CBSNews.com’s Dottie Lynch wants to know why kids these days aren’t throwing more ’60s style fits, protesting authority and law endorcement:
[A]s the war in Iraq rages on I keep asking myself: Where are the young people this time around? Where are the campuses? Where are the new Tom Haydens and Sam Browns and where are the Noam Chomskys, William Sloane Coffins and Daniel Berrigans?
For the past four months, I was at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, surrounded by idealistic young people and their liberal professors. There was virtually no support for the war (except for the offspring of a few famous neo-cons) but neither was there serious organized activity to try to stop it.
Large groups of students traveled to New Orleans to help rebuild it and another group went to Washington to protest the genocide in Darfur. But why so quiet about Iraq? Could it be because it seems abstract?
Dottie, rebuilding New Orleans and deploring genocide are positive things on which most people can agree. Protesting the war in Iraq is misguided and often politically motivated, and it is an action with the disgusting ’60s connotations.
It’s the 21st century, Dottie. The 1960’s occured FOUR DECADES AGO. That is ancient history to current events.
The message is simple. Whether you are for the liberation of Iraq and the destruction of terrorism at its roots or agin it, retrograde nostalgia for a smellier time is counterproductive to the task at hand. Living. And no matter how you see the war, there are better ways to spend your time.
