Over the weekend, I thought back to the tumultuous days of the 1960s and early 1970s.
I remember the images on my black and white television of those anti-war protests all over the U.S., with young people in the tens of thousands marching in various cities and occupying college administration buildings. Young people marched on the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, protesting the Vietnam War and our federal government. They were met by police, who used mace indiscriminately on protestors and bystanders. The protestors chanted, "The Whole World's Watching," as television cameras captured images of the police fighting back the protestors.
The young people in those crowds were the offspring of those who experienced World War II, a generation that nearly saw its rights taken away by the Germans, Japanese and Italians. Many of those young people had parents who were killed or injured in World War II, and they also had many friends and family members who were either injured or killed in the Vietnam War. With the military draft still in force, these young people certainly had skin in the game, so to speak. They protested the Vietnam War with a passion, perhaps because at any time they could be forced by their government to fight in a war they didn't feel was necessary or just.
Although I was a little too young to participate in those protests, my father was seriously injured in World War II and had to live with pain every single day for the rest of his life. I knew a lot of young men from my hometown who never made it home from Vietnam. I learned from my father, who grew up in the Great Depression, that our rights were worth worth fighting for, even if it meant giving up your own life.
During this time period, young people, more than any other age group, questioned the decisions and motivations of our federal government, and rightly so. Young reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post were among those from this age group who doggedly asked tough questions and uncovered sources within the federal government in order to report the truth about the Watergate break-in and subsequent coverup. Their reporting, and the reporting of others, forced a President, Richard Nixon, to resign, not because of the original burgulary of political offices at the Watergate Hotel, but because he was deeply involved in the coverup to keep others from learning who was involved in the original break-in.
While thinking about life in the 1960s and 1970s this weekend, I began comparing the young people of today to the young people of yesteryear. Young people from both time frames are similar in some ways, including their impatience, but they are vastly different in other ways, including their belief in and support for our federal government. While young people of 40 and 50 years ago had a healthy disbelief for anything the government told them, the young people of today seem to blindly follow the federal government, especially this President.
I have to wonder how the young people of yesterday, as well as the reporters in their age group, would have reacted to a President who clearly avoided calling violence on our consulate the result of terrorism, although intelligence before the attack pointed to a growing terrorist threat, and intelligence immediately after the attack indicated that a terrorist group had carried out a well-planned, coordinated assault.
Young people back then became very angry when their President and government clearly lied to them. Young people of today don't even seem to want to know the truth.
I wonder how those young people of yesterday would have reacted to an Administration that ignored pleas for additional security at the consulate or to an Administration that clearly dragged its feet in sending in military assistance to save American lives. I also wonder how those same young people would have reacted to a federal government whose policies have devastated so many of their peers economically, with only one out of two recent college graduates able to find a job in their field. Young people in the 1960s and 1970s would have been protesting in the streets if jobs weren't available to them. After their parents had sacrified life and limb so that their children would have a better life, those children, as well as their parents, would have demanded opportunities better than the previous generation of Americans. Today, being out of work and living with your parents is apparently the new normal in America.
For some reason, the young people of today just don't seem to care with the same fervor how easily our rights can all be taken away. They also don't even seem to believe that our federal government should be viewed with a cynicism. That's always been the American way -- to distrust government. This friction between citizens and government was ingrained in our fabric even before America was a country. We forged our own union because of an oppressive British government, and we have remained a country because our citizens have fought valiantly to preserve those rights and also to hold our government accountable to we the people.
Somewhere along the way, the healthy skepticism our young people have had for government has become an unhealthy allegiance. Sadly, if young people blindly follow government, our democratic form of government is at great risk for this and future generations of Americans.
No comments:
Post a Comment