It’s
Packer time, and I can’t let this particular summer end without some historical
comment. This summer notes the
forty-year anniversary of 1967, a period that is euphemistically known as the
“Summer of Love”. I believe the 60’s
are very relevant today, because the explosion of social and public policy
which then occurred serves as a crucial backdrop to the current content of
social discourse and governance at the national, state, and local levels.
A while
back I wrote and delivered an extensive talk on the subject of Western
Civilization and American culture, part of which contained an in depth look at
the 60’s. Names such as “The Summer of
Love” and “The Age of Aquarius” are vapid and sadly misplaced, for they ascribe
all kinds of noble and altruistic motivations to the 60’s. To the contrary, I believe it was an era that
witnessed an unprecedented elevation of “the self”.
Now if I
am to treat this subject seriously I must begin with some honest
disclosure. I was nine years old in
1967, and had no intellectual awareness of the tectonic shifts that were
occurring in the geology of American politics and culture. But I came of age in that era’s immediate
aftermath, and for many years my life and my behavior reflected that reality.
With a few
notable exceptions (civil rights, music, and some others) the results of the
60’s have been an unmitigated disaster for our society and our culture. The dissolution of the family, the rejection
of and disregard for authority, the Warren Court’s emasculation of the criminal
justice system, the craven collapse and metamorphosis of America’s once proud
University system, and the trickle-down effect it has had on all public
education, the unrelenting assault on all things ecclesiastic, the sexual
revolution and its shattering impact upon the emotional well-being of our young
people, Timothy Leary’s tacit vindication of drug use as something innately
liberating and noble, the open flirtation with and legitimization of violence
so brilliantly captured in Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic, the list could go
on.
It was
the 60’s where the erosion of so many pillars of American culture began. It was the 60’s where the pursuit of one’s
personal pleasure replaced such antiquated notions of self-control and social
responsibility as being the highest attainable goal. It was the 60’s where the time-honored
practices of our collective cultural responsibilities, the very fabrics that
weave a society together, began to tear.
We can’t
change what occurred.
But can’t
we at least start calling the summer of ’67 what it really was?
The
summer of “SELF love”.
