The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America Paperback – June 1, 2001

An excellent discussion of the effect wrought by the '60's counterculture ("arrested adolescence"); continues in relevance because said entrenchment HAS carried on since then AND since this book's publishing in 2000, reaching it's highest level of entrenchment TODAY (2009). Be educated or reminded of How We Got Here.Several quotes (just from the Introduction!) that stood out:"Writing about America's cultural revolution in The Totalitarian Temptation, Jean-Francois Revel noted that 'a revolution is not simply a new political orientation. It works through the depths of society. IT WRITES THE PLAY IN WHICH POLITICAL LEADERS WILL ACT MUCH LATER.'""[from Paul Oskar Kristeller]...degradation of intellectual standards...One sign of our situation is the low level of public and even of our academic discussion. The frequent disregard for facts or evidence, or rational discourse and arguments, and even of consistency, is appalling." Who, says Kimball, can disagree? And who would have envisioned HOW MUCH WORSE it would get! (How well did/does Obama speak, just to turn around and prove it to be a lot of manipulation? Those who mentored him did a good job, proving RELEVANT those who questioned his associations.) Conservative Talk Radio (heavily under assault) is so popular becuz it tries to reopen debate/keep Another Side in play in an arena that's grown overwhelmingly leftist. Thankfully there's still some Americans who aren't willing to swallow Leftist Conformism/Utopianism whole, who don't cheer on the burying of common sense, who renounce the "twin banes of political correctness and radical multiculturalism." But that's why anyone who questions or challenges the current Conformism is personally attacked/individually discredited, while con men/obfuscators of truth (e.g., Al Gore) are lauded. Leftists don't champion Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Religion, it's all about Power and they have proven RELENTLESS. Opinions/viewpoints are "to be applauded only when [they] conform to the left-liberal orthodoxy..." A perfect example is how maligned the Tea Party movement has recently been; well-behaved, legitimately concerned citizens acting under Constitutional Rights are reduced to "dangerous," "pure racists," and "not for family viewing." Kimball quotes Edmund Burke: "The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: WE OUGHT TO SEE WHAT IT WILL PLEASE THEM TO DO, BEFORE WE RISK CONGRATULATIONS, WHICH MAY SOON TURN INTO COMPLAINTS." Yeah, are there voters courageous enough to have "buyers' remorse"? Is there enough backbone left in Americans to throw out ALL the bums before it's too late?! Not all Americans are happy with what's happening!As Kimball says, "This inheritance has addled our hearts and minds, and perverted our dreams while also preventing us from attaining them." WHO IS IT that is truly cheering on the collapse of America? The destruction of prosperity, the American family, the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution?"The idealization of youth has resulted not only in the spread of adolescent values and passions; it has also led to the ECLIPSE OF ADULT VIRTUES LIKE CIRCUMSPECTION, RESPONSIBILITY, AND RESTRAINT." We are now Alice living in Wonderland. Those of Good Will and Behavior are now the scorned. Where has SHAME gone? WHO is being held accountable today? Sadly, not those who would preserve our virtues...We see, today, in 2009, the nearly full working out of the takeover of our American society. The "slobbering over the Fab Four [Beatles]" is now the slobbering over Barack Obama, a perfect culmination of the counterculture's ambitiousness via "insinuation and infiltration rather than confrontation," the "call for total freedom quickly [having] turned into a demand for TOTAL CONTROL." The last 2 yrs of Bush's admin the majority-Dem Congress sat on their hands doing NOTHING to curtail the subprime lending/coercion of banks, close the border, or acknowledge the existence of those who wish our death. They were patiently waiting for Obama, community organizer/untouchable black man (doesn't the Race Card trump any and ALL criticism?), to then be let loose to hurriedly push thru agendas OUTSIDE normal legislative processes, spend UNPRECEDENTED amounts of BORROWED money bankrupting future generations before they are even born, rewarding their special (corrupt) interests while lulling the people with rhetoric, no disagreement/criticism permitted. I've often wondered why white Americans have been long coerced into setting aside their own interests and the best interests of the U.S. so that our primary concern has become the well-being/virtual supremacy of Afro-Americans. Hannah Arendt (no enemy of the Left) is quoted, "Virtue has indeed been equated with selflessness ever since Robespierre preached a virtue that was borrowed from Rousseau...put, as it were, its indelible stamp upon the revolutionary man and his innermost conviction that the value of a policy may be gauged by the extent to which it will contradict all particular interests, and that the value of a man may be judged by the extent to which he acts against his own interest and against his own will." When Eric Holder accused us of "cowardice" regarding race, his intent was not to stoke honesty or genuine fairness but to further implement that most effective tool of Liberal Guilt. Why else was Bill Cosby shut up?Because activist judges attempting to overturn convictions/free criminals have not proven fully successful, the Left now talks about how expensive & overcrowded prisons are, just full of 'innocents' and 'political prisoners,' another 'end run' around those who don't want escalating, out of control danger in their communities (much of it black on black for goodness sake):"Western intellectuals falling over themselves in a vain effort TO EXCUSE, MITIGATE, OR SOMETIMES SIMPLY DENY the crimes" of Stalin or Mao or Castro [or the minority underclass ("just let them vent!") or illegal aliens free to roam]... No owning up to unacceptable misbehavior; no comprehension that evil does exist.It's not yet too late. The battle for America's soul/existence isn't over yet. IF YOUR FEAR HAS BEEN RISING, Wake Up! and fight back, re-educate yourself and those you love. This book, "a series of cautionary tales, an annotated guidebook of wrong turns, dead ends, and blind alleys that, tragically, became a roadmap to the present" is well-worth your time and consideration.

Roger Kimball's acerbic wit and lively intellect make this book a pleasure to read. As Kimball notes, "The Sixties" is just an evocation; as a slice of history it actually encompassed nearly twenty years. "It began some time in the late 1950s and lasted at least until the mid-1970s."It's instructive to note that the "cultural revolution" Kimball discusses coincides exactly with the period of the Vietnam War; 1959 to April 30, 1975. The cultural revolutionaries that Kimball describes were spawned by the Vietnam conflict. It was the longest war of U.S. history, over 50,000 American youth were killed, and the Army was filled with draftees; "conscripts paid to kill", as Joan Baez hauntingly lyricized. It was this combination; the war, the draft and the popular resistance to both, that provided the backdrop of the sixties principal motif, "rebellion against authority"." This antipathy to authority merged with left wing ideology, both of which held that all of humanity should live together in a peaceful egalitarian utopia.(Aside: Kimball commits a serious omission in that he never mentions musician and poet Bob Dylan once in his book. Dylan's lyrics, style and cultural dominance of the sixties cannot be overstated: "The Times They Are a-Changing". Also, although the Vietnam War is discussed in several places, I don't believe Kimball gives it the central place it deserves as a "permitting condition" for the cultural revolt of the sixties.)Most of this book is spent exposing the intellectual vacuity of the revolutionaries. They were against the war but their leftist radicalism took some bizarre and twisted turns. Kimball describes the main and peripheral characters; the boorish egoist Norman Mailer, the narcissistic "intellectual poseur" Susan Sontag, the freakish sociopath Eldridge Cleaver, the fat, dumb and happy Allen Ginsberg, the drugged out Timothy Leary, the murderous Black Panthers and dozens more cultural icons who stood for nothing more than an attack on authority - all authority. (Note: epithets are mine, not Kimball's.)The Chapter on Susan Sontag is worth the price of the book. In fact, it is priceless. Kimball takes the ideas of these cultural icons apart as easily as disassembling a cheap tinker toy set.The most ominous theme to emerge from these hare-brained people who were going to save the world (along with saving the Viet Cong) was the antinomian view that their morality was "above the law." Yale Chaplin William Sloane Coffin Jr. and the two brothers, Priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, became carried away with their own virtue and burned draft records and helped young Americans flee to Canada. They exempted themselves from the claims of democratically established authority to pursue the calling of a "higher authority."Civil disobedience was born. I recall seeing tee-shirts on campus emblazoned "Question All Authority." Students came to class wearing ragged war surplus clothing. In one graduate class, "The Intellectual History of America" (at a California State University), one student always showed up dressed only in dirty, cut-off Levi's; bare-foot and shirtless. Not long after this a number of students at Berkeley started attending classes totally naked. Apparently this was their expression of a higher morality. "If it feels good, do it."How does all this sixties turmoil effect us today? The answer lies in the universities. The students who assimilated the religion of rebellion and anti-Americanism became the professors of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Many of these academics also became University administrators. This "intelligentsia" still controls the intellectual and moral discourse at the top of the cultural heap. (David Horowitz has documented this academic dominance of radical leftists in many of his books, articles, and on his website.) Perhaps, as historian Victor Davis Hanson has put it, this intelligentsia is like a large meal ingested by a boa constrictor. It has to slowly work its way through the intestines of the giant snake until it is finally digested. Maybe the academics and administrators have reached this point; maybe they have worked their way through the labyrinth of the universities and are about to be expelled from the other end.

Recebido em boas condições.

Perfeito. Excelente análise dos impactos da década perdida que foi a década de 60.

Fast delivery, just as described, thank you

Basically what us near 80 year olds suspected all along

Excelente leitura para compreender a sociedade atual! Recomendo a todos do Amazon!