If we are, I think my generation is responsible. Those of us who entered our early to mid 20s during 1960s America.

We experienced things that today’s generation would hardly understand. Movies without sex, language or chain saws.

Rock and roll music where everyone either died or committed suicide. Drive In movies, drag racing on city streets, no color TV, no computers or video games.

Sounds really boring when we compare it to the 24/7 sound bite world we inhabit today.

It didn’t cost $100 to see a baseball game. You drank soda in the movies in glass bottles.

There was no such thing as talk radio other than maybe sports now and then. We said the pledge every morning in school.

It was an honor to be picked to raise the flag that day and we never let it touch the ground.

Where Did We Go Wrong?

I mentioned earlier that my generation began the downward slide of American values and traditions.

The Vietnam War, hippies, music, sexual revolution, drugs all came together and waged an all out assault on all the things that made America great.

We did that.

Things Americans respected for generations were now out of date, not hip, not cool. Tune in, turn on, and drop out. Don’t trust anyone over 30. If it feels good do it — to use the vernacular of the 60s.

The USA Was Far From Perfect

America was great in the 50s and 60s — if you were white. But not if you were black — or a woman.

The Civil Rights Movement came along and the Civil War metaphorically erupted all over again. Dogs, riots and fire hoses, filled our black and white TV screens nightly.

Women could not serve on juries in all 50 states until 1973. Women were not allowed to apply for credit in their own names without their husband’s permission until 1974.

Until 1978 women could be fired for becoming pregnant. Laws against sexual harassment in the workplace weren’t passed until 1980.

Today’s Youth Have No Idea How To Demonstrate

Yes, the US was far from a perfect nation. We were going through post war puberty. Growing up to fast in a world changing too fast for us to keep up with.

What today’s 20 somethings fail to realize is that when we demonstrated to change something we all demonstrated together.

Did you think the riots during the 1968 Democrat National Convention in Chicago were a bunch of unhappy Republicans? No, demonstrators showed up at both conventions that year. One just got out of hand.

Now, before you demonstrate, you have to read the talking points to make sure that it fit’s your ideology and there is the problem.

It’s not the cause that’s just unless it fits your particular groups narrative.

Some Final Thoughts

Every Saturday I would drive past the county court house on my way to the station to do my radio show. During the Bush years there were always demonstrators on the lawn good weather and bad protesting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama is elected and I never saw them again. War must be perfectly OK if the right man is at the helm.

The war protest was just a ruse disguised as a Bush protest. Obama's president can’t protest the guy we like.

Your cause, and you, have feet of clay. The war is still with us — the demonstrators are not. I wonder why? I guess they’ve moved on to statues.

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