1960s New Left

This post was originally posted at FRS Daily Journal

The Left, which is a diverse movement of Liberals such as myself who are center-left and more Progressive to Socialist Leftists in America, have been around a long time. And the Progressives emerged in the Progressive Era in the early 20th Century with their economic agenda that eventually became the New Deal in the 1930s. President Truman’s proposed Fair Deal that was to build on the New Deal, that never became law in the 1940s and then of course the Great Society of the 1960s.

Economic Progressives have been vocal and vibrant for really a hundred years now. But Social Liberals really didn’t emerge until the 1960s. They started coming alive in the 1950s when the civil rights movement came of age. But is really the 1960s when the Baby Boom Generation came of age that Social Liberals made their feelings known across the country on issues like civil rights. But we had a real anti-war movement then and a women’s movement, environmental movement as well as the homosexual movement. So homosexuals would be treated equally under law.

There are plenty of things that I like about the 1960s as a Liberal. The Hippie movement to me was really about individual freedom. Young Americans tired of being conformed to having to live one type of life. That Americans in previous generations lived and didn’t fit into the American life that their parents and grandparents. And so-forth lived under and decided to rebel and tell the establishment, “that we are not looking to overthrow you. And we are not dangerous, but we simply want the freedom to live our own lives.”

Thats what the mainstream Hippie movement was. And I like the civil rights movement of course and what came from that. But there was this fringe in the Hippie movement that was almost anarchist if not anarchist. That was not only anti-war and anti-Vietnam was and I would’ve been against the Vietnam War was if I was alive and an adult back then. But the problem I have with the anti-war movement was that it wasn’t just anti-war, but anti military all together. And treating soldiers, sailors, Marines, sailors like they were evil murderers or something which they weren’t, they were all American Patriots instead.

The Left at its best and the mainstream faction of it the Liberals represent the best of what Leftists and leftism have to offer America. This idea of Liberal Democracy, individual freedom and self-determination. A system where all Americans would benefit from and where we would all as a country have the freedom to chart our own course in life. And make out of it what we put into it. But like the Right, we also have a fringe from Socialists when it comes to economic policy and people who are called non-interventionists. Who only use violence to confront people they don’t like when they are doing something they don’t like. Like war to use as an example that give all Leftists a bad name.