This article describes the process of revolutionary attach of the system that has granted a degree of freedom along with resources for living and attacking. There are two ingredients to create this process: 1) the seductive lullaby of perfectionism, utopian dreams, elevating rhetoric and simple abstract ideals 2) smug righteousness, absolute self-regard, condemnation of the status quo. This always leads to the confused fanaticism harbouring a despotic subtext beneath the progressive rhetoric. The legacy of the American cultural revolution of the sixties is a disdain, or even self hatred for 'the American way of life'. In academy community, the greater the exposure to higher education, the more thorough the repudiation is likely to be.
The Vietnam war provided an event and/or text to exploit for delegitimization of many North American institutions. Clerical activists, namely William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (Chaplain at Yale) and the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Philip (Catholic priests). The background of these individuals is outlined including family, military experience and of course civil disobedience.
The fact that the opposition (justice instead of the law) came from representatives of the religious establishment sent a message of moral legitimacy. The fact that they were repeatedly jailed seems to have not cast doubt on the message. Philip was defrocked in 1973 for having secretly married a man in 1969. These men wrote of the virtue of the North Vietnamese compared tot he injustice of Americans. Heroic resistant against greedy oppression was the sanitized vision they presented. Dazzled by these thoughts and delusions of their own virtue they undermined not only the authority of established religion but the laws they broke with such regularity and insouciance.
Now, we have a society where the thinkers react negatively to the compromises that have and are sustaining the wealth and power of America. A disrespect for the individual freedoms which we won after centuries of patriarchal struggle. The institutions which guard our culture, freedoms, and morality are left in a crisis of ideals, mission and legitimacy.
I think the legacy is an even further pollution (with low self esteem and irresponsibility) of the legal system (if not just them why not a good business) of the traditional religious institutions (if not moral then why not a redundant social service) and the education system (if not wise or knowledgeable then why not do industrial training).
Page Created April 14, 1998
Page Last Updated April 14, 1998