A snippet caught my eye over at Powerline (emphasis mine):
So let’s revisit the original for a moment, and note the media propensity for glorifying whatever self-assertion reckless youth decides to throw up at the moment. Back in 1969, Time magazine chirped that Woodstock
may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological events of the age. . . [T]he revolution it preaches, implicitly or explicitly, is essentially moral; it is the proclamation of a new set of values. . . With a surprising ease and a cool sense of authority, the children of plenty have voiced an intention to live by a different ethical standard than their parents accepted. The pleasure principle has been elevated over the Puritan ethic of work. To do one’s own thing is a greater duty than to be a useful citizen. Personal freedom in the midst of squalor is more liberating than social conformity with the trappings of wealth. Now that youth takes abundance for granted, it can afford to reject materialism.
Yet, that "different ethical standard" was never different (there is hardly ever anything new under the sun) nor is it ethical. What was, at that time, the mantra of "do what feels good as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else" is nothing more than a thinly veiled gauze of hedonism. The hippies back in the ’60s, following the "turn on, tune in, and drop out", thought this was the new that would usher in a new society, with Woodstock as the iconic event pointing to the "fact" that this could happen.
Then Altamont happened, showing that reality can really gum up the works of any planned or "scientific" utopian nirvana.
The "personal freedom" turned out to be nothing more than a form of personal anarchism – a rejection (once you drilled down through the flotsam and jetsam) of self-control and self-responsibility. Without these two virtues (imagine that, a discussion of virtue!), a civil and democratic society becomes all but impossible if it spreads far enough.
Well, Occupy Wall Street has been pretty much a replay of that ’60s scenario – but with a compressed timeline. A "new" way of being, a "new" style of governance, and a "new" set of ethics. While the Generation of Love ended with a single murder at the Rolling Stone concert, OWS has had a number of murders but even with eviction of various OWS encampments, I don’t think that this is the end of this movement, given the aims of the some of the actual leaders bent on driving capitalism and democracy out of American society. After all, some of the folks that are support OWS are the radicals (like Obams’s best bud, Bill Ayers) that came out of the 60s – all convinced that they have the answer, it is one form or another of socialism, and that we all have to accept them (like it or not).
In the end, however, it all comes down to this little ditty that RedState had found, an Ode to #OWS. Look at the date – it sure precedes OWS and the Age of Aquarius:
The "Puritan Work Ethic" – much denigrated by intellectual elites hellbent on turning us into Greece writ large. Bring in socialism, however, and the ability for many to turn to "hedonistic sloth", society will fail eventually. After all, of all of the communes that have been tried here in the United States that have tried similar schemes, how many of them can be pointed to as rousing successes (as in "can you name one?")? Heck, look at the countries that have tried to make socialism a go – each one has had to adopt capitalistic principles in order from going under. And as far as "non-partisan technocrats" that Progressives say that should fill the levers of government for a more efficient society – just watching Europe walking the highwire for bailing out their more profligate EU members has shown that moving from nation-states based on truer forms of democracy to that of the Progressive goal of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and technocrats is not something that we should look forward to.
