. Man, that's funny.

Today's kids volunteer for charity more often than previous generations, have lower incidences of delinquency, pregnancy, and drug use, are more likely to be involved in and donate to political campaigns, and skew more liberal than the previous generation.

But yeah, it's great to see a Baby Boomer end a "oh, we didn't change the world after all" rant by complaining about how selfish and entitled another generation is. Score one for hilarious irony.

[charlyvi]

12. I agree OB

And I'm a DFH from the sixties myself.

I'm sick of my peers, at least some of them, apologizing for not creating a perfect world. Who can? We were part of the Civil Rights movement, the Anti War movement and the Feminist movement. What's to apologize for that? And our kids and grandkids have their heads screwed on just fine. At least most of them.

There's an old Zen saying "If you meet your teacher in the road, kill him". It's a way of saying that future generations don't have to pay homage to what we did, they just have to live it. And they are, they most definitely are.

[hfojvt]

16. so kids of today are better than us?

that's hard to see when they are tearing up my lawn :argh:

Probably the bad ones stand out and are more easily noticed. Just like all of us selfish old boomers :eyes:

[tomg]

13. I go into the same funk sometimes.

Like you, I am from the same generation. I was (still am) a Co and an activist. In retrospect, the problem I had, I think, was that a) I assumed the vast majority of people my age also had my politics so I was very blown out when I ran into those who were different; and more importantly b) I assumed that it would all change over night - we had answers, it was self-evident, welcome to the future.

1968-1970 is my watershed, like many. But look at what really began after that - 1969 and Stonewall and the start of a strong GLBT movement, the start of a greater environmental consciousness, Roe v. Wade and a new wave of feminism to continue and extend the work of earlier generations - and these movements built on the Civil Rights movement which drew from the Unions which. . . . It just takes a long time. Let the fascists be sprinters. We run the marathon. They are fighting a rear-guard action against social justice.

Nothing makes me realize this more than remembering a day a couple of years ago that I heard Pete Seeger sing at a local anti-war rally and introduced my youngest son to him, and then remembering the first time I heard him when I was 18 in 1969, and then realizing he had been doing that for thirty years before 1969.

This might put it in perspective: "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bUch5dveX0

[MiniMe]

14. Part of the problem is that probably half of those people who were with you

are now republicans and voting with their wallets. Me and mine is their meme.

[SidneyCarton]

15. You didn't fail, you tried, you made change...

The sacrifices of the counterculture changed our nation.

The problem is that the counterculture was not the only movement in your generation. There were others, equally, if not more fanatical on the right. They were taken, cultivated and prepared to be used by the elites, waiting for their moment. That moment came in the late 1970's and 80's as you settled down to raise your children and establish your households, as was your right. They struck when the left was scattered, divided and complacent. They swathed their filth in the flag, faith and false hope. There was a slight respite during Clinton, but we were still complacent, and we paid in 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2004.

As it is in physics, it is equally true for politics: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, the pendulum swung to the left, it swung to the right, our hope is that it has begun to swing leftward again.

[blues90]

17. It's pretty difficult to fight against the media

What we did in the 60's was all we could do then you had the schools and most of all the TV selling things that were new a shiny sort of a push and revolt against the 60's generation and something to distract the youth to move on and not be their parents generation.

You would have thought all the Vietnam war movies would have been enough to remind the later generations that war was not a good thing in any respect.

Capitalism at it's best , sell , sell, sell!!!!!!!!!!!!