Times.konradturski.com – Political and Economic Commentary by a Postgrad in London

With his Independence Day speech on patriotism, Barack Obama may  have unintentionally marked a second unlikely milestone: the Left’s decisive abandonment of the 1960’s. Though Democrats conceded(perhaps wisely) to the virtue of “Supporting Our Troops” in the immediate aftermath of the Afghanistan War, Obama’s well-intentioned pleasantries on the virtues of honouring veterans and moving beyond the fiery clashes of Vietnam era mark a new, institutionalized development away from an era that, in many ways, marked the pinnacle of Leftist strength and a certain something more.

There is a certain logic to this shift. Perhaps because it also begot a period of weakness – crowned by the apologist presidency of Jimmy Carter, and replaced by the ideologic vigor of the Reagan era – many in the Left have followed Obama and other party leaders without regret. We have proven increasingly willing to abandon  uncompromising anti-war and anti-government stances in favor of a quiet acknowledgement that excesses were made.

This is a mistake.

Since it is often said that those who were there would never remember the Sixties, I can perhaps hope that my own experience – having been born two decades later – can provide the narrowest insight into what is lost by abandoning a generation of youth protestors to the dustbins of impracticality or extremism. Or history. Like the Europe-wide”Springtime of Peoples” in 1848, the 1960’s marked a global tidal wave of transformation that was as political as it was social. History has a way of remembering those political changes – whether they unravel a Hapsburg dynasty or Richard Nixon – while quietly sanitizing the elan, or the spirit, of those generations that stood up to say no. Consequences are remembered, but actions, motivations, and dreams are sanitized to the point where they cannot be related to and, importantly, cannot be re-dreamed.

In a curious irony, politics has maintained a memory that history has yet to convincingly record. By fighting a futile battle to uphold the Sixties – from Carter to Dukakis – the Democrats held true to the twentieth century’s own “Springtime of Peoples.” It was Clinton’s concept of New Democrats and Obama’s new-found centrism that have now marked the slow abortion of these ideals.

On July 4th, 2008, Obama and the United States have come full circle: we are back at a symbolical 1959 traveling backwards through the decades. Obama’s calls for patriotism and unity are the rallying cries of Cold War insecurity, and World War valor. The Sixties, by contrast, have been institutionally abandoned by the very forces that waged them.

This is not a proud day for Progress.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under konrad's life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.