As I think of times and places of importance in my life, 1968 ranks high. I was 14 and living down the road from the very counterculture dominated Guilford College. In the middle of the then very traditional North Carolina, this "hippie freak show" was a sight to see. See it, I did. Daily, I would bicycle there to hang out and listen to local bands such as "Electric Lather" as they did their renditions of "new" songs such as "Happiness is a Warm Gun" or "Stray Cat Blues". It amazed me that anyone had the audacity to play the sacrosanct songs of the Beatles or Stones.
For my 1968 birthday, I was given my first guitar, a "Silvertone" (Sears) acoustic. I'd haul this instrument of torture with strings that seemed to be at least an inch above the fretboard everywhere. One friend, Alan Thornton, who later would become a guitarist for "Nantucket", taught me my first riff, "Wipe Out". Later, when I brought over an amazing sounding 45, "Sunshine of Your Love", he figured it out and taught it to me too.
It was the politics of the time and place that also caught my attention. Guilford students were routinely protesting in the streets of the small town of Guilford (now part of Greensboro). Vietnam was, of course, the main issue. However, even our local barbershop was the target of a protest when its barbers said to a reporter that they couldn't and wouldn't cut a black man's hair. The barbershop was boycotted for weeks. However, the impact a bunch of longhairs boycotting a barbershop was minimal.
It was the quest for individual freedom (you know,"life, liberty and the pursuit happiness"), the anti authoritarian and decentralized vision of the "good" government, that appealed to me then and now. This was the more libertarian and even conservative side of the counterculture. The term "conservative hippie" is appropriate and not an oxymoron within this context.
On the other hand, the counterculture collectivists and cultural Marxists (who would spawn political correctness)of the hard left, held no promise to me. When Johnny Lennon sang "if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone, anyhow", it was "alright" by me.
It was McGovernite liberalism AND elements of countercultural libertarianism that held sway in my mind for years.
In another time and place, Philadelphia, 1988, the liberal part of my 1968 weltanschauung was shattered. I had moved back to Philly, and my wife and I were renovating a boarded up graffiti covered house. There, in my grandmother's old neighborhood, Kensington, which once proudly boasted the moniker, "workshop of the world", reality collided with liberal theory. There, the liberal political policies and programs that I thought would usher in the "new age", had wrecked the old neighborhood. Drug dealers and junkies "did their thing". And, each new government program delivered by parasitic ward healers, seemed to eat away at what was left of the neighborhood's social fabric. Even worse, a de facto coalition of liberal activists, real estate brokers and drug dealers,(each pursuing their own very different agendas), were united against people like us. We were to them, "evil gentrifiers", to be stopped no matter what. They won.
As for the legacy of '68, I've kept a guitar as a constant companion over the years. In yet another time and place, Washington, D.C., 1985, a guitar even played matchmaker when I met my future wife while playing it in a park.
Politically, the more libertarian conservative side of the counterculture still remains with me. I strongly oppose creeping authoritarianism in our government and the increasingly centralized bureaucratic control of our lives.
Many other aspects of the '68 social and political revolution, however, did serious damage. Much of the pre-1968 American tradition that I grew up with, is gone forever. Now, as a father struggling to keep the more insidious spin offs of '68 away from my daughter, my nostalgia grows for a time and place before 1968.
It was the politics of the time and place that also caught my attention. Guilford students were routinely protesting in the streets of the small town of Guilford (now part of Greensboro). Vietnam was, of course, the main issue. However, even our local barbershop was the target of a protest when its barbers said to a reporter that they couldn't and wouldn't cut a black man's hair. The barbershop was boycotted for weeks. However, the impact a bunch of longhairs boycotting a barbershop was minimal.
It was the quest for individual freedom (you know,"life, liberty and the pursuit happiness"), the anti authoritarian and decentralized vision of the "good" government, that appealed to me then and now. This was the more libertarian and even conservative side of the counterculture. The term "conservative hippie" is appropriate and not an oxymoron within this context.
On the other hand, the counterculture collectivists and cultural Marxists (who would spawn political correctness)of the hard left, held no promise to me. When Johnny Lennon sang "if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone, anyhow", it was "alright" by me.
It was McGovernite liberalism AND elements of countercultural libertarianism that held sway in my mind for years.
In another time and place, Philadelphia, 1988, the liberal part of my 1968 weltanschauung was shattered. I had moved back to Philly, and my wife and I were renovating a boarded up graffiti covered house. There, in my grandmother's old neighborhood, Kensington, which once proudly boasted the moniker, "workshop of the world", reality collided with liberal theory. There, the liberal political policies and programs that I thought would usher in the "new age", had wrecked the old neighborhood. Drug dealers and junkies "did their thing". And, each new government program delivered by parasitic ward healers, seemed to eat away at what was left of the neighborhood's social fabric. Even worse, a de facto coalition of liberal activists, real estate brokers and drug dealers,(each pursuing their own very different agendas), were united against people like us. We were to them, "evil gentrifiers", to be stopped no matter what. They won.
As for the legacy of '68, I've kept a guitar as a constant companion over the years. In yet another time and place, Washington, D.C., 1985, a guitar even played matchmaker when I met my future wife while playing it in a park.
Politically, the more libertarian conservative side of the counterculture still remains with me. I strongly oppose creeping authoritarianism in our government and the increasingly centralized bureaucratic control of our lives.
Many other aspects of the '68 social and political revolution, however, did serious damage. Much of the pre-1968 American tradition that I grew up with, is gone forever. Now, as a father struggling to keep the more insidious spin offs of '68 away from my daughter, my nostalgia grows for a time and place before 1968.
