The undoing began before our revolution was over, and we who made it helped with the undoing of it.
We wondered who could be in favor of returning to the racism, gender oppression, and colonialist brutality that our revolution overturned. Idealists like us thought that only the deranged would dislike the kinds of protection of land, sea, air, and animals we got passed into law? Who in their right minds would oppose legal protections for children?
"Who? War? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing," we sang in celebration of the 1960s victories that brought on a Great Society. We were crossed a New (social) Frontier as bold as the one that our space program was crossing. In less than a decade we had put the world on its way towards what we felt humankind had been seeking since the beginning of time.
There was a "planet-wide identification," President Kennedy called it. For example, Ann Dunham, a teen age white girl from Wichita, Kansas, ". . .went off to far away Hawaii to focus on women's work on the island of Java and blacksmithing in Indonesia," says Wikipedia.
"To address the problem of poverty in rural villages, she created micro-credit programs while working as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development. Dunham was also employed by the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and she consulted with the Asian Development Bank in Pakistan."
She married an African; and in 1961 they had a son, and named him Barack Hussein Obama II. That's what kind of dreamers we were. "Did you, did you want your freedom, didn't we Lord," we used to sing. The air was electric with hope.
That must have been what you of this generation felt around the time of the 2008 election victory of our son of the 60s, Barack. The entire world rejoiced in what you were doing. Foreign crowds for Obama were as large and as joyous as your crowds here at home. Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after having created peace no where but in the souls of the world. .
From your feelings then, you can see how natural it was for us in the 1960s to assume that a majority of Americans wanted The Great Society to expand. "Great Society, Hu-u-uh! Who is it good for? Absolutely everybody," we thought.
And so through our efforts Lyndon Johnson became the only sitting President not to pursue his party's nomination. We cheered! We on the left had forced him to announce: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
We had someone better in mind for 1968. We happily nominated Hubert Humphrey. He was more vocal in his support of our Kennedy/King (Camelot/Mountain Top) dreams. We didn't count the fact that Johnson had brought us laws that upheld civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protections, aid to education, and a "War on Poverty," which actually reduced poverty.
"During the decade Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent. The percentage of African Americans below the poverty line dropped from 55 percent to 27 percent in 1968," says Wikipedia.
With Hubert Humphrey, we planned to push forward; but Richard Nixon defeated Humphrey by more than a 3 to 2 margin. And in that 1968 election George Wallace, the populous, race-baiting, demagogue got more electoral votes than any 3rd party candidate since the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800.
The history of our revolution proves that Matt Damon, Michael Moore and other ultra-liberals are wrong in trying to get Obama to be a "kick-butt" President. To advance our revolution, the most important task for him, and us, is to get him re-elected. Instead of, as Obama himself said, "having a "sanctimonious" pride in the purity of their (our) own positions."
At the same Dec 7, 2010 press conference Obama added: ""This is a big, diverse country, Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people." It shocked us. How could someone not agree with protecting children?
Well, there are some dreamers of another American dream who do not agree. America is a country where the individual should be free to make as much money as he or she can. The government should get out of the way of that.
The previous posts in this series are:
Should President Obama Have Gone the Way of LBJ?
Will the 60s Revolution Be Undone?
The new post, "Are These the Last Days of the Reaganites?", is coming in January.
George Davis is creator of the series of world-sourced, interactive books, Barack Obama, America and the World. This series contains the background reporting, drawn from across the nation and around the world that gives deeper meaning to the ideas in this post.
