The late 1960s

Unlike most baby-boomers in general, I have limited respect for the 1960's and early 1970's. I found its rallying cry, "Do Your Own Thing" of-putting and suspect. Blacks, women and gays found their long overdue and well-deserved freedom in the period, but the attendant costs have been under reported.

I find that the period's heightened, propagandized sense of self-absorption and self-indulgence abhorrent. In the period's loud and self-aggrandizing self-promotion, its adherents created an implicit attack on consensus and group solidarity; it let loose a torrent of negative resonances in the US society: an increased disintegration of social respect and harmony, political polarization and political particularization, a sense of individual victimization, a great wave of personal isolation and individual alienation and a profound loss of group solace and comfort.

Freedom is a mixed blessing.