The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties

by Leaf, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9781596985728
• ISBN10: 1596985720
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-11
• Publisher: Regnery Pub

Summary

Politically correct textbooks and Hollywood movies portray the 1960s as a momentous era of youthful rebellion and social upheaval. But this is a gross distortion. From popular culture to social views, throughout the 1960s America remained a conservative nation-and in many ways, extremely so. In The Politically Incorrect GuideTM to the Sixties, Jonathan Leaf takes you on a raucous tour of America's real social, cultural, and political life during that supposedly transformative decade. This myth-busting book shows how the decade's vaunted radicalism was, in fact, confined to a small group of isolated extremists who have rewritten the decade's history, casting themselves as the heroes. In truth, it was mainstream America-conservative America-that both quietly dominated the 1960s, and that has survived every outrage the radicals have tried to hurl against it. Sixties radicals might not find this book groovy, but for the rest of us, here's the unvarnished, politically incorrect truth about one of the most misrepresented decades in American history. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Jonathan Leaf is a playwright and cultural critic. The author of The Germans in Paris, The Caterers, and other plays, he has written about the arts and culture for National Review, the Weekly Standard, the New Criterion, and other publications. He now lives in New York City, where he previously worked as a public school teacher.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
The Social Sixties
The Student Radicals: Who They Were and Which Girls They Wanted	p. 1
Leaders of the New Left: Marx would be proud
The Berkeley free speech movement: Free speech for us
Students for a Democratic Society: From radicalism to terrorism
Kent State: The untold story
The radicals go to grad school and take over the faculty
The decline and fall of the American university
The Sexual Revolution and the Start of Feminism: Where'd Mom and Pop Go?	p. 29
The advent of feminism
The legacy of feminism
Civil Rights and Uncivil Wrongs: From Freedom Rides to "Burn, Baby, Burn"	p. 43
From anti-discrimination to "positive discrimination"
Jumping on the bandwagon
Who was Malcolm X?
Who were the Black Panthers?
What caused the 1960s urban riots?
Cesar Chavez: Labor organizer and best buddy of the INS
The Intellectuals: Did They Have It All Figured Out?	p. 65
The treason of the clerks, part I: It's a mad, mad world
The treason of the clerks, part II: There's no villain like the corporate villain
The Cultural Sixties
Rock 'n' Roll: Soundtrack to the Sixties?	p. 75
What is rock 'n' roll?
"If you go chasing rabbits..."
Bob Dylan vs. Merle Haggard
Paul McCartney and George Martin
The Rolling Stones
The Altamont debacle
Movies and TV: Not Great, But Not Yet Decadent	p. 95
Hurray for Hollywood-sort of
Foreign films: Trying to make Marxism interesting
Mods, Minis, Wide Ties, and Brooks Brothers: The Best of Sixties Fashion	p. 107
Jackie and Audrey: Adult fashions
Haight-Ashbury: Where good fashion went to die
To the Moon, But at What Price?	p. 117
The politics of outer space
One giant boondoggle for mankind
The moon landings did not lead to countless new inventions	p. 117
The Political Sixties
The Unwarranted Court: Earl Warren and His Battle against the Constitution	p. 129
Who was Earl Warren?
Power grab: The Warren Court in action
Power corrupts
Camelot as It Really Was	p. 141
With a little help from his friends
Viva la resistance-to Communism
Peace through superior firepower
Kennedy's tax cuts and the roller-coaster 1960s economy
Sickness in secret
Johnson's War on Poverty-and Common Sense	p. 163
Just saying "yes"
The great cost of the Great Society
The Vietnam War: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory	p. 175
Who were the real heroes in Vietnam?
A defeated enemy is handed victory: The Tet Offensive
Why did the South lose?
Cambodian nightmare
Street theater: The 1968 Chicago riots
The Birth of the Counter Counterculture	p. 197
Russell Kirk
Milton Friedman
Ayn Rand
William F. Buckley Jr.
Barry Goldwater lights the prairie fire
Out of the ashes
Acknowledgments	p. 211
Notes	p. 213
Index	p. 235
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