On the 1960s

George Weigel takes a critical look at one of the most peculiar decades in the history of man in his article, “The Sixties, Again and Again,” published in the April 2008 issue of First Things (I’m still catching up on my reading).

Weigel explores six “crucial movements in the Sixties with an eye to how they reshaped American political culture, with effects still being felt today” (32). The six movements are: the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963; Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965; the Tet Offensive in 1968; the Kerner Commission in 1968; The Secular City, published in 1965; and the rise of Environmentalism in 1969.

As he always does, Weigel applies his sharp intellect and good common sense to each of these movements and concludes that the Sixties are “a decade still much with us” (39).

He says, and quite rightly, that in the Sixties:

A politics of reason gave way to a politics of emotion and flirted with the politics of irrationality; the claims of moral reason were displaced by moralism; the notion that all men and women were called to live lives of responsibility was displaced by the notion that some people were, by reason of birth, victims; patriotism became suspect, to be replaced by a vague internationalism; democratic persuasion was displaced by judicial activism (39).

How these shall be remedied is yet to be seen, but may it be done soon.