For awhile now I’ve been pointing out to anyone who’d listen that the 60s counterculture (at least, its rank and file) agitated for the same kinds of libertarian values that we now see coming from Tea Party / legal conservative types. Meanwhile, today’s progressives — the direct descendants of the New Left — pretend toward a counterculture hipness that simply doesn’t jibe with their calls to regulate salt intake, or legislate toilets, or micromanage every aspect of the life of “the people”.
Good to know I’m not the only one who’s noticed:
[…] the mass-movement hippie era first arose during the Johnson administration, and was explicitly hostile to Johnson’s Democratic Party agenda — in particular his foreign policy agenda. Despite a fair amount of after-the-fact revisionism in which Nixon has been retroactively cast as the villain of the Vietnam War, remember that Nixon did not become president until the end of January, 1969, and that for the vast majority of the anti-war protests of “the sixties,” LBJ was president and LBJ was consequently the target of the protesters’ wrath.
This 1967 hippie poster depicted President Johnson’s big-government “Great Society” programs as hell on Earth.The truth is: Hippies didn’t particularly like Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats, or their ’60s-era “Great Society” big-government programs. […]
[…]
1968 was the apogee of the original hippie era, and it also happened to be an election year. If you knew nothing about actual history, and believed that hippies were from the beginning pro-Democrat and anti-Republican, you would likely assume that hippie protesters must have descended with fury on the 1968 Republican National Convention, intent on showing their displeasure with those nasty conservatives. And, of course, you’d be entirely wrong. The 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach was pretty much ignored by hippies, protesters and the media. But the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — now, that was a different story entirely. Right from the beginning, the Democratic convention was wracked with violent protests, as hippies (along with many other related groups) fought with police and the National Guard.
Throughout the convention, as the clashes between the protesters and the police got worse, Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was accurately pegged by the hippies as the big-government totalitarian thug that he was. And Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey wasn’t getting much love either — he was dismissed as just another tool of the system.
So, the hippies of 1968 didn’t particularly like either major political party, but they showed a particular anger toward the Democrats for screwing everything up — while giving the Republicans a shrug. Which, amazingly, is exactly the way the Tea Party feels today: Anger towards Democrats, and a grudging acceptance of Republicans as the lesser of two evils.
[…]
[…] as has been documented endlessly, the hippie movement originally grew out of the Beat movement, and the two primary guiding lights of the Beats, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, were both wildly anti-authoritarian. But that doesn’t mean they were “liberal”: what most people don’t know is that Kerouac, while being anti-authoritarian and unconventional for his era, was in fact politically conservative, something which continues to mystify naive young leftist historians:
At the height of the counterculture, Kerouac declared: “Listen, my politics haven’t changed, and I haven’t changed! I’m solidly behind Bill Buckley, if you want to know. Nothing I wrote in my books,” he confessed in a 1968 interview, “nothing could be seen as basically in disagreement with this.”
…
In other words, Kerouac was a true individualist iconoclast, a fact that [Tom] Hayden still finds incredibly frustrating.I don’t see this as unexpected at all: Kerouac’s keen mind noticed and then recoiled in horror from the collectivism and anti-Americanism that had begun to creep into the hippie movement as the ’60s progressed. To anyone who understands the kernel of philosophical clarity which conjoined the Beat movement with the early hippies, it should come as no surprise that Kerouac, the original inspiration for hippiedom, self-identified as a conservative. Individualism was the whole point, from the very beginning of the postwar counterculture.
The fact is, the hippie ethos (as distinct from the New Left ideology that ultimately came to co-opt the countercultural narrative) was decidedly small government and anti-authoritarian. The hippies’ anti-war stance was a product not of some great love for communism so much as it was a product of the draft — and so their own self-interests.
And yet some of the biggest icons of the hippie movement are today hard leftists — and so align themselves with the soft tyranny being established by today’s progressives.
Largely, I believe, this is a product of three things: their inveterate revulsion to what they believe is the forced morality of social conservatism; their self-styled romantic relationship with “nature” (and so environmentalism); and an almost knee-jerk anti-war stance, regardless of the circumstances. And yet, in their rush to demonize the moral scolds of the right, they have accepted, if only tacitly, the ever increasing constraint on freedom being erected by the progressive left; they have empowered an environmental movement based on faulty science and patronage that has killed millions, and threatens to impoverish even the most developed of nations; and they have adopted a realpolitik foreign policy stance — which requires precisely the kind of backroom deals and CIA manipulation of foreign affairs that they once spoke out against. It’s about power. Disguised as pragmatism.
Up is down. Black is white. Wyatt is Billy.
It’s time for the erstwhile hippies to take stock: are you for the freedom and individualism and anti-authoritarianism you once claimed to embody? Are you for smaller government, individual autonomy, self-sufficiency, and the organic organization of the marketplace? Or have you become The Man?
Hey Hey LBJ, How Much Trans Fat Have You Allowed A Grown-Ass Adult of His Own Free-will to Consume Today…?
Dude,
I think I agree with your point, but I smoked WAY too much hash in the 60’s and now can’t process complex, multi-layered thoughts like I used to, so I’m not entirely sure.
I sorta remember that bastard Daley and his goons rousting us in Grant Park, but between the tear gas, the mushrooms and the cannabis, my memories are a bit sketchy.
They have become the “Man”. It is a position that they don’t understand. Some people do have to run the country and it is not easy. I didn’t vote for W, but he seemed to understand his responsibilities.
* I had relatives on the Chicago Police force in 68. They had sons over in Vietnam and were not happy with the Vietcong flag flying over the city.
I humbly and sleepily add a fourth factor in the hippies going Dem:
It’s almost impossible to find work when you’re 72, bald with a long ponytail in back and reek of herb-sweat. So, bring on the gov’t aid Dudes!
On the Road probably would have been titled On the Bong had Kerouac intended it to sing the praises of booze and marijuana (and whatever wacky shit Burroughs might have been experimenting with) moreso than the freedom of the road…
Yeah, but I think that the Hippie lifestyle more often than not led to ruin. Once your life is in ruin, the natural inclination is not to draw the line between years of drug induced navel-gazing and your current circumstances, but to blame your circumstances on a “system” and demand shit.
Back when Politically Incorrect was not entirely a misnomer, John Ratzenberger (Cliff from Cheers) was a guest. Somehow the topic got around to ‘the 60s’ (I mean the experience of the counterculture during the 1960s and 1970s) and Ratzenberger made the point (I’m paraphrasing) that the Hippie lifestyle to which he ascribed was something for well-off white kids because they could cut their hair and rely on family networks and influence to transition into mainstream, conventional lives. He more or less said that the counterculture screwed anyone who wasn’t well-off and white, leaving them with drug habits, criminal records, reduced prospects for employment, etc.
I was also under the impression that in ’68 the Hippie/Left was contending to take over the Democratic party, whereas they had no such prospect with the GOP, hence the protests and violence.
Dude, the hippies never fucking shut the hell up about Jesus. Does that sound like a modern Democrat, or a modern Republican?
(tongue kinda in cheek)
They have gone from the demand to be left alone (not be conscripted, free to smoke as much dope as they want, screw whatever they wanted, etc) to discovering that they could make people do what they wanted or be what they wanted, as long as they clung to the levers of state power.
I don’t want anyone to make anyone else be anything other than ‘not hurting others or intruding on their rights’. And no, you helping yourself to other people’s money to give yourself the “right” to free housing, free food, free visits to the doc, free everything, doesn’t count.
I always appreciate this time period being discussed.
I’ve read a bit of the requisite writers but it’s still a cartoon picture in my head.
I’m sorry, but did that “brilliant at breakfast” genius really lay out a list of dozens of government contractors as examples of the free market? Really?
Disagree: they always were hard leftists.
Again, disagree: the people who admired Mao, Che, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, etc. are not anti-war. To steal a phrase, they are on the other side, regardless of what that side is.
As someone who was not alive during ‘the 60s,’ I’ve always drawn the conclusion that plenty of people involved in the counterculture had their development arrested in late adolescence. I think that is kind of reflected in our politics today – the posing, the cult developed around having been offended, and the demonisation of stand-ins for their fathers (i.e. the GOP, those perceived as moral scolds, etc.).
I think the point is that while the hippies were in the counter-culture, they were not all of the counter-culture. The Maoists and Che-ists were never hippies — but they adopted them as a mascot to play off the cred hippies had for just being relatively harmless “drop out, tune in and turn on” types.
Rob: Keroac was not a hard leftist. Bob Dylan is not a hard leftist.
The New Left co-opted the movement. But not everyone followed along once they did.
Correct, McGehee. The left infiltrated the anti-war movement and created the category of useful idiots here in the States.
As an actual hippie from the, like, actual 60’s, I concur. I was never infatuated with the New Left. In fact, I spent quite a little time telling the Maoist “come the revolution” types how little I agreed with them. Then I stopped being a hippie. What was left? Individual freedom and whomever supported it. Free the people from “The People”.
I was going from the statement you made, that “some” hippie-heroes are today leftists. “Some” does not mean “all”. I’m not disputing that some of the hippie-heroes were not and are not leftists; I’m pointing out that many of the hippie-heroes always were leftists. They didn’t change; they dropped the camouflage.
Related: Geoff’s pw pub post, “How the ‘New Left’ took over.”
Dang, who was it said, “‘Power to the People’ invariably means ‘power to the people who say things like ‘power to the people””?
Thanks for the link, bh.
“The hippies’ anti-war stance was a product not of some great love for communism so much as it was a product of the draft — and so their own self-interests.”
And yet hard left, true believeing, communists managed to leverage this anti-war sentiment into the adoption of largely transnational socialist ideology by one of the major political parties in America. Sure, they try to camoflage thier doctrine as being essentially democratic and empowering people, but so did the former Soviet Union! It may be tin-foil hat stuff (maybe not, I’ll have to read Dupes! and see what Paul Kengor unearthed in the Soviet archives) but I believe that it was part of a concerted cold-war covert effort to tear America down from within; kind of like Telefon operatives that inadvertantly self-activated and a rampaging regardless of the fact that the system that spawned them fell. This is reflected in the intense America hate, and glorification of all things foreign by the transnational multi-culturalists.
It is remarkable though the parallells between the hippy and tea-party agenda.
There were numerous elements in the counter-culture of the 60s. One such was the anti-establishment folksong tradition which had developed a strong socialist message during the Depression.
#19 Rob:
I think that may have been Dave Barry.
Yep. There was a lot of ’30s-era Socialist revival in the radicalism of the ’60s. That the latter-day champions of a Depression-spawned radical message were themselves growing up in post-war prosperity their grandparents only dreamed of, might just be the inspiration of the observation that history repeats, first as tragedy and then as farce.
Hm. If you believe Matt Taibbi, the Tea Party is composed largely (see what I did, there?) of obese Caucasian geriatrics unselfconsciously suckling the same public teat they are reviling.
And he should know, because he attended a gospel music rally in Kentucky.
Matt Taibbi might be one of the least talented hack writers to be published, no small feat. He is so devoid of talent it is breath-taking.
“If you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone, anyhow”
–some bitter clingers from Liverpool
Perhaps, but “Imagine” is sort of a Commie Creed put to a catchy piano tune.
One more thing to blame on Yoko.
Alec Leamas–Your account of Ratzenberger’s comments (at #5 above) reminds me of my reading of the film “Midnight Cowboy,” where Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo essentially see their lives ruined by living on the edge of the counterculture in New York City and imitating its values. Although the film was controversial at the time because of its frank depictions of sexuality, and although it has remained well-known as a result of that controversy, I always thought it was ironic because at its core, it seems to be an illustration of counterculture values leading people to more troubled lives.
“that the Hippie lifestyle to which he ascribed was something for well-off white kids because they could cut their hair and rely on family networks and influence to transition into mainstream, conventional lives.”
– Exactly correct. A lot went along for the networking, and because it was the “in” thing to do, much like the college student youth vote Obama scored, which got him in office. But there was then, and always tends to be, a classicist set of layers, and the kids from stable middle class homes were just indulging in the fad of the moment, the Bohemian life style. A great many completed school, got jobs, and moved on to middle class lives. The people in their 60’s and 70’d you see running around still sporting headbands and ponytails did not.
– Back in the mid 60’s I was working out here (San Diego) for my company back east. Every Friday I had to go down to the main Western Union to get my pay wired to me. Standing in line I often overheard heated conversations, such as the following, emanating from the bank of wall phones next to the pay window:
Young Woman/ SDS student: “….But mom, you promised to send me the money……How are we going to be able to afford the rally signs and the party afterword’s if you don’t come through……you promised…..you can’t let me down……No I’m not hanging out with dirty hippies….you’re being paranoid…..Moooooommmmm.”
– I could imagine that on the other end of the line, some poor, emotionally beleaguered middle class hard working mom, was struggling to understand how it is her life had been turned into some sort of tragic-comedy, wherein she was being forced into supporting a movement that seemed to seek to destroy her way of life, when in fact her anxious daughter and her friends just wanted to party.
– In fact, as Jeff has pointed out, the program for power really was the providence of the hard Left, the SDS and weather underground, Black Panthers ect, not the free love flower child bunch, or the kids of middle class families that were just out for the excitement and fun.
So, like, we looked in the mirror and didn’t like what we saw. Most of us anyway. Over 50 I mean.
“that the Hippie lifestyle to which he ascribed was something for well-off white kids because they could cut their hair and rely on family networks and influence to transition into mainstream, conventional lives.”
Or, if they were Bill Ayers, they could evade conviction for crimes by hiding behind Daddy’s (Big shot in Com Ed) money – ‘guilty as sin, free as a bird’.
He’s an old hippie
And he don’t know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He’s an old hippie
and this life is just a bust
He ain’t tryin’ to hurt nobody
He’s just tryin’
Real hard
To adjust… (Bellamy Brothers)
Unfortunately a goodish number of them seem to be trying to adjust the world to themselves, rather than the other way ’round.
Talking about the Woody Guthrie component that was unmistakeably present in the late 60’s counterculture misses the point. The USSR had a strong presence in the US for the whole time it existed, taking advantage of people inclined to believe that s*t in order to advance the cause. I actually met and spoke with one of the footsoldiers in that effort, in the DDR (when there was such a place, and I could still successfully simulate the wide-eyed, not-quite-politically-mature naif) According to him, there were, in fact, weapons in the crowd of “students” at Kent State, some of which he personally supplied, so I wasn’t at all surprised by the recent discovery of pistol shots on the tapes.
Regards,
Ric
Rob Crawford:
No, the original hippies were NOT always hard leftists. The author of the linked article presumes a little more knowledge on the part of the readers than most have concerning the ’60s. The original hippies were more apolitical, and to the extent that they were political, they were against “The Man,” which is a euphemism for big government and oppressive social attitudes. Early hippies hated the government. It was not until 1967/8, as the author notes, when the commies began to move in and co-opt the hippie movement, twisting it leftward leftward leftward. The Bill Ayerses and the Tom Haydens were like an invasive species taking over an inviting ecosystem. At the ’68 Dem convention the protesters were already evenly split three ways between pro-freedom pacifist hippies, violent anarchist Yippies, and communist assholes. That’s why, to our modern eyes, the protest doesn’t make any sense — because three disparate ideologies were battling for supremacy. The hippies lost the internal struggle, and were pushed aside from the leadership of their own movement after ’68, and the commies then out-organized the scatterbrained yippies, and by ’69 the communists were in the driver’s seat of the counterculture.
The author obviously is aware of all this, but didn’t spell it out clearly enough in the essay. Too many words already, I suppose.
That case and the explanation for why he was not convicted smells like daddy paying to have the prosecutor take a knee.
I like how they get to launder their criminals through the academy too.
I never said they were.
“Some” does not mean “all”. I’m not disputing that some of the hippie-heroes were not and are not leftists; I’m pointing out that many of the hippie-heroes always were leftists. They didn’t change; they dropped the camouflage.
But I repeat myself.
They’ve shortened the process a bit recently.
– And when, as a society, we are either unwilling or incapable of enforcing our laws, freedom of speech does not include throwing bombs, or immigrating illegally, we directly give credence to the Lefts contention that our Democratic Republic doesn’t work, and you get narcissistic asocial birdbrains like Ayers laughing in our faces and saying he wished he’d bombed more.
– Remember that when you vote on Nov. 2nd.
Great post and good discussion.
I’m trying to teach my young’uns that the hippies were the villains of the 60’s. It’s not quite that cut and dried, the hippies became the villains.
Arlo Guthrie voted for McCain. Alice’s restaurant was down with the Palin.
So if the Tea Party is now the counter-culture, then we have until when? 2025 by the time we inflitrate the system and become the man?
Can one learn Chinese by watching “Ni Hao Kai-Lan”?
Ric – Woody Guthrie ironically wrote some songs about the great benefit of industry, and dams, and all of the jobs they provided. That was the Soviet view at the time. When did the left become anti-progress?
#42:
I think that was when they saw demonizing industry was a great way to hurt the American economy, and pushing the green agenda was a great way of getting contol over the economy.
NB: I am in favor of clean air and water, but much of the green agenda was less about that than increasing centralized control.
OTT: That was Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son.
…aaaaand I only just now noticed the first word in OTT’s comment. It’s frickin’ 4:00 in the afternoon here — do I still need coffee?
This might explain why Kerouac drank himself to death.
It was not until 1967/8, as the author notes, when the commies began to move in and co-opt the hippie movement, twisting it leftward leftward leftward. The Bill Ayerses and the Tom Haydens were like an invasive species taking over an inviting ecosystem.
The power-grabbers are already trying to worm their way into the various Tea Party factions. Granted, the main force in the movement is trying to dissipate such power, but it seems sensible to make sure nobody grabs the controls before we’ve had the chance to dismantle things.
That goddamned Month Tucker is another goddamned Repbublican teabagger ya know. And a bitch too.
My blackberry will not accept the awesome Ms. Tucker’s nickname.
I guess some call her Maureen.
– Maureen will be your Huckleberry.
– Hey, the Progs/Left are about to become a bowel movement.
– Is that all you guys can do is stand there with your Blackberry’s hanging out?
– Could a Sistah have a <i<Amen?
One thing, at least, different. Back then the power-grabbers were being controlled, both wittingly and unwittingly using various cutouts such as the CPUSA, by the USSR with their actions having aims that benefited them.
The current group, though they may have some hidden outside support, I doubt that they have some singular entity to synchronize the actions and words to work towards a goal. Freelance opportunists they are not organized cadres.
– an Amen
(and a crash course in HTML on the side)
– With Soros cutting off the water, if he means it, that’s another hit from the snake.
I checked out FDL and DKos today, just as a matter of interest on how they’re trying to deal with the crash and burn.
– Gone are the heady days of thousands of commenters, and the posts are mostly half hearted screeds, looking for any petty bone picking they can throw out there concerning this or that GOP candidate, some just plain silly.
– Apparently the pushback against the coming tsunami at Kos is a campaign centered on “clicks on search engines” ploy, where the pinheads are told to click on any unfavorable articles on Conservatives, the idea being that hits makes the engines raise the tendency to put those posts first.
– Not so much desperation as just quiet acceptance.
b-orr
s-heins
link
– Obama is a Marxist????????
– Who knew. (cue dramatic background music)
– In the aftermath of the coming tsunamic loss, look for the Left to put out the time honored excuse that, once again, Socialism wasn’t practiced properly, and so therefore has not been properly tested, nor proven a failed ideology.
– In spite of the fact that the Democrats have controlled Congress for four years, both sides of the aisle, and Obama has gotten every bill he wanted passed, even the most Socialistic items, the Left might be correct in one way only.
– They weren’t able to do what their Marxist Masters always did in the past.
– Nationalize all businesses and food sources, and kill anyone who opposed them.
– Of all the brain dead false accusations the Left builds it’s case on, all the screeching and name calling and agitprop, what really galls the Lefts asses is we don’t let people kill each other for the sake of the cause.
– Call it the fatal flaw in the US psyche. America is funny that way.
It seems that the difference between Hippies and the New Left remains the fact that a fair amount of Hippies grew up and realized that seeing the Grateful Dead tour for a third season in a row was not nearly as much fun as the Dead’s marketing department suggested it was. Pot, furry chicks, hunger and existential boredom replaced peace, love and understanding. People wanted to finish college, read books that weren’t revolutionary–just important–and they didn’t want their boyfriends nailing everyone else. Individualism replaced the collective, and achievement replaced passivity not because of anything Nixon said–who the hell listened to him anyway?–but because most of us are wired this way.
The New Left HATES this in an Eastern Front sort of way and has waged a bitter, endless, total war against human nature since. They have entire corridors of power in the arts, the social sciences, journalism, academia and the law. From Metereology to the way we view the world, from how we speak to the way we frame the very definitions and utility of life, the New Left holds sway. Yet when they rise to the battle, when they identify themselves, they usually lose.
It must burn them fiercely.
At least the Harold Washington Library is nice. Am I the only one who’s noticed how hideously ugly government buildings have become?
Never design by committee.
Hey, Roddy, I just discovered your blog through a google search and now I’m already here to demand more posts!
Shit, you’re a genuine investigative reporter. Not enough of you guys.
Btw, while your focus is definitely not “general interest”, I’d bet that a broad spectrum of people would be interested in stories like this.
Give yourself a link once in awhile.
Former Enron booster Paul Krugman’s been playing that line the last couple of weeks. Not enough was spent, not spent the right way, blah blah blah.
– Looking in on the Fwenchies is a pretty timely way to check on the progress of modern Socialism.
– Back awhile ago, when they had a fuel crisis, they solved it by the expedient of burning 8,500 cars,
– They now have a crisis in young slackers social payouts, so I suppose the answer they will come up with is to burn all the schools.
– You just have to look at this ‘social justice’ thing with the right attitude!
BH, thanks. I appreciate it. I mean that. I have two on deck. One is more general interest than the other. I’d like to have one a week but I am finishing the manuscript.
The Arab Bank stuff is something I’ve been covering since the NY Sun. It’s pretty wild. I was hunting through some old files week before last and I found the “Martyr’s Kits,” which were the identification packets Hizbollah/Palestinian Islamic Jihad/Hamas gave the fathers and older brothers–can’t trust the women with banking in Ramallah, don’t you know–to present at the bank, along with the death certificate. That way, they get the Saudi cash. Funniest thing is that they take it in dollars or sheckels. They NEVER want their own currency, or even Dinar’s from Jordan or Rupees from Egypt.
Ironic. Israeli currency for killing Jews.
– Equally ironic – Saudi currency killing Americans.
– Probably one of the few enterprises, outside of Household appliance manufacturers and auto companies, systemic killing of your best customers.
That’s some crazy stuff, Roddy.
It’s nice to know that some reporters are still, well, looking into shit.
27. Comment by DarthRove on 10/12 @ 10:55 am #
“If you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone, anyhow”
–some bitter clingers from Liverpool
You say you’ll change the Constitution?
Well, you know, we all want to change your head. You tell me it’s the institution, well, you know. You better free you mind instead.
It’s too bad he
pussed-outbacked away from his youthful wisdom later on in his coke addled, radical-chic, Dakota-insulated irrelevance, but New York does that to people.Also, despite their booster-ism and apologia for Socialism, and their booster-ism and apologia for Barack, remember that Barack isn’t a Socialist. Also, racism.
I voted for comedian Dick Gregory in 1968. This post is excellent and accurate, Jeff.
What a piece of hippie fantasy.