I was alive, though young, during the so-called Vietnam Era. The ranks of the Left were swelled by the aging Baby Boomers at this time as that enormous mass of population reached voting age. Like most young people, they looked for a way to find their adult identity by taking views opposite from their parents. Since their parents had come of age during WWII (when Nazism was defeated through overseas intervention) and the opening years of the Cold War (when the spread of communism was halted through armed conflict in Korea), the BB’s were almost compelled to embrace many lefty causes and parties. And the more radical and outrageous the better since it would provide a greater cry of outrage from shocked parents. (Sort of like the role that piercings and tattoos fill today.)
The stance that many of these kids took was simple enough to be easily understood, yet nuanced enough to lend the lie that they were deep thinkers. Foreign intervention was bad, particularly in the 3rd World countries being used by the superpowers as proxy battlegrounds. Communism was good, and any reports of massacres and mass graves were dismissed as right-wing propaganda while the tales of the excesses of anti-communist dictators were repeated ad nauseum in coffee houses and campus dorm rooms.
This would pretty much have resulted in nothing more than a few elections where the Democrat candidates had an advantage, if it wasn’t for the Vietnam War. Here was a case of a bungled proxy war on foreign soil, mishandled and mismanaged from the first, providing ample grist for the Left’s media machine. Many of these young BB’s had their first taste of adult responsibility when they marched in mass protests and risked arrest. These were heady times for young people.
But the radical Left would have still lost much of its support as its core aged and gained a more balanced view of the world. The Watergate scandals killed that hope, though. Here was an American President, a conservative, elected by an overwhelming majority, who eagerly took part in criminal activity.
This had the profound effect of convincing many people involved in hard-left causes that they were RIGHT!!! There really was a vast right-wing conspiracy! It wasn’t just a paranoid theory with no basis in reality, like your parents said! There really were people working for the Republicans who sneered at the law of the land even while swearing to protect it! And the fight against such forces was the fight of the angels.
This also convinced the radical Left that they were morally superior to…well, just about anyone. They could do no wrong, nothing said was out of line, as long as they fought the good fight and stood up against The Man! And, of course, thinking about it too much would take up valuable time better spent constructing giant puppets for the next protest.
In this post I discussed an effort by the anti-American, hard-left British newspaper The Guardian. They tried to influence the upcoming American election by urging their readers to write letters and email to undecided voters in my home state of Ohio. Although the paper was very careful to never actually come out in favor of any one candidate, they published 3 letters urging the election of Kerry as examples to their readers as the correct way to get it done.
A foreign newspaper indulging in partisan politics in an American election is bad enough, but the letters are perfect examples of what I was talking about above. Arrogant, condescending, clueless. No wonder they outraged the very US voters they were trying to sway. They eventually called a halt to the project even while claiming that they were the victims of right-wing hatemongering.
This refusal to wake up and smell reality is breathtaking, but at least the Left in general and The Guardian specifically could console themselves by claiming that the methods used were peaceful, their stated purpose the lofty undertaking to save lives. The moral high ground was theirs.
In the link above, a columnist for The Guardian named Charlie Brooker openly fantasizes for a whacko assassin to rid the world of George W. Bush. Before he does so, Mr. Brooker takes the time to list how he finds Bush’s mannerisms to be annoying. The rationale, near as I can tell, seems to be that anyone who comes across so poorly during a televised debate deserves to be killed.
Of course, we’re dealing with a Brit here. He’s not an American, and he has no power to influence the election except through his writings. This might very well be why he’s so shrill and (let’s face it) insane. The article in question is an act of desperation so deep, an indication of a sense of helplessness so profound, that his loved ones should initiate a suicide watch. But it’s not like anyone with a strong stomach can’t find numerous examples from Americans that are just as bad or worse. They just don’t crop up in the mainstream press.
I’m really curious to see how this will play out in the next 30 years. It could be that the Left’s odious and repugnant message will find willing supporters in the general population and it will become mainstream once more. (In which case they’d be vindicated in their claims that the average American voter is too stupid to be trusted with democracy.) Or it could be that there’s a backlash against such violent and irrational rhetoric, and the majority of voters a generation hence will treat most of the present Left the same way they do the guys who wear tin foil hats and screech about mind-control rays from CIA satellites.
The reason why I’m speculating about the future is because I recently was engaged in a debate with someone who claimed that the Republican Party was scheming to destroy the Democrats. The only thing I could say was that, should the Democratic Party close its doors for good in the next few years, it won’t be the fault of the Republicans.
I’ve been hearing more and more rhetoric encouraging us to vote Democratic to “save the Republic”. Even Andrew Sullivan, reaching new heights of incoherence, has argued the Democratic Party is so messed up Americans owe it to themselves to vote for Kerry to give Democrats an opportunity to straighten themselves out. Logic like that makes my head hurt. America survived without the Whigs; we can survive without the Democrats.
I’m also a baby boomer that served in Viet Nam and attended college at the height of the anti-war movement. As an adult during that era, I recognized then and after how far the popular history written by the left about the war, the politics, and the players, differed from reality. I fought for Westmoreland, one of America’s great men, and he was never the man the media and acedemics protrayed.
I wrote a post last August that the Swift Boat Vets were going to cause the popular history of the Viet Nam era to be rewritten in ways that would drive the left berserk. I’ve been enjoying the spectacle of their reactionary, ideological attempts to silence the truth ever since.
The link to the Guardian column by Charlie Brooker is now broken. I don’t think you got the link wrong, either. Eamonn Fitzgerald links to that piece as well (I haven’t checked any other blogs yet), and his link is also broken.
I was able to find this note from the editors in the archive of Brooker’s columns. They now claim that Brooker was making an “ironic joke”, “flippant and tasteless”, but not “a call to action”. Ha! The weasels …
Thank you kindly, Chuck. I should have taken a screenshot.
James
I sent this link to the Guardian.
I read an interesting article about the ’72 election and Nixon’s stunning 72% majority. I imagine it was hard to think of anything positive to say that night at the Democratic concession/wake, but Sargent Shriver reportedly told the stunned, defeated McGovernites: “You are the future.”
And now it has come to pass; they grew up and took positions in the media, government, academia, and the arts and have molded a society that suits their juvenile world view, at least on the surface. I can only hope that the sane bb’s and the rest of the country restore reason to the republic before it’s too late.
By adopting and wanting their rank-and-file believers to begin using the label PROGRESSIVE to describe themselves, the Clinton-led Democrats are well on their way to becoming a de facto SOCIALIST and COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE USA, the one that is trying to pervert, destabilize, asnd kill America for national and anti-sovereign Socialism, Communism, and a Communist world order disguised as GLOBALISM-INTERNATIONALISM. The Clintons are for Communism and Russia-China, aka Communist Asia, and they and their Communist/Anti-AMerican cabal have no intention of letting America in any form, traditional Free, Republican, and DemoCapitalist; or any future Socialist or Communist Amerika, and by extens the West also, go on dominating the world or world affairs. THINK OF ONE EACH OF THE NYC TWIN TOWERS REPRESENTING THE COMPETITIVE -ISMS OF AMERICA, ONE FOR THE GOP-RIGHT, THE OTHER FOR THE DEMOCRATS/LEFT – IFF RADICAL ISLAM ON 9-11 = FAILED/ANGRY/POWER-MANIC LEFTISM-SOCIALISM-COMMUNISM, THEN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TOWERS SYMBOLIZES THE SUDDEN, UNILATERAL, AND UNCONDITIONAL DEATH AND DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING AMERICA AND BOTH PARTIES, ET AL, ANYONE AND EVERYONE, ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, STANDS FOR! POTUS Democratic candidate KERRY reportedly is being cousneled and advised by the Clintons, being mentored by a Bill Clinton whom now infers or admits to being POTUS only via ELECTION FRAUD worse for America, Kerry may likely receive the aid and assistance of a Clinton political machine that resorted to fraud in order to get Bill elected while the 1980’s and Bush 1 Reagan-Republican economy was STILL well-expanding with seemingly no end in sight. The Clintons will likely NOT care iff Kerry becomes POTUS vv FRAUD because they are dedicated Commies and Anti-AMericans to begin with, out to discredit, destabilize, and destroy America for Socialism, Communism, and MOscow-Beijing/Asia no matter whom GOP-DEM is in the White House, JUST AS THEY DON’T CARE IFF DUBYA WINS BECAUSE THEY KNOW IF AMERICA DOES NOT ATTACK OR MAKE WAR AGAINST IRAN, NORTH KOREA, …ROGUES, ETAL. IRAN AND NORTH KOREA, ETAL. AND INTERNAT TERROR WILL WAR OR INDUCE AMERICA TO MAKE WAR AGAINST IRAN AND NORTH KOREA, ETC. 9-11 AND RADICAL ISLAM ARE JUST PC, DIVERSIONARY, PROXIES AND MERCENARIES FOR THE FAILED LEFT AND INTERNATIONAL/GLOBAL SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM – Regional nuke war or conventional war, the REAL BATTLEFIELD is for the domestic control of hyperpower-and-still-expanding, too successful, America and Washington DC! The Failed Left is in “FINAL STRUGGLE/CONFLICT”, kill or be killed, rule or slave, mode – they can be “AT WAR”, but don’t want America to be NO MATTER HOW MANY “TERROR” ATTACKS OCCUR AGAINST AMERICA, NOR HOW MANY AMERICAN MILFORS DIE OVERSEAS DEFENDING AMERICA! LEFTISM =ISLAM = ULTIMATELY ABOUT POWER, aka SUBMISSION, sub aka WHOM MAKES THE RULES! CLINTONISM > GOP-RIGHT = Republicans and Fascists TO KILL NOW; Democrats/Left = Republicans and Fascists TO KILL LATER – CLINTON-MENTORED KERRY IS BEING “LIKE BUSH” FOR A REASON, PEOPLE, AND THAT REASON(S) T’AINT GOOD FOR THE FUTURE OF AMERICA AS A FREE AND SOVEREIGN NATION, GOVERNED BY ITS OWN!
The above post by Mediola is a perfect example why some people refer to Republicans as Right wing nuts or wing nuts for short. Especially the use of CAPS. THOSE ARE KILLERS.
British humor is not what once it was.
I wonder how much of the war protest was actually driven over outrage motivated by the draft, and how much was driven by a misguided believe that we were harming the locals by depriving them of the benefits of Communism.
I’m willing to believe that some of the protestors pretended to believe the latter, having given up hope that a protest against the draft itself would be seen as anything more than selfish cowardice. While figures like Heinlein and Freidman were willing to attack the draft separately from the war, the targets of the draft might be seen as having more of a conflict of interest.
I’m thinking that if we’d fought Vietnam with an all-volunteer force, we’d have stayed in until the other side threw in the towel.
Ken. The proof is in the pudding. Nixon wanted the protests to end. He ended the draft, and they did, at least in size and intensity. Most of the protesting was about not going.
Anonymous, Joseph’s idiosyncratic viewpoint and lavish use of CAPITALS should not cause you to stereotype him. I think he represents a wing which is all his own.
Dave, and G&S were political humor, at that.
“Ken. The proof is in the pudding. Nixon wanted the protests to end. He ended the draft, and they did, at least in size and intensity.”
Didn’t he also being removing American troops at the same time?
Are you loosing ….. your cool?
Ranting, ranting is it all you are left with?
Blaming the enemy because you have not prevailed is old. But you are the future isn’t it?
Dave, and G&S were political humor, at that.
Yup. That was my point. It’s possible to advocate something very outrageous (as the Lord High Executioner does) and still be funny. Mr. Brooker isn’t. And it’s not just time and distance.
“Are you loosing ….. your cool?
Ranting, ranting is it all you are left with?
Blaming the enemy because you have not prevailed is old. But you are the future isn’t it?”
What are you talking about, Peter? What’s this comment in reference to?
James
Very well put, Mr. Rummel.
I was alive AND an enthusiastic participant in the ” ’68 movement”, and your take is pretty darn accurate. My personal thought is that the US left “died” in the mid-70’s, when they betrayed their own pacifist and anti-fascist ideals, and that we’re just seeing the desperate death-throes now.
That’s not necessarily good news….there could be a smaller, but much more violent faction before it’s over. I dunno, but I’d like to write a piece about it before long, and I’ll definitely link to this article. Thanks.