The Changed Times Don’t Last
Nov 1, 2010
David Mills
Driving home yesterday, listening to the local “Where the music matters” station, I found myself belting out “The Times They Are a-Changing,” to my children’s amusement, and suddenly realized that it’s a really dumb song. I hear it now very differently than when I first heard it as a young teenager, some years after it appeared, when it was already an anthem spoken of by the politically engaged the way northerners once spoke of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Then, I was fourteen or fifteen and understood the world better than my parents, understood its needs so well that I volunteered for the McGovern campaign. (I would not do that now.) The fourth verse got my attention, since I hear it very differently. The fourth verse is the one in which Dylan tells parents not to “criticize what you can’t understand,” and continues.
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command,
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand,
For the times they are a-changin’.
Then, it seemed a declaration of enlightenment and progress. Now, it seems a self-serving charter for liberating oneself not only from one’s parents but from all they metaphorically represent, from Moses with his laws to that uncle who used to warn you about saving every penny for the future. Which liberation, speaking as a parent and one who respects all we metaphorically represent, seems disastrous.
The young counterculture’s self-conception—its ideology—was as fluffy as an angora rabbit. What exactly it meant no one quite knew, except that the old world (their parents’ world) was dying and deserved it and the new one was a-borning and would be much better, if not transcendently better.
For that, the song, with its string of images unrelated to any proposition, proved an excellent anthem. (And the tune was catchy, too.) As one critic of Dylan’s music wrote, “Dylan's aim was to ride upon the unvoiced sentiment of a mass public—to give that inchoate sentiment an anthem and give its clamour an outlet. He succeeded, but the language of the song is nevertheless imprecisely and very generally directed.”
Imprecision and generality are the friends of the ideologue and the romantic.
But the times didn’t change. Or they didn’t change for long. People remained what they had been. After the brief period when the new society seemed real and permanent, people acted as St. Paul would have been predicted, if anyone had thought to consult his letters.
Countercultural stores popped up all over town when I was young, stores where the revolution in manners and morals was thought inevitable and making a profit and relying on the law were dismissed as relics of the old uptight acquisitive materialistic square world. People congratulated themselves on doing business in a new way, without the materialism and selfishness of the old way.
But it didn’t last. It didn’t last long at all. It lasted about as long as the owners took to pay their suppliers and see how much they had left over to live on, and to find that their fellow revolutionaries would happily slip some small and expensive item into a pocket and walk out of the store. It lasted until they read their first spreadsheet and caught the second thief.
The hippest of the stores—the one that sold obscene “Zap” comic books and various devices for getting high—quickly got a reputation as the store in town that would most quickly and vigorously prosecute shoplifters. Whereas the old man who for years had run the drugstore down the street might let a kid go with a warning, or a call to his parents, the hippie owner of this store would call the police. The store’s clientele regularly called the police “the pigs,” without dissent from people who relied on those policeman—all townies and therefore easily patronized—to keep order.
The store nevertheless energetically sold Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, which taught its readers how to shoplift, among other acts of alleged resistance to the establishment. I dimly remember someone being prosecuted for stealing the book. That might have been a rumor, but if it was, it was a perfectly believable one.
Why did things seem so promising for a while? What made the counterculture the period so many remember so fondly that they have never stopped trying to recreate it in some partial and modified way? The answer, I think, is that they remember it the way a man of declining powers remembers his first serious girlfriend.
An ideology is a kind of falling in love. The man gripped by an ideology is like the young man newly in love with a young woman. Suddenly morning is breaking, the birds are singing, a thousand flowers are blooming, lions are lying down with lambs, and times are a-changin’. Suddenly the noisy neighbor, the pushy driver, the rude store clerk, the exploitative roommate, the sanctimonious aunt are all people one can easily humor or forgive.
That is what people remember most. They felt a growth in what the Christian would call charity, but it was artificial and temporary. It came from an adoring look from a fetching face, or from that and hormones. But they will remember forever what it was like when the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, and the times changed.
Of course, at some point the infatuation fades out. The good, enlightened, a changing times don’t last in the way and for the reason falling in love doesn’t last. The woman who had made the birds sing and the flowers bloom stops being as perfect as she was. She is selfish or petty or greedy, or, worse, no longer so indulgent as she had been.
And suddenly the noisy neighbor is a jerk, the pushy driver is a jerk, the clerk, the roommate, and the aunt are all jerks. The darker parts of St. Augustine and Jonathan Edwards now make sense. Charity is no longer so easy.
But they will still have the memories, and looking back at youth the illusion that that heightened state of being in love was the real world, and that their life since was a matter of sad compromises and failures. That is what makes the counterculture still so powerful an image of the good life for so many people who have made their way in the world in the traditional ways, and why they keep trying to recreate it. It was their first serious girlfriend.
David Mills is Deputy Editor of First Things. His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here. The Dylan critic quoted is Michael Gray, quoted in the Wikipedia entry on the song.
Comments:
11.1.2010 | 1:59am
Andrew Gilbert says:
I don't know David. That's one way to look at it. But in the context of late 1963 when Dylan wrote the song, the times were changing with the civil rights movement, and those changes have indeed lasted. It was a movement in which young people played a central role, including young whites and blacks who were rejecting the counsel of parents that change should be slow and deliberate. Doesn't seem so silly to me...
11.1.2010 | 3:11am
Don Roberto Hill says:
I just happened to drive past "People's Park" today. I'm always reminded of the tear gas wafting over my elementary school, a mile away. Runaways still shoot heroin there, guarded by their faithful pit bulls. Seems to me the authorities sent the wrong message to the spoiled anarchists, who acted as if they thought material wealth simple materialized, who thought THC, LSD or psilocybin gave them insights denied to their parents and teachers. Dylan was certainly one of their heroes. Chaos and wasted years are their progeny.
11.1.2010 | 6:25am
Stuart Koehl says:
From the time I could read--which was when I was about three--I consumed history in enormous quantities. It annoyed my teachers, who wanted me to read "age appropriate" matter. I had little time and much disdain for fiction or romance at that point: why read made-up stories, when the true stories were so much more dramatic and interesting?
And so, by the time 1968 rolled around and I was all of twelve, the siren song of the counter-culture held no allure for me. I found the anti-war movement and its romantic view of the Viet Cong dangerously naive, foolish, even evil, and wanted nothing to do with it. I found the Left's rapturous embrace of socialism just as bad. And, come to think of it, I didn't much like the music, either. My family of reflexively liberal New Yorkers was not amused (neither were my teachers or many of my peers).
For such foresight and wisdom, I do deeply thank the study of history, which does show human nature to be unchanging, of societies making the same mistakes again and again, and of the strength and resilience of traditional institutions developing organically over the centuries.
OK, so taking Churchill's old aphorism at face value, at twenty I had no heart, but at least I did not have to wait until I was forty to grow a brain.
And so, by the time 1968 rolled around and I was all of twelve, the siren song of the counter-culture held no allure for me. I found the anti-war movement and its romantic view of the Viet Cong dangerously naive, foolish, even evil, and wanted nothing to do with it. I found the Left's rapturous embrace of socialism just as bad. And, come to think of it, I didn't much like the music, either. My family of reflexively liberal New Yorkers was not amused (neither were my teachers or many of my peers).
For such foresight and wisdom, I do deeply thank the study of history, which does show human nature to be unchanging, of societies making the same mistakes again and again, and of the strength and resilience of traditional institutions developing organically over the centuries.
OK, so taking Churchill's old aphorism at face value, at twenty I had no heart, but at least I did not have to wait until I was forty to grow a brain.
11.1.2010 | 7:27am
Stuart Koehl says:
The problem with Andrew Gilbert's assertion is the Civil Rights revolution had pretty much peaked by the time Dylan wrote "The Times They Are A-Changing". By most measures, blacks made their greatest progress in the period between 1950 and 1965, which progress then stalled and advanced only fitfully after the landmark Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts passed by the Johnson Administration as John Kennedy's legacy. A large portion of the blame can be attributed to the rise of identity politics, the very antithesis of Martin Luther King's vision of a colorblind society, but something made practically inevitable by the nature of the remedies for discrimination embedded in civil rights legislation.
That this kind of balkanizing group identification was both attractive and useful to the Left is obvious, and resulted in the erection of coalitions of the disenchanted seeking to gain power and divide the pie has plagued us ever since. Because most Americans are not idiots, and see this attempt at redistributionism for what it is, the Left has failed whenever it has attempted to place its agenda before the people in a general election (as we shall discover again tomorrow); hence the Left has relied almost exclusively on anti-democratic tactics (e.g., executive order, regulatory control and judicial fiat) to achieve its ends.
All of this was quite foreseeable, because it is the typical outcome of all dreamy-eyed utopian fantasies, such as those typified by Dylan's song. I doubt Dylan would write such drivel today.
That this kind of balkanizing group identification was both attractive and useful to the Left is obvious, and resulted in the erection of coalitions of the disenchanted seeking to gain power and divide the pie has plagued us ever since. Because most Americans are not idiots, and see this attempt at redistributionism for what it is, the Left has failed whenever it has attempted to place its agenda before the people in a general election (as we shall discover again tomorrow); hence the Left has relied almost exclusively on anti-democratic tactics (e.g., executive order, regulatory control and judicial fiat) to achieve its ends.
All of this was quite foreseeable, because it is the typical outcome of all dreamy-eyed utopian fantasies, such as those typified by Dylan's song. I doubt Dylan would write such drivel today.
11.1.2010 | 7:44am
Richard says:
Stuart Koehl,
I could write pages in praise and support of the wisdom of your observation of the vital importance of a knowledge in depth of history. It is a survival skill that we are debauching or abolishing.
As a soon to retire member of a college faculty, I watch a whole horde of younger faculty (some extremely ingenious and covered with the honors of academe) and a whole generation of empty though often winning students who think that they are creating the world that a wise, just and good creator would have crafted, if only he existed. The senior staff varies from informed but complaisant to simply clueless--champions of the underclass enjoying thousand dollar suits and blue ribbon wine cellars. These people are not ill intentioned--far from it. But they are frolicing at the foot of a trembling volcano.
I remember Ecclesiastes and can only think, "Alas, Babylon."
Best,
Richard
I could write pages in praise and support of the wisdom of your observation of the vital importance of a knowledge in depth of history. It is a survival skill that we are debauching or abolishing.
As a soon to retire member of a college faculty, I watch a whole horde of younger faculty (some extremely ingenious and covered with the honors of academe) and a whole generation of empty though often winning students who think that they are creating the world that a wise, just and good creator would have crafted, if only he existed. The senior staff varies from informed but complaisant to simply clueless--champions of the underclass enjoying thousand dollar suits and blue ribbon wine cellars. These people are not ill intentioned--far from it. But they are frolicing at the foot of a trembling volcano.
I remember Ecclesiastes and can only think, "Alas, Babylon."
Best,
Richard
11.1.2010 | 7:54am
David Mills says:
Andrew Gilbert: Read just as a song about the Civil Rights movement (it was recorded in 1963 and appeared in 1964), yes, but it wasn't, and isn't still, heard that way. Dylan himself kept performing it and helped make it into an anthem for the "new world" the young were supposedly making.
The changes brought by the Civil Rights movement have lasted, as well as all sorts of cultural and social effects from the counterculture's elevation of feeling and freedom, defined its way. I should have noted that, but I was trying to get at the movement's imperviousness to the realities of human nature, which struck even the fifteen year old me.
The changes brought by the Civil Rights movement have lasted, as well as all sorts of cultural and social effects from the counterculture's elevation of feeling and freedom, defined its way. I should have noted that, but I was trying to get at the movement's imperviousness to the realities of human nature, which struck even the fifteen year old me.
11.1.2010 | 8:19am
Joe DeVet says:
Besides the lyrics being empty and mostly vapid when one parses them, the voice was beyond annoying. It still is, if you have heard Dylan's late Christmas album. Christmas?
I was 18 when this song came out, and Dylan and PP&M, etc were all the rage. I got a second-hand guitar and learned to play from my dorm buddies, including the Travis pick, which was the one on PP&M's version of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." At the time, I was into the counterculture attitudes so prevalent.
These attitudes started to fail me when I got married and we began having children. Something about becoming a father caused me to re-evaluate the "changin'" proposals that were offered, and I began to see the folly of them, to recognize the eternal wisdom of the faith I was brought up in, and to begin embracing it as an adult. A Pearl of such great price! My children made me decide to buy the field in which I found it. "The child is father to the man."
One benefit of my children's instruction of me is to ask, when someone proffers change, exactly what, why, when, where and how will you change it, and to what end? Easy to have rejected Obama before trying him if these questions had been thoughtfully asked!
A further benefit was the extension of my folk music career. I'm an indifferent guitarist, and a bad singer--no audience would ever let me entertain them. But my kids, at least when they were little, did not know this. As a result, we shared many golden hours with me hacking on the guitar and croaking out the old PP&M, Kingston Trio, calypso, and random other songs (the ones within my limited capability). Then one day recently my youngest son told me he heard "Dont Think Twice" on the radio, done by the original songwriter. "Dad, you do that song a lot better than Dylan." God be praised for the children who raise us!
I was 18 when this song came out, and Dylan and PP&M, etc were all the rage. I got a second-hand guitar and learned to play from my dorm buddies, including the Travis pick, which was the one on PP&M's version of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." At the time, I was into the counterculture attitudes so prevalent.
These attitudes started to fail me when I got married and we began having children. Something about becoming a father caused me to re-evaluate the "changin'" proposals that were offered, and I began to see the folly of them, to recognize the eternal wisdom of the faith I was brought up in, and to begin embracing it as an adult. A Pearl of such great price! My children made me decide to buy the field in which I found it. "The child is father to the man."
One benefit of my children's instruction of me is to ask, when someone proffers change, exactly what, why, when, where and how will you change it, and to what end? Easy to have rejected Obama before trying him if these questions had been thoughtfully asked!
A further benefit was the extension of my folk music career. I'm an indifferent guitarist, and a bad singer--no audience would ever let me entertain them. But my kids, at least when they were little, did not know this. As a result, we shared many golden hours with me hacking on the guitar and croaking out the old PP&M, Kingston Trio, calypso, and random other songs (the ones within my limited capability). Then one day recently my youngest son told me he heard "Dont Think Twice" on the radio, done by the original songwriter. "Dad, you do that song a lot better than Dylan." God be praised for the children who raise us!
11.1.2010 | 8:31am
Asa Kraut says:
Speaking as a boring old fart with waning powers who came of age with the Sex Pistols and The Clash and who actually married his first serious girlfriend, whom he still loves and to whom he is still married, I was as self-consciously counter-cultural then as I am now. In other words I am just like Mr Mills and everyone else. We all grew up to become our parents.
11.1.2010 | 8:32am
Stuart Koehl says:
"I remember Ecclesiastes and can only think, 'Alas, Babylon.'"
About the time everybody was singing "The Times They Are a Changing" and "Blowing in the Wind", I became deeply enamored of Kipling's "Recessional":
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
Powerful stuff, which is probably why Kipling has been consigned to the dust bin in favor of Maya Angelou.
About the time everybody was singing "The Times They Are a Changing" and "Blowing in the Wind", I became deeply enamored of Kipling's "Recessional":
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
Powerful stuff, which is probably why Kipling has been consigned to the dust bin in favor of Maya Angelou.
11.1.2010 | 8:44am
Joe the Human says:
THe important theologial change that came out of this era, was the insistence that Christianity cannot be too spiritual. It should not just forget about this material world, in hopes of the next. But it must help the poor, the starving, minorities. Here, on this world. Now.
Hippies and Liberals and Marxists saw this. And tried to make it happen.
Hippies and Liberals and Marxists saw this. And tried to make it happen.
11.1.2010 | 8:51am
Judy K. Warner says:
Dylan has always claimed he was and is not political. I know this seems highly improbable, but I think he has always been mainly an artist and a self-promoter. He certainly is not a revolutionary, political or cultural. At the time he wrote this song he was probably looking for his chance to make it big, or he was writing about his observations of the zeitgeist. Or both.
I was a pretty extreme leftist at the time, and I thought the song was great. But as I already had my ideology I didn't need the new one that David describes so well. I thought hippies were ridiculous, and that might be what opened my mind and made me capable of changing my world view radically a couple of years later.
I was a pretty extreme leftist at the time, and I thought the song was great. But as I already had my ideology I didn't need the new one that David describes so well. I thought hippies were ridiculous, and that might be what opened my mind and made me capable of changing my world view radically a couple of years later.
11.1.2010 | 9:14am
C.R. Coughlin says:
Andrew Gilbert writes: “
It was a movement in which young people played a central role, including young whites and blacks who were rejecting the counsel of parents that change should be slow and deliberate. Doesn't seem so silly to me.”
It was these parents of the “young people” (principally white males) who voted in the 1964 Civil rights act before the advent of significant youth demonstrations. After the achievements of the three previous generations in civil rights the destructive pomposity of the youth of the 1960s concerning civil rights occurred in just a-sweeping-up-times not a-changing-times.
Post-Civil War, the most important advance in civil rights was effected well before the demonstrations. It is largely ignored in accounts of the era that President Eisenhower made perhaps the greatest advance in civil rights in 1954 with the deployment of thousands of federal troops to integrate a High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Most of the nation supported his action. In 1954 most of members of the 1960s youth movement either had not learned to talk or were mere gleams in their parent’s eyes.
It can be argued that the 1964 act ended up being counter-discriminatory and sadly destructive to its goals. Slow and deliberate was not given a chance.
It was a movement in which young people played a central role, including young whites and blacks who were rejecting the counsel of parents that change should be slow and deliberate. Doesn't seem so silly to me.”
It was these parents of the “young people” (principally white males) who voted in the 1964 Civil rights act before the advent of significant youth demonstrations. After the achievements of the three previous generations in civil rights the destructive pomposity of the youth of the 1960s concerning civil rights occurred in just a-sweeping-up-times not a-changing-times.
Post-Civil War, the most important advance in civil rights was effected well before the demonstrations. It is largely ignored in accounts of the era that President Eisenhower made perhaps the greatest advance in civil rights in 1954 with the deployment of thousands of federal troops to integrate a High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Most of the nation supported his action. In 1954 most of members of the 1960s youth movement either had not learned to talk or were mere gleams in their parent’s eyes.
It can be argued that the 1964 act ended up being counter-discriminatory and sadly destructive to its goals. Slow and deliberate was not given a chance.
11.1.2010 | 9:19am
David Poecking says:
Your invocation of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" reminds me that the revolution is no so new. Scratch the surface of a revolutionary, and you inevitably find that underneath he's a messianist. They're not always wrong: Sometimes, we are being saved from something or other, a tyrant or slavery or segregation. But all too often, the messianist is in an unrealistic hurry, or worse, a messianist who thinks he himself is the messiah.
Every generation has them. Tea Party activists fantasize about restoring some primeval American Eden, replacing Obamessianics who were the change they were looking for. Devotees of Reagan celebrated "morning in America," while those of Clinton didn't "stop thinking about tomorrow." Earlier there was the war to end all wars, and the "return to normalcy," and the New Deal and the Great Society.
Granted, some messianists are more conceited or more obvious than others, and the Dylanites may have been among these. In substance, though, the revolution was just another expression of messianic expectation that got detached from the One with authority to anoint a genuine Messiah.
Every generation has them. Tea Party activists fantasize about restoring some primeval American Eden, replacing Obamessianics who were the change they were looking for. Devotees of Reagan celebrated "morning in America," while those of Clinton didn't "stop thinking about tomorrow." Earlier there was the war to end all wars, and the "return to normalcy," and the New Deal and the Great Society.
Granted, some messianists are more conceited or more obvious than others, and the Dylanites may have been among these. In substance, though, the revolution was just another expression of messianic expectation that got detached from the One with authority to anoint a genuine Messiah.
11.1.2010 | 9:36am
Joe the Human says:
David P:
On the other hand Christianity is so much cleverer and more real? In promising its own messiah "soon," "at hand," "presently," the "time is near" ... for fully two thousand years?
That's the "real" messiah?
St. Peter was so good as to assure us all, that "soon" meant millions of years of course. Thanks, Peter, for that particular bit of sophistry and word-"twist"ing.
Liberals in contrast, demanded real results; here on this material world; and "soon" in a very real, honest sense. And no word-twisting tricks.
On the other hand Christianity is so much cleverer and more real? In promising its own messiah "soon," "at hand," "presently," the "time is near" ... for fully two thousand years?
That's the "real" messiah?
St. Peter was so good as to assure us all, that "soon" meant millions of years of course. Thanks, Peter, for that particular bit of sophistry and word-"twist"ing.
Liberals in contrast, demanded real results; here on this material world; and "soon" in a very real, honest sense. And no word-twisting tricks.
11.1.2010 | 9:40am
Stuart Koehl says:
I suspect that the "counter-culture" remains popular only by way of nostalgia and romance. Those who lived through it either hated it then and hate it now, or loved it then and romanticize it today without having the least inclination of living it or returning to it. They certainly aren't exhorting their children to "turn on, tune in and drop out"--quite the reverse. All those ex-hippies who managed to survive the big burn out are today lawyers, doctors, investment bankers and insurance salesmen. But, as old age comes upon them, they pine for their youth, and in so doing, put on the rose colored glasses and film everything in soft focus.
Those too young to remember the sixties (or even worse, the seventies) tend to view those decades with a combination of bemusement and irony. After all, those are their parents in the afros, tie-dyes, bell bottoms and sandals (or worse, the powder blue leisure suits, shirts open to the navel and Mr. T starter kits). It's hard to take a generation seriously when it is your parents you see acting so foolishly. So, when kids in their teens and early twenties look at those years, it's almost as though it was a joke.
The boomers have shot their bolt. They made the march through the institutions and tried to change everything, and they failed. They are discredited in the eyes of their successors, whose values they look upon with horror. It turns out, after all, that the Baby Boomers are not the navel of the universe, are not the first generation in all of history to do everything (soon they will be the first generation to confront mortality, to which I look forward with much humorous anticipation).
When the younger generations write about them, it will be in much the same way that Mozart's generation wrote about the Turks. In 1685, the Turks marched right up to the gates of Vienna, and were a threat to take most seriously. A century later, and they were the "Sick Man of Europe", something to be treated as an exotic amusement, hence the rise of "orientalism", "Janissary music" and Mozart's comic opera "The Abduction from the Seraglio". It took the Turks a century to go from terror to laughing stock. It took the Baby Boomers less than half that time.
Those too young to remember the sixties (or even worse, the seventies) tend to view those decades with a combination of bemusement and irony. After all, those are their parents in the afros, tie-dyes, bell bottoms and sandals (or worse, the powder blue leisure suits, shirts open to the navel and Mr. T starter kits). It's hard to take a generation seriously when it is your parents you see acting so foolishly. So, when kids in their teens and early twenties look at those years, it's almost as though it was a joke.
The boomers have shot their bolt. They made the march through the institutions and tried to change everything, and they failed. They are discredited in the eyes of their successors, whose values they look upon with horror. It turns out, after all, that the Baby Boomers are not the navel of the universe, are not the first generation in all of history to do everything (soon they will be the first generation to confront mortality, to which I look forward with much humorous anticipation).
When the younger generations write about them, it will be in much the same way that Mozart's generation wrote about the Turks. In 1685, the Turks marched right up to the gates of Vienna, and were a threat to take most seriously. A century later, and they were the "Sick Man of Europe", something to be treated as an exotic amusement, hence the rise of "orientalism", "Janissary music" and Mozart's comic opera "The Abduction from the Seraglio". It took the Turks a century to go from terror to laughing stock. It took the Baby Boomers less than half that time.
11.1.2010 | 9:51am
Beth Impson says:
Joe writes: "The important theologial change that came out of this era, was the insistence that Christianity cannot be too spiritual. It should not just forget about this material world, in hopes of the next. But it must help the poor, the starving, minorities. Here, on this world. Now. Hippies and Liberals and Marxists saw this. And tried to make it happen."
While there have always been Christians who are too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good, there have also always been a much larger number of Christians who have served the poor and the oppressed in innumerable ways. This was not a theological change. If anything, the era brought a focus on "social justice" that forget about the gospel itself within a number of denominations.
As for hippies, liberals, and Marxists caring about the poor and oppressed -- I don't know which ones you grew up around, but the ones I knew in a major university town were far too busy getting stoned and enjoying the pleasures of sex without commitment to care about anyone but themselves.
David, I really enjoyed this article. I've often thought about trying to write about what Camelot meant to those of us who came of age with Kennedy's assassination -- and the disillusionment which followed for so many of us -- but I always find my thoughts too incoherent. Perhaps the trouble is not only with me but also with the era itself, as the vagueness of Dylan's song (one which I loved too) demonstrates. Food for thought. I have always been immensely grateful that I was raised by parents with their feet on the ground who loved me so thoroughly that I could never quite follow through on the weirdness that surrounded me during those years, but kept making choices that would please them. I don't regret a one of those choices today.
While there have always been Christians who are too heavenly-minded to be any earthly good, there have also always been a much larger number of Christians who have served the poor and the oppressed in innumerable ways. This was not a theological change. If anything, the era brought a focus on "social justice" that forget about the gospel itself within a number of denominations.
As for hippies, liberals, and Marxists caring about the poor and oppressed -- I don't know which ones you grew up around, but the ones I knew in a major university town were far too busy getting stoned and enjoying the pleasures of sex without commitment to care about anyone but themselves.
David, I really enjoyed this article. I've often thought about trying to write about what Camelot meant to those of us who came of age with Kennedy's assassination -- and the disillusionment which followed for so many of us -- but I always find my thoughts too incoherent. Perhaps the trouble is not only with me but also with the era itself, as the vagueness of Dylan's song (one which I loved too) demonstrates. Food for thought. I have always been immensely grateful that I was raised by parents with their feet on the ground who loved me so thoroughly that I could never quite follow through on the weirdness that surrounded me during those years, but kept making choices that would please them. I don't regret a one of those choices today.
11.1.2010 | 9:57am
David Poecking says:
>>On the other hand Christianity is so much cleverer and more real?
Yes, Christianity is the typical messianism from which these other movements draw their (usually unacknowledged) inspirations. In particular, the notion that we ought to be the change we're looking for, pending God's self-manifestation to the entire world, is a distinctive contribution of New Testament authors Peter and Paul. They didn't say much about working for justice, still less revolution, outside the Church, but they were quite insistent that would-be Christians live under the government of the man they recognized as Messiah. To the extent that Pres. Obama's campaigners really intended their slogan, they were promoting a genuinely Christian soteriology.
Joe "the Human" (talk about posturing!) seems to contrast "liberals" with Christians and identifies them as expecting real results. That's rather doubtful. Achievements such as the end of slavery, or the more recent civil rights movement, drew much of their energy and arguably all their permanence from the Christianity embedded in them and in the cultures that hosted them. By and large, things described as liberalism over the past 150 years have been rather anti-humanist in character. It's just that soi-disant liberals have such short memories. (See Stuart Koehl's remarks, above.)
As to the matter of waiting for thousands of years---as they say, "I hear you." Certainly, it puts us in strong solidarity with the Jews, who were waiting long before Gentiles ever got in line. But then again, we're still here, and still waiting---unlike most other messianists.
Yes, Christianity is the typical messianism from which these other movements draw their (usually unacknowledged) inspirations. In particular, the notion that we ought to be the change we're looking for, pending God's self-manifestation to the entire world, is a distinctive contribution of New Testament authors Peter and Paul. They didn't say much about working for justice, still less revolution, outside the Church, but they were quite insistent that would-be Christians live under the government of the man they recognized as Messiah. To the extent that Pres. Obama's campaigners really intended their slogan, they were promoting a genuinely Christian soteriology.
Joe "the Human" (talk about posturing!) seems to contrast "liberals" with Christians and identifies them as expecting real results. That's rather doubtful. Achievements such as the end of slavery, or the more recent civil rights movement, drew much of their energy and arguably all their permanence from the Christianity embedded in them and in the cultures that hosted them. By and large, things described as liberalism over the past 150 years have been rather anti-humanist in character. It's just that soi-disant liberals have such short memories. (See Stuart Koehl's remarks, above.)
As to the matter of waiting for thousands of years---as they say, "I hear you." Certainly, it puts us in strong solidarity with the Jews, who were waiting long before Gentiles ever got in line. But then again, we're still here, and still waiting---unlike most other messianists.
11.1.2010 | 10:09am
Sean says:
"On the other hand Christianity is so much cleverer and more real? In promising its own messiah "soon," "at hand," "presently," the "time is near" ... for fully two thousand years?"
Hell yeah. I'll take that over the social engineering disasters caused by your marxist friends any day. It's way more realistic and way less destructive.
Hell yeah. I'll take that over the social engineering disasters caused by your marxist friends any day. It's way more realistic and way less destructive.
11.1.2010 | 10:25am
Todd Speidell says:
The "do your own thing" generation was, as I often tell my adolescent students, ironically marked by uniformity (i.e., we tended to express our "freedom" and "autonomy" in remarkably similar ways). It was an adolescent movement, and when adolescents become adults, they (we hope) mature and learn to appreciate and respect their parents, history, heritage, and the like. Didn't the first human couple, in essence, proclaim their autonomy as the essence of their Fall?
11.1.2010 | 11:17am
JonathanR. says:
"St. Peter was so good as to assure us all, that "soon" meant millions of years of course. Thanks, Peter, for that particular bit of sophistry and word-"twist"ing."
Word twisting? God has been watching His little planet turn for billions of years. 100,000 years is "just a moment". 1 million years probably won't even be long enough to qualify for "soon".
Word twisting? God has been watching His little planet turn for billions of years. 100,000 years is "just a moment". 1 million years probably won't even be long enough to qualify for "soon".
11.1.2010 | 11:57am
michael Currie says:
I don't know what Mr. Dylan was doing when he wrote that song but he had a lot of company doing it. "talking bout my generation" and "don't trust anyone over thirty" and any number of of other pithy songs and sayings were the lingua franca of the day. Having come of age in those days I feel safe to say that while it may have had other dimensions to it it was primarily about sex, drugs and rock and roll.It was a party looking for a cause. Civil rights may now be being sold as its true beating heart,in reality its' real rallying cry was Vietnam which did not resonate with our generation on a wide scale til very late in the decade of the 60s'.Of course there were true believers and many of them took considered and in some cases courageous stands based on moral principle that spanned from the treatment of blacks in our company to the immorality of the war. They may have given the gravatas to our generation but they were not representative. I saw more charlatans and just plain skeeves wave the banner of moral outrage whose true and only purpose was to get chics and they did. Debauchery was the name of the game and oh yeah screw the man. Some people did grow up and we all grew old and i would have to grudgingly give some credit to those times for bringing attention to some social justice issues. Mostly though in their arrogant belief that they had escaped history, which for many continues today, they have created a generation with a double failed expectation which mimics the party and the cause of those days.My grandmother used to say that one grows into their age. Ours has not for their age was 40 or so yrs. ago and it reverberates today. After all it was the age of Aquarius.
11.1.2010 | 12:36pm
Stuart Koehl says:
""don't trust anyone over thirty" "
The worm has turned, and God's sense of irony proves to be far beyond anything the Boomers could ever muster. For now, as the bulge in the python begins moving down towards the cloaca, its mantra seems to be "Don't trust anyone UNDER thirty", and the best they can muster is condemnation of their own children and grandchildren as "slackers", and cynics lacking the noble idealism with which they managed wreak chaos across an entire generation. Fortunately, the seven decade temper tantrum is almost over.
The worm has turned, and God's sense of irony proves to be far beyond anything the Boomers could ever muster. For now, as the bulge in the python begins moving down towards the cloaca, its mantra seems to be "Don't trust anyone UNDER thirty", and the best they can muster is condemnation of their own children and grandchildren as "slackers", and cynics lacking the noble idealism with which they managed wreak chaos across an entire generation. Fortunately, the seven decade temper tantrum is almost over.
11.1.2010 | 12:38pm
Stuart Koehl says:
"and oh yeah screw the man"
As the delicious commercial says, "But sir, you ARE the man."
As the delicious commercial says, "But sir, you ARE the man."
11.1.2010 | 1:21pm
DO says:
"Imprecision and generality are the friends of the ideologue and the romantic."
And given that Dylan has hardly ever been an ideologue, I think you're selling the song and especially the artist short here. It did come out of the brief period in which Bob Dylan was dating some young, romantic, ideologues himself, and within the orbit of protest singers and activists. Of course, he quickly turned on these people (and wrote some fine anthems attacking, usually with humor, their mule-minded naivete).
It may sound optimistic on my behalf, but I've found with the very best of the tunes from this era, including the one you hate so much now, Dylan was absolutely phenomenal at singing both to romantic teenagers and far over their heads. That's why so many of his so-called "protest songs" have survived the changes he's gone through in his own life, including coming to Christ and a decidedly conservative outlook.
I'm also surprised an essay dismissing some of Dylan's work as reveling in mindless rebellious leftism doesn't even mention a song he published the very same year, "My Back Pages":
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
Now either he's criticizes his own thoughts and deeds from just months ago, or this is a guy who never really bought into the "cause" of the 1960s, aside from civil rights for African-Americans.
And given that Dylan has hardly ever been an ideologue, I think you're selling the song and especially the artist short here. It did come out of the brief period in which Bob Dylan was dating some young, romantic, ideologues himself, and within the orbit of protest singers and activists. Of course, he quickly turned on these people (and wrote some fine anthems attacking, usually with humor, their mule-minded naivete).
It may sound optimistic on my behalf, but I've found with the very best of the tunes from this era, including the one you hate so much now, Dylan was absolutely phenomenal at singing both to romantic teenagers and far over their heads. That's why so many of his so-called "protest songs" have survived the changes he's gone through in his own life, including coming to Christ and a decidedly conservative outlook.
I'm also surprised an essay dismissing some of Dylan's work as reveling in mindless rebellious leftism doesn't even mention a song he published the very same year, "My Back Pages":
Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now
Now either he's criticizes his own thoughts and deeds from just months ago, or this is a guy who never really bought into the "cause" of the 1960s, aside from civil rights for African-Americans.
11.1.2010 | 1:33pm
Sue Abromaitis says:
Many of us were young in the days of rage, of liberation, of demonstrations, of slacking from duty. And we were not part of it. We lived with our families,went to school, worshipped, grew up, entered professions, married, and looked with horror at the aberations of the times. But they did not affect us because we were loved by our parents and families and spouses, because we had senses of humor about ourselves, and because we lived (if imperfectly) our faith. So many of the revolutionaries (as they liked to think of themselves) were essentially throw-away children, maybe not literally but really. A very wise Jesuit taught me to be kind to feminists, saying that most of them had been mistreated by their fathers or brothers or other males in their lives. I think that one could expand the categories of those whose being abused led them to the various extremes of the '60's and '70's and, indeed, now. Good article, David, as always.
11.1.2010 | 5:57pm
Dan Crawford says:
Apparently conservative "Christian" politicians claiming they are the new saviors but incapable of keeping their pants above their knees and sold out out all the interests Jesus found worthy of criticism are signs of hope for this generation. The times - they never change at all.
11.1.2010 | 6:02pm
CKG says:
I recall a few years back, when The Who (or at least, its surviving original members) played the Super Bowl halftime show. There was something bizarre about the 60-something Roger Daltry singing "Hope I die before I get old." A manifestly forlorn hope, that. . .
11.1.2010 | 6:06pm
Gemma says:
Joe the Human says: "Hippies and Liberals and Marxists saw this. And tried to make it happen."
I don't know about the Hippies and the Liberals, but the Marxists saw it and used it for their own ends, thereby corrupting faith and charity into secular humanism and class warfare.
I don't know about the Hippies and the Liberals, but the Marxists saw it and used it for their own ends, thereby corrupting faith and charity into secular humanism and class warfare.
11.1.2010 | 6:52pm
Margaret says:
I wonder if the cultural backlash of the sixties would ever have happened if Thomas Jefferson's anti-slavery language had been included in the original Declaration of Independence, rather than being scrubbed as a compromise to Georgia and South Carolina. The civil rights movement was a worthy cause that, in the eyes of many at the time, lent credibility to the general rejection of the status quo that went with it. It would be interesting to see how that alternative scenario (abolishing slavery back in the 1770s) would have played out.
11.1.2010 | 7:09pm
Bobby Winters says:
David,
There are places where the Sixties happened differently. Consider the happy refrain:
I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Ol Glory down at the court house
And white lightning's still the biggest thrill of all
There are places where the Sixties happened differently. Consider the happy refrain:
I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Ol Glory down at the court house
And white lightning's still the biggest thrill of all
11.1.2010 | 7:30pm
Matt says:
Times change but coming to terms with the real world and our selves is never easy. Thoughtful and well written essay.
11.1.2010 | 7:47pm
Paul Jones says:
I believe that it may have been James Lileks who observed that nothing is more quick to become dated than the future.
Nonetheless, sir, like you, I too believe that "the old world ([my] parents’ world) [i]s dying." That said, I do not look for the dawning of the Age of Aquarius; rather, I note Phoebus' sad lack of shelter, as well as sacred laurels.
Nonetheless, sir, like you, I too believe that "the old world ([my] parents’ world) [i]s dying." That said, I do not look for the dawning of the Age of Aquarius; rather, I note Phoebus' sad lack of shelter, as well as sacred laurels.
11.1.2010 | 8:07pm
Magistra Bona says:
Sue Abromaitis relates the advice of Jesuit regarding feminists. Is it possible that feminists might have been mistreated by their mothers?!!! It can happen. My Dad WAS a feminist, and an early member of N.O.W. to his death. My Mom worked all of my childhood and adolescence, and at that whether she wanted to or not, because we were not middle class or wealthy. And, guess what?!! That's nothing new under the sun. The women of the working class have been sweating and grunting for their survival and that of their children for thousands of years. In America, if they are black, they're still working. The minute a woman joins the process of production for profit, she becomes "economic woman". You don't have to like it. But, the 60's is only a different and "new" time because, finally, middle-class white people realized that this was going on--right under their noses. Dylan's 'anthem' is the anthem of awakened suburbia--not the proletariat. They've got to go to work tomorrow--if they have work in this economy. The revolution will have to wait. Dylan is musically delightful, but politically irrelevant.
P.S.--Don't entirely knock Dylan. He was a member of his high school's Latin Club. Can you detect the Virgilian cadences in his opera?
P.S.--Don't entirely knock Dylan. He was a member of his high school's Latin Club. Can you detect the Virgilian cadences in his opera?
11.2.2010 | 11:16am
Tara says:
David, I ended up blogging back to you at http://freerangeanglican.blogspot.com/2010/11/hope-n-change-nat.html. I wasn't around for the sixties, and I don't remember much of the seventies... but it's amazing how the nineties seemed so similar, and I'm not sure if or when the nineties actually ended.
11.2.2010 | 11:32am
Neil Gussman says:
Stuart--Exactly! on your last comment. The huge war machine was a great source of rebellion and we baby boomers are our parents children.
Bobby--Since I grew up in Boston, I didn't hear "Okie from Muskogee" until 1972 when I enlisted. I remember leaning against the back wall of our barracks in Utah after a day on a missile test range drinking Coors beer and passing a cylindrical, hand-rolled enkindled controlled substance from one airman to another while listening to that song.
Bobby--Since I grew up in Boston, I didn't hear "Okie from Muskogee" until 1972 when I enlisted. I remember leaning against the back wall of our barracks in Utah after a day on a missile test range drinking Coors beer and passing a cylindrical, hand-rolled enkindled controlled substance from one airman to another while listening to that song.
11.2.2010 | 2:08pm
Fred says:
Interesting you should bring that up Bobby Winters. In 2006 I saw Bob Dylan at Chastain Park in Atlanta, and guess who opened for him. . . the Okie from Muskogee himself, Merle Haggard. The times they had a-changed after all.
11.2.2010 | 2:30pm
Tom says:
I too thought of "My Back Pages" when I read the article, and the way Dylan played "The Times They Are-A Changin'" at the White House this past February--seemed almost rueful. The song certainly captured that moment when we all thought we had discovered a new world--and what 15-20 year-old doesn't feel this way? It will always be a classic for that reason. But it also can stand being played in the mournful, reflective way Dylan played it at the White House. And just look at us all, conversing about history and emotions. Not bad work for a minstrel.
11.3.2010 | 12:32pm
Stuart Koehl says:
"The song certainly captured that moment when we all thought we had discovered a new world--and what 15-20 year-old doesn't feel this way?"
Oooo! Oooo! Me, teacher! Me, me, me!
I was far too busy discovering wondrous OLD worlds, and that led me to see, in fairly short order, that the "new" world my peers thought they were making was simply a goulash of a lot of old, half-baked ideas that did not work the first time around, and would not work this time, either.
Oooo! Oooo! Me, teacher! Me, me, me!
I was far too busy discovering wondrous OLD worlds, and that led me to see, in fairly short order, that the "new" world my peers thought they were making was simply a goulash of a lot of old, half-baked ideas that did not work the first time around, and would not work this time, either.
11.3.2010 | 11:58pm
S. M. Hutchens says:
I had the advantage of discovering Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and falling in love with them, early in life. What an immense amount of confusion and unhappiness this saved me, keeping me objectively above both the counterculture of the sixties and seventies and the defects of the dominant culture that provoked it.
Besides this, there was little interest in either in the blue-collar union town (Pontiac, Michigan) where I was raised. There were few, if any, real hippies at my high school at the height of the hippie era. To find these one would have to go to the more affluent areas--Royal Oak, Birmingham, or Bloomfield Hills. The few among us who professed to being hippies were not ideologues, not opposed in principle to "the man" and the "establishment" (that is, their executive fathers--the executives didn't live anywhere near us) but burnouts and losers from bad families who were glad for the opportunity to make themselves distinctive by growing long hair, smoking pot, and listening to strange music. They were ignorant of the literature of the movement, and did not go to college.
Locally, hippie-ism and all that went with it was regarded as a vice of the younger members of the upper classes--privileged, lazy, disrespectful, cowardly, unpatriotic, irreligious, and worse than useless. The knowledgeable would be sure to inform you, if the subject came up, that Bob Dylan was a Jew whose real name was Zimmerman, whose arrogance and ungratefulness toward the culture that nurtured him was understandable for that reason alone. We grew up in very different worlds, David.
Besides this, there was little interest in either in the blue-collar union town (Pontiac, Michigan) where I was raised. There were few, if any, real hippies at my high school at the height of the hippie era. To find these one would have to go to the more affluent areas--Royal Oak, Birmingham, or Bloomfield Hills. The few among us who professed to being hippies were not ideologues, not opposed in principle to "the man" and the "establishment" (that is, their executive fathers--the executives didn't live anywhere near us) but burnouts and losers from bad families who were glad for the opportunity to make themselves distinctive by growing long hair, smoking pot, and listening to strange music. They were ignorant of the literature of the movement, and did not go to college.
Locally, hippie-ism and all that went with it was regarded as a vice of the younger members of the upper classes--privileged, lazy, disrespectful, cowardly, unpatriotic, irreligious, and worse than useless. The knowledgeable would be sure to inform you, if the subject came up, that Bob Dylan was a Jew whose real name was Zimmerman, whose arrogance and ungratefulness toward the culture that nurtured him was understandable for that reason alone. We grew up in very different worlds, David.
11.4.2010 | 5:03am
DianeS says:
This song is timeless - just because your world view has changed, it doesn't diminish it's power. Even the verse you complain about is still quite true - though it may not apply to you personally. If you are listening and learning from your children then you are not blocking their road. Others are.
The civil rights movement was nowhere near the end when this song was written. Do you think the Civil Rights Act abolished predjudice and over night blacks and whiltes were in perfect harmony from coast to coast? There were still fights to be won in areas where the majority did not support these changes.
And btw, "slow and deliberate was not given a chance" is completely false - what about the previous hundred years? How about the lynchings that were still common place in the 50's and uninvestigated murders of blacks in the south that continued into the 60's? Nothing was changing "slowly and deliberately."
Then there was the push for women's rights. Other minorities are still fighting. The right not to conform is always challenged. Pursuing change is a never ending process, or it ought to be. And Times They Are a' Chaging expresses eternal truths.
It's nice to hear that your personal life is settled, but for our society we should never be that complacent.
The civil rights movement was nowhere near the end when this song was written. Do you think the Civil Rights Act abolished predjudice and over night blacks and whiltes were in perfect harmony from coast to coast? There were still fights to be won in areas where the majority did not support these changes.
And btw, "slow and deliberate was not given a chance" is completely false - what about the previous hundred years? How about the lynchings that were still common place in the 50's and uninvestigated murders of blacks in the south that continued into the 60's? Nothing was changing "slowly and deliberately."
Then there was the push for women's rights. Other minorities are still fighting. The right not to conform is always challenged. Pursuing change is a never ending process, or it ought to be. And Times They Are a' Chaging expresses eternal truths.
It's nice to hear that your personal life is settled, but for our society we should never be that complacent.
11.5.2010 | 12:36pm
"68, my age now, and my year in Viet Nam, then,, came to an end when I realized I shouldn't be standing at the perimeter wire watching ARVN artillery walking short rounds toward me; bunker a better home be that I would live to see homeland again. The times of lies, false hopes of LBJ and Robert Mac Namara to avoid Soviet Union intervention change slightly to Dubya and Cheney'HALELUYA CHORUS to bring down Saddam and Usama Bin Laden by SHOCK and AWE.
No, the times are always a-changin.' Read Hegel and see change as dialectic.
Politicians, especially cowards, are always promising change. Now that the Muck-rakers (Republicans) have a perfect Hegel (Palin) HALLELUYAYAYA REDUX is the campaign song for 2012, and I am seeking a low-rent bomb shelter in polluted Marcellus Shale." From myfoxhole to yours, baby.
No, the times are always a-changin.' Read Hegel and see change as dialectic.
Politicians, especially cowards, are always promising change. Now that the Muck-rakers (Republicans) have a perfect Hegel (Palin) HALLELUYAYAYA REDUX is the campaign song for 2012, and I am seeking a low-rent bomb shelter in polluted Marcellus Shale." From myfoxhole to yours, baby.
11.5.2010 | 6:51pm
Mr Norway says:
Well, as far as I can say I grew up and are getting older in quite a different way compared with my mum and dad.
Dylans words, music, art, watevva, his role has been so important to our mind on the bridge to a a more clever world, in Norway, Europe and the rest of the western world, and also among more open ears in US than some of you commenting here. Bob Dylan has brought a slice of intelligence to Americas soul and heart, and no one is going to remove that. And I am not a lefty.
Dylans words, music, art, watevva, his role has been so important to our mind on the bridge to a a more clever world, in Norway, Europe and the rest of the western world, and also among more open ears in US than some of you commenting here. Bob Dylan has brought a slice of intelligence to Americas soul and heart, and no one is going to remove that. And I am not a lefty.
11.6.2010 | 9:50am
Denyse O'Leary says:
"The hippest of the stores—the one that sold obscene “Zap” comic books and various devices for getting high—quickly got a reputation as the store in town that would most quickly and vigorously prosecute shoplifters. Whereas the old man who for years had run the drugstore down the street might let a kid go with a warning, or a call to his parents, the hippie owner of this store would call the police. The store’s cientele regularly called the police “the pigs,” without dissent from people who relied on those policeman -all townies and therefore easily patronized - to keep order.
The store nevertheless energetically sold Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, which taught its readers how to shoplift, among other acts of alleged resistance to the establishment. I dimly remember someone being prosecuted for stealing the book. That might have been a rumor, but if it was, it was a perfectly believable one."
But, David, leftism provides the perfect solution: Make the police work for leftists, once in power.
Here in Toronto, we have been having serious problems with "social engineer" police, enforcing the law in a politically correct way.
That first girlfriend spawned some hideous monsters from the liaison: How about tis: Police protect "death to the Jews" marchers whilecautioning anyone who protests (because the left is currently undergoing a fit of anti-Semitism).
Getting them out of poer and influence would require a level of effort of which I doubt our society now capable.
The store nevertheless energetically sold Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, which taught its readers how to shoplift, among other acts of alleged resistance to the establishment. I dimly remember someone being prosecuted for stealing the book. That might have been a rumor, but if it was, it was a perfectly believable one."
But, David, leftism provides the perfect solution: Make the police work for leftists, once in power.
Here in Toronto, we have been having serious problems with "social engineer" police, enforcing the law in a politically correct way.
That first girlfriend spawned some hideous monsters from the liaison: How about tis: Police protect "death to the Jews" marchers whilecautioning anyone who protests (because the left is currently undergoing a fit of anti-Semitism).
Getting them out of poer and influence would require a level of effort of which I doubt our society now capable.
11.19.2010 | 3:41am
edmond says:
I grew up also during the "cultural devolution" of the 60's and aside from the artistic creativity and the novelty of the hippie/pseudo-revolutionary cults in those days
(at least for the first few years) I know now what a stupid waste of time that decade de in regressed into terms of values formation and moral discipline. I was a hippie too
who believed in free love, reefers and fighting the establishment partly because my emotions brought me there but mostly because it was the trend and it made you part of the "in crowd". Aside from the philosophical posturing of the ivy league drop-outs,
there was very little wisdom spread out during those times.
(at least for the first few years) I know now what a stupid waste of time that decade de in regressed into terms of values formation and moral discipline. I was a hippie too
who believed in free love, reefers and fighting the establishment partly because my emotions brought me there but mostly because it was the trend and it made you part of the "in crowd". Aside from the philosophical posturing of the ivy league drop-outs,
there was very little wisdom spread out during those times.
12.16.2010 | 11:53am
stu ped says:
You all must be very lonely if your arguing about a bob dylan song.
