I’ve already promoted Dan Mahoney’s excellent analysis of the socio-political import of 1968, especially from the perspective of France. Our own Peter Lawler provides his original critical commentary here cautioning us that as seminal as ‘68 was, a fuller picture of the Summer of Love has to be situated within a proper "decade analysis". While the 60’s, Lawler contends, began with an impassioned defense of civil rights that could be construed as a restoration of our founding principles, the later half of the decade was devoted to a more revolutionary agenda, that meant a radical reordering of the nature of human eros. Lawler memorably concludes that the sexual liberation of the late 60’s turned out to be a step back for love and, somewhat paradoxically, a step forward for the bourgeois-ification of American life. I can’t recommend this essay enough.
