Sowing the Sixties Winds, Reaping Today’s Whirlwind

From one perspective, the surreal absurdity of the current protests, vandalism, and riots is not even close to the disruption and mayhem of the political violence in the Sixties and Seventies....

But what’s going on today is more dangerous, for the ideologies driving the disorder reflect just how successful the leftist “long march through the institutions” has been at corrupting American education and culture over the last half a century. As a result, ideas and behaviors that by consensus were out of bounds then, have now been normalized and abetted by civic leaders and politicians, as well as popular culture, schools, and even sports....

For example, slavery, the historical evil that so exercises the “woke” protestors and rioters, is an historically unexceptional, universal institution.... But the rejection of slavery happened only in the West, from the 4th century BC Greek rhetorician Alcidamas, who said “The god gave freedom to all men, and nature made no man a slave”; to the Christian American and British abolitionists of the early 19th century, who finally brought about the end of slavery in the West....

But because the left sees only the West’s flaws, today we are watching the violent assault on public monuments to people from the past, even statues of Lincoln, who ended slavery in the U.S. ...

Meanwhile, a president who has done more for “black lives” than Barack Obama and the Black Congressional Caucus put together, is slandered as a “racist” and “white supremacist.”...

Next, we are witnessing the most blatant examples of the leftist principles that flourished in the Sixties: “any means necessary” and “never let a crisis go to waste.” The former explains what seems to be the pointless protests and violence...

Today the crisis is being manufactured....

This mostly blue-state dereliction of civic duty is unprecedented, and illustrates just how thorough the multigenerational corruption of education has been. We are now entering the third generation of those who have been indoctrinated rather than educated, which means that the political ideologies of a minority in the Sixties, today are more widespread and embedded in the halls of government, as well as in popular culture and entertainment....