Here we go again. In 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War college campuses exploded in protest. Moreover the Civil Rights movement was going full throttle and M.L. King was murdered. Protests shut down campuses, administration offices were occupied, the ROTC building at Stanford was torched.
And the newspaper articles decried the immaturity and lack of knowledge of the college "spoiled brats". Articles were written like this one, calling students immature and spoiled.
Dr. Spock was assailed for teaching a permissive humane form of child rearing, that was a cause of young men not wanting to go off to die in a senseless war. The fact that it was a senseless war was discounted by the greatest generation. Parents were turned against their children, second guessing "sparing the rod". One wonders what happens to cultures who produce soldiers first and citizens second?
The greatest generation watched in horror as their anti-war sons and daughters resisted, demonstrated, and dropped out.
And now, we listen to the same nonsense when young people act like America's promise is real.
Vietnam, as it turns out was wrong. Only the most conservative hard liner believes that the mistakes in Vietnam were warranted. The dominoe theory, that was thrown up to us constantly by Johnson and then by Nixon, did not happen.
Today every baseball cap you buy is "Made in Vietnam". We discovered, after the war, that Vietnam hates China, even fought a brief war in the mid-seventies with China and is a capitalist nation economically; communist politically.
In short the children of the sixties, spoiled and immature, had it exactly right. The greatest generation was wrong.
And Civil Rights? The sit ins, the marches at Selma, all led by the young. And the deaths, borne by the young college students who discovered the white supremacy realities of the American nightmare. And the non-violent protests turned to angry violence when Martin Luther King was gunned down.
I suppose those riots were the actions of spoiled brats? With yet another leader shot down, it was that superficial a reaction? Really? Talk to any African American about the M.L. KIng murder riots; they will tell you straight up what those riots were all about. And the white supremacy leaders did not listen then either!
And the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the Voter Rights Act was passed after bloody Sunday, when the march at Selma was attacked by white state troopers in an ugly example of white supremacy at its worst. And we all choke up when we hear Glory, the song of Selma.
Milk and cookies? Tell that to the students at Kent State with blood on the ground, or U.C. Berkeley, where Govenor Reagan earned his tough guy image by ordering actions that killed students.
And there is David Harris, Stanford Student Body President, who elected prison over Vietnam; another "spoiled brat" ?
David Harris went south with the demonstrators; he paid his dues. He has more love for this country in his little finger than the author of this nonsense has in her whole body.
When we invaded Normandy the first boats were loaded with 19 year olds. The brass knew it would be bad and the youngest were sacrificed; they were brave and foolhardy. The young feels the passion more and are less careful.
Young people are who die first in a war. The Young die for old people's mistakes.
But, as any parent can tell you, children often look up from their milk and cookies and ask, "Daddy, why are black people treated bad?" Why are people mad at "Redskins". Daddy, why are we fighting a war? Daddy, why does that old man have no leg?
It is not spoiled brats we are talkiing about. This con has it as usual all wrong. It is the insightfulness of innocent youth that we are seeing; calling us to our promises and ideals.
Listen to your children! It is in their innocence that we find our idealism.
