November 13, 2007
In Defense of the Sixties
I've had Tom Hayden's defense of the Sixties Generation open on my computer for a couple days, but I just got around to it this morning. And it's good. Very good. It takes the form of an appeal to Barack Obama, and it asks why, exactly, Obama believes those battles done and finished:
Your problem, if I may say so out loud, and with all respect, is that the deepest rationale for your running for president is the one that you dare not mention very much, which is that you are an African-American with the possibility of becoming president. The quiet implication of your centrism is that all races can live beyond the present divisions, in the higher reality above the dualities. You may be right. You see the problems Hillary Clinton encounters every time she implies that she wants to shatter all those glass ceilings and empower a woman, a product of the feminist movement, to be president? Same problem. So here's my question: how can you say let's "turn the page" and leave all those Sixties' quarrels behind us if we dare not talk freely in public places about a black man or a woman being president? Doesn't that reveal that on some very deep level that we are not yet ready to "turn the page"?[...]
You were ten years old when the Sixties ended, so it is the formative story of your childhood. The polarizations that you want to transcend today began with life-and-death issues that were imposed on us. No one chose to be "extreme" or "militant" as a lifestyle preference. It was an extreme situation that produced us. On one side were armed segregationists, on the other peaceful black youth. On one side were the destroyers of Vietnam, on the other were those who refused to submit to orders. On the one side were those keeping women in inferior roles, on the other were those demanding an equal rights amendment. On one side were those injecting chemical poisons into our rivers, soils, air and blood streams, on the other were the defenders of the natural world. On one side were the perpetrators of big money politics, on the other were keepers of the plain democratic tradition. Does anyone believe those conflicts are behind us?
Which is not to say, of course, that Obama should begin talking like Tom Hayden. But it's worth being occasionally reminded that the Sixties weren't merely the cartoonish, narcissistic decade that keep showing up in John McCain ads, and were instead a moment of tremendous social change and unrest, the aftershocks of which are largely defining this election.
November 13, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
This is ridiculously defensive of Hayden. Obama constantly - CONSTANTLY - references the importance of the movement of the sixties. People stood up, giving him the opportunity to stand up now. But does that mean we have to remain there forever? Think about the 2004 election - if that was not re-fighting the sixties, nothing is.
Posted by: cms | Nov 13, 2007 10:31:48 AM
On the one side were those keeping women in inferior roles, on the other were those demanding an equal rights amendment.
IIRC, Jane Fonda might find that a bit rich. At least one description of the women's movement is that during a time of massive change on rights, women found themselves getting fucked over by liberal guys over issues of power, they got pissed, and they did something about it. It wasn't as simple as one side, the other side.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Nov 13, 2007 10:33:57 AM
Old problems, still neglected, but highly pertinent. Harry Truman's 1947 Full Employment Act is law but still not carried out. Eisenhower's worry in his farewell address about the military-industrial complex being too dominant is even more relevent today, and essentially nothing has been done to try to manage it.
Those who complain about the 60's issues being raised again are not complaining because the issues are stale, but instead because they thought their dragons had been slain and now find them resurgent and breathing fire again.
Ezra refers to these old issues raised again as aftershocks. I'd suggest that a better metaphor (given the healthcare trope oft found here) might be the recurrent symptoms of an untreated disease, which without treatment will likely to be fatal in nature.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Nov 13, 2007 10:39:10 AM
Obama needs to take ownership of the 60's legacy-- and a part of doing that is consigning Tom Hayden to the past. It's not about Tom anymore, and not Jane either.
Posted by: MattF | Nov 13, 2007 10:40:17 AM
As someone born after the sixties were over, I have a question as to who would seek to make the decade "cartoonish" or "narcissistic". Read the opine by Ezra and you will see that this particular characterization appeared in "John McCain ads" and the like. I say the like, because, there is a certain personality type that would seek to deride the era bacause they either A.Seek to dis-associate themselves from their own behavior in the era. Or B. Have a disdain for the empowerment of groups that did not share a certain "heritage" made during the era. Or C. Both. This leads me to an even larger question. If the country continues to allow people of his ilk to push the "culture war" born out of the sixties iteration to the front of the political conversation,when it is now an obvious red-herring, when do we have the conversations about the future of the country and the fundamentals with which said future will be built upon? I.e. Dollars and cents, and whom will have access to these elements?
Posted by: onlinesavant | Nov 13, 2007 10:51:23 AM
All men are beasts Tim. But feminism certainly has a longer deeper history than a reaction to SDS'ers asking the girls to go get the coffee. In both 20's Germany & England leftist/feminist agendas were vitiated by liberals making minor welfare-state concessions that reinforced gender roles.
I am not a real fan of Hayden, although I suppose everyone should read the Port Huron thing and Frantz Falon and Debord & the 2nd wave feminist works. Especially if you think modernism/postmodernism changed, like everything and it's all really new. But mostly the 60s were just about competition over bourgious privilege and power. We got Friday casual. Hayden wasn't a revolutionary.
Better is 1875-1925.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Nov 13, 2007 10:56:06 AM
I mean just compare Emma Goldman & the Pankhursts to Steinem & Freidan. The 60s were when everyone just wanted a bigger slice of the neo-liberal pie. The lesson from the 60s is that the bosses...whatever. Carry on.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Nov 13, 2007 11:03:59 AM
WHY Obama believes that these battles are done and finished? Because for his kind - the 60s were INDEED nothing like a cartoonish, narcissistic but were instead a moment of tremendous social change and unrest, the aftershocks of which are largely defining this election.
Him running for president... oh Ezra - where do I begin?
I think NOBODY knows better among the candidates what the 60s where about than Obama. He does not have to act black! McCain has not clue - he was a soldier in a war that is not different than any other war that has ever been waged. But there were black soldiers in Vietnam and back home in the US their sisters were murdered by Federal Troops and they were not allowed to share the same buss with whites...
What exactly do you want Obama to do? He refers to the 60s all the time in fact - but apparently too subtle for most to comprehend? He implies that the problems we want to finally overcome have been around before the last administration. He implies that he will be no Kennedy or Clinton but will stick to his word. He uses the words "gays and lesbians" on Meet The Press rather than "homosexuals"? He tells a black crowed that his grandfather in Africa living under British rule was motivated by what happened in Burning-Ham and that was the sole reason for him...
I really do not know where to begin. But Barack KNOWS that the 60s were more than Vietnam (McCain) and Woodstock (Hillary)! It is Hillary and McCain and Tom Hayden who are old but have less clue than Barack? How did you manage to turn this against him again???
You also claimed that Hillary has more expirience than him when in fact he has served longer than her? There is nothing wrong with having personal emotional preferces that are not based on tangible arguments - you can go public with your feelings? It is also ok to change them later. Being undecided should not mean speaking in strange tongues only?
Posted by: Hugo Pottisch | Nov 13, 2007 11:33:55 AM
many people who were in college in the sixties, believed in studying the humanities...believed in reading great literature...believed in the peace corps, that accountants and business majors did that because they could do nothing else...we believed that bodies were beautiful as they were, with just a few flowers here and there...we believed that peace could be possible..canals and oceans could still be clean..that we felt we had progressed to a world of equality.
...it was a time of visionary thinking....
a meteoric burst.
but how very ephemeral.
it was a great time to be under thirty.
there were so many heroes. thinkers. activists.
whatever came after, whatever crushing blows turned it all around....it was a very amazing time to have lived through.
and tom hayden is right...this is not a time of passionate idealism, ideas infusing a whole generation, and strong collective voices.
Posted by: jacqueline | Nov 13, 2007 12:10:01 PM
"The 60s were when everyone just wanted a bigger slice of the neo-liberal pie."
Did we watch the same movie? Although the results did not match the rhetoric in many areas, what strikes me about the difference between then and now is the militant anti-capitalism of much of the left during the Sixties (roughly 1963 to 1972) - and by "left" I don't mean the liberal establishment parties of the U.S. and other western nations. I mean the grass-roots, activist, street-fighting, smash-the-state left -- which was all over the place: literally, and (unfortunately) figuratively as well.
Posted by: mijnheer | Nov 13, 2007 12:29:50 PM
I realize that Obama recognizes the significance and importance of the era for him personally. Many of the progressive policies that allowed him to access the accoutrements of upper-middle class success were the result of the reforms instituted during that era. What angers me about Obama is that he wants to use the successes of the 60s to inspire his campaign–one largely centered upon him as an embodiment of these policies truimphant; listen to his “standing-up” rhetoric from the JJ Dinner speech this past Saturday. At the same time he sets himself up as an alternative to the supposed chaos and polarity of that era. But the righteous indignation that resulted in the polarity he now decries was integral to the success of the policies from which he now benefits. To critisize that is the worst type of moral cowardice.
It is the taint of combat that Obama has successfully avoided that drags down Hillary Clinton the same way that it dragged down Jesse Jackson in 1984. To make an example of onself, to court controversy in order to overcome social constraints–these are the battles that Clinton as a woman and Jackson as an African-American fought during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s: HRC refused to take her husbands last name during Bill’s first term; she was the first female partner at the Rose Law Firm; the only First Lady to take a publicly meaningful role in her husband’s administration.
African-Americans don’t support Hillary because they think a black candidate unelectable. They support Hillary because they recognize in her the same types of wounds that many of them suffered. I’m sure Obama has suffered the indignity of racial prejudice. But his election as president of the Harvard Law Review, in addition to being notable because of his race, was also remarkable because he was the compromise candidate–an African-American male as the compromise candidate, without the taint of controversy. Obama is post-Civil Rights. To implicitly critisize the tactics of those that came before is nothing short of ungrateful.
Posted by: sean | Nov 13, 2007 1:55:21 PM
How about a little historical review?
The radicals of the 60s wanted to end a war of aggression in Vietnam, liberate women, end racial discrimination, liberate recreational drug users, and make it possible for even the poor and disabled to live a decent life.
40 years later, we are ruled by a government engaged in a war of aggression in Iraq and dedicated to making abortion illegal in the US. This government is so widely understood to be racist that almost all non-whites vote for the opposition party. The government spends $40 billion a year imprisoning marijuana smokers. The poor and disabled, including many veterans, live in alleys in cardboard boxes.
And this is all before we even start to talk about the environment and the need to make a 180-degree turn in our policies and devote every effort to undoing the damage we've done.
Call me a skeptic, but I'd say the battles of the 60s are far from over.
Posted by: serial catowner | Nov 13, 2007 1:59:18 PM
I agree that the "battles of the 60s are far from over". But the reason Obama is right and Hayden is wrong is that continuing to have the same debate that we have had since the 1960's isn't going to solve modern problems, because everyone's position on that debate is intractable. People have long since made up their minds about Vietnam, drugs, the sexual revolution, feminism, traditional religion vs. exotic forms of spirituality, popular music, etc.
So, you can continue refighting the battles of the 60's over and over again, or you can try to move the country forward. Yes, in moving the country forward, there's going to be some working together with people on the other side of the 60's cultural divide, and, in a sense, that will be a repudiation of things that Tom Hayden believes in. But it's the only way to get to progress, whereas if we elect Hillary Clinton, we will just continue to have the same old debates (which, by the way, benefits the Clintons because they can get away with extremely right wing goverance while keeping the base busy with partisanship and the culture war).
Posted by: Dilan Esper | Nov 13, 2007 4:33:49 PM
Most of what Hayden claims credit for is the fruit of the 1950s if not the 1920s. The people of the 'Sixties' invented good government? Equality for women? A safe and healthy environment? Tell it to the men who litigated Brown v. Board of Education, the women who pushed for suffrage, and Upton Sinclair. My problem with the 'Sixties' generation is they take credit for every noble and just impulse in humanity like they invented it. Nevermind the fact that the 60s generation made little infrastructure investment for the generations that follow. Ports, electricity, highways, bridges, manufacturing -- all in a state of decay because of the inattention from pie-in-the-sky 60s folk. You landed on the moon. Hooray. You also managed to almost never pay the bills, elect one president who left no footprints in an unprecidented time of peace and prosperity and another that is a fracking disaster. Thanks for the TANG, now go away.
Posted by: joejoejoe | Nov 13, 2007 4:58:39 PM
Agreed 100% with joejoejoe. The glamorization of the 1960s requires that the 1950s be painted as some kind of dark age, when in reality it was nothing of the kind. The 1960s simply saw a continuation of societal trends that started in the post-WWII era, and it saw many harmful excesses.
In response to serial catowner:
"The radicals of the 60s wanted to end a war of aggression in Vietnam, liberate women, end racial discrimination, liberate recreational drug users, and make it possible for even the poor and disabled to live a decent life."
And how did they actually accomplish any of this?
End Vietnam? That didn't happen until 1975, until mainstream America was thoroughly sick of it. The angry, anti-American student marchers probably delayed the end of the war by frightening ordinary Americans into voting for people like Nixon.
Liberate women and end racial discrimination? That was accomplished by Lyndon B. Johnson and his Congressional caucus, not by Sixties "radicals." And the groundwork for racial liberation had been laid by the staid NAACP (which ran demonstrations with polite, suit-wearing marchers) and Brown v. Board of Education (a 1954 case). Nor was Betty Friedan usually associated with the wild-eyed excesses of 1960s radicals.
Liberate recreational drug users? The primary reason marijuana is still illegal is because of its association with dirty hippies. Your generation set that cause back by decades.
Make it possible for even the poor and disabled to live a decent life? Again, that was LBJ, not Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.
The self-absorbed losers of the 1960s threw away the New Deal and squandered the potential of the Great Society by frightening the pants off of Middle America with their self-absorbed antics. Only in that kind of environment was it conceivable for someone like Richard "silent majority" Nixon to be elected President. They did make some great music, though.
Posted by: Josh G. | Nov 13, 2007 6:28:05 PM
"the self-absorbed losers of the 1960s"
as i remember, many of us were fairly involved in social and political issues, and with less cynicism, a great sense of hope and more generosity of spirit.
the marches in selma, the headstart program, the peace corps, highly organized demonstrations, lots of experimentation in music and art, interest in psychology, an awareness and interest in cultural, religious and spiritual thought outside of the judeo-christian mainstream, the desire to study and explore outside of the united states, new frontiers beginning in science, women feeling a new sense of independence and openness.
...it felt inclusive and open. activism was encouraged..it was an exalted time.
the universities were alive!!!!!
....as i remember life before the internet, there was less self-absorption, a greater openness in communication and a lots of curiosity.
...maybe you had to be there.
and yes, the music was amazing!
Posted by: jacqueline | Nov 13, 2007 8:17:27 PM
It was the Fifties generation that landed on the moon. And blame Tang on them too. The Vietnam War didn't end because "mainstream America was thoroughly sick of it." It ended because the Vietnamese were willing to pay the price in blood to defeat the American invaders, just as they had defeated the French before them. Sure, they were helped a little bit by the millions of "anti-American" marchers in the U.S., just as all those "anti-American" protesters against Bush's Iraq War are doing their little bit -- or are they frightening people into voting for the Republicans? Okay, on second thought, let's blame everything on "dirty hippies".
Posted by: mijnheer | Nov 13, 2007 8:19:39 PM
By the way, I want to thank all those tens of thousands of American war resisters who came to Canada in the Sixties and helped make Canada the place it is today -- just as all those refugees from the American Revolution helped to shape English-speaking Canada in the 18th century and defend it from foreign invasion in the early 19th century.
Posted by: mijnheer | Nov 13, 2007 8:29:28 PM
mijnheer is right about TANG (1957, General Foods) and most of the space program. I think it's being too tough of a grader to give the moon landing to the 50s generation - it did take place in 1969 and the Apollo program grew almost entirely out of developments that took place in the 1960s (Yuri Gagarin's orbit, the 'space gap', JFK's need for a symbolic 'New Frontier', and LBJ's Texas roots ('Houston, we have pork'.).
I'm not trying to belittle the 60s generation. I just wish they had a little more humility and acknowledged they didn't invent liberty and equality on the earth and that they didn't build much of, well, anything in the way of infrastructure. Ideas are great but in the long run Eisenhower's Interstate Highway system was a hell of a lot more powerful force for good than Flower Power.
Posted by: joejoejoe | Nov 13, 2007 8:37:41 PM
"i just wish they had a little more humility and acknowledged they didnt invent liberty and equality on the earth"
it was an inspiring and empowering time for those of us who lived through it...and the years of our lives are as precious to us, as yours may be to you.
...for those of us who were activists, we felt we made a difference.
we have beome storytellers now.
that happens when people grow older.
we remember distant times.
we try to share what we lived through, with others.
that also, is part of being human.
it isnt about humility or inventing liberty and equality.
even if the social condition changes, the human condition does not.
there was a lot of positive social change and progress at that time, it is is exhilarating and poignant to look back on it and remember those times.
there is always more work to be done.
Posted by: jacqueline | Nov 13, 2007 9:48:58 PM
The one joy I have to look forward to is that I am likely to live to see the reins of power pried from the boomers.
Never have so many done so little for anyone else. Clinton and Bush are emblems of a generation. Unable to rise above their own pathologies, incapable of embracing a purpose beyond themselves, they left a wasteland for all who supported them. It took the Democratic party years to recover from Clinton's "successes", the jury's still out on how long W will have kneecapped the Republicans. Probably we will have to endure another decade of fruitless boomer "leadership" before we can move forward.
Posted by: Don | Nov 14, 2007 3:51:33 AM
Hayden is overstating the case a little bit (a number of the things that began in the 1960s did not come into fruition until the early 1970s). But what Hayden is saying is that Obama believes that he is entitled merely because he is black.
And Hayden appears to be correct in that assessment.
Posted by: raj | Nov 14, 2007 6:51:53 AM
It's always great to see young people get involved- although it's no great novelty to see that involvement take the form of criticizing their parents.
It's too bad, though, when they're not very well informed. Joejoe, for example, doesn't seem to understand how much freeway building took place in the 60s. From his comment, it's plain to see he wasn't there.
Let's consider an average "greatest generation" person. In 1950 they were 30- in 1960 they were 40. They had built suburbs and were abandoning the cities.
Their society was a simple one. J Edgar Hoover was blackmailing half of the Congress. Curtis LeMay was demanding an atomic attack on Russia.
In Seattle in about 1961 two policemen could murder two unarmed black men by shooting them in the back and be exonerated by the police department in just a few days. The police collected blackmail payments from gay bars. In the black neighborhoods they went in the bars and robbed patrons at gunpoint. Those who paid protection money could openly operate storefront prostitution rings and gambling joints. Black people found north of the shipping canal after sunset were taken back by the police to the ghetto "where they belonged". No women or minorities were employed as police officers, firemen, or linemen for City Light.
At this time, the typical "greatest generation" cohort was about 40 years old.
So, who should get the credit for what seems hard to say- and it gets even harder when "the dirty hippies" are blamed for electing Nixon. Why, it's almost as though the people who were actually old enough to vote had no will of their own and were forced, like zombies, to vote for Nixon by their fear of the "hippies".
Maybe the "hippies" got a little help in looking scary from the Reader's Digest.
Posted by: serial catowner | Nov 14, 2007 9:44:52 AM
In any case, marijuana is not illegal because "hippies smoked it". Marijuana is illegal because if pot isn't a problem, America doesn't have a drug problem. Less than one per cent of us have a problem with drugs that actually harm you, if we exclude alcoholism and tobacco smoking.
If America didn't have a drug problem you could buy pain relief for pennies instead of dollars. Without a drug problem one out of five black men would have their votes restored. Without a drug problem there would be no possible rationale for testing urine instead of behavior.
And if you think this is unimportant, well, that's $40 billion spent last year imprisoning pot smokers. That's ten thousand black voters disenfranchised in Florida in 2000. Maybe that's your car being seized by the police after they detect cocaine residue on your $20 bill, which they also seize.
It's not wild-eyed radicalism to be aware of the costs of all this. In fact, it's the essence of real conservatism.
Posted by: serial catowner | Nov 14, 2007 10:20:45 AM
you know, this thread has had me thinking about the sixties.
...it was an era that was defined by an imagination and will to see the world in a different way.
it was first a spiritual movement, that really was about a higher plane of thinking.
and lennon's song, "imagine"...really was an image that we thought with spiritual evolution, seemed attainable. it was a borderless way of thinking.
i was wondering to myself when it ended.
and i think the door closed on that era with the manson murders.
i remember one morning opening the newspaper, and reading about those murders.
and then, i realized that something that i could only call evil, would always exist.
that no matter how much good will,effort,intent, knowledge, organization, hard work there might be for a shining cause or ideal, that the other force would be there to meet it from the other direction.
there was a palpable initiative for change and growth in the sixties. it felt like a euphoria.
it was a brief time when one could glimpse what collective good will and enlightenment could bring.
there were actions that catalyzed and invoked social progress, but the human condition remained.
and there would always be another manson, another war, another flag, another religious battle, another personal jealousy or slight that could tip the balance of the world with a person powerful enough and angry enough to become a destroyer of dreams.
one of the messages of the sixties, was peace and love. and i still believe that love...love of a generation of children in our midst, love of many lonely and disenfranchised people, love and awareness of people without food, family, friendship, health, care, education,, support and appreciation is always the first battle to be fought.
when we lose that vision and stop fighting for the collect health of our society, we lose our soul and our upward path for civilization.
there is still so much work to be done.
good thoughts before thanksgiving.
children of all generations must continue to dream the dream and do the work.
Posted by: jacqueline | Nov 14, 2007 11:07:04 AM
