Right On: From free love to free money, our country went to pot in the 1960s

July 11, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — Sex, drugs and rock and roll.

For those who remember the 1960s, those words encapsulate the dramatic changes in societal values that occurred during the latter half of that tumultuous decade. Many of today’s most vexing problems have their roots in that era.

In the 20 years following World War II, traditional values were widely accepted by all segments of society. An opinion column in the Philadelphia Inquirer summed them up:

Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

Not everyone embraced these values, but those who didn’t stayed in the shadows to avoid being ostracized by society at large.

If only that were true today.

Society then was far from perfect. Female roles were limited. Southern Jim Crow politics and pockets of racism elsewhere betrayed our founding principles. Nonetheless, dramatic progress was being made by African-Americans as described by the Wall Street Journal’s black columnist, Jason Riley.

Riley notes that black labor participation rates during the post-war era were higher than whites. Black incomes grew faster than whites, and the number of blacks in middle class professions quadrupled. The legacy of slavery, a frequent liberal touchstone today, was not stifling black progress then.

The bipartisan Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 swept away Jim Crow laws and paved the way for today’s large number of black elected officials in the South. Martin Luther King and like-minded civil rights leaders asked not to be judged by the color of their skin.

But these laws, intended to produce equality of opportunity, failed to produce equality of results in short order. Liberal politicians discovered that pandering to African-Americans was an electoral winner. Tell blacks they were being oppressed by Republicans and that only Democrats could help them.

Thus began Democratic identity politics, putting everyone in a demographic box, initially sorted by race but to which ethnicity, gender and eventually sexual orientation would be added.

Equally unfortunate, the other great federal initiative of the 1960s, President Johnson’s war on poverty, unleashed a number of controversial programs with a mixed record of success. Each of these programs has been debated at length: Medicare, Medicaid, expanded Social Security benefits, food stamps, the Job Corps, Head Start and others all started in the 1960s.

All were launched with high-minded intent, but most have either failed to accomplish their stated goals or have proven to be fiscally irresponsible. Several of these programs will bankrupt the country if their costs and benefits are not dramatically reduced.

I find it fascinating that Johnson’s goal of “eliminating poverty” instead halted the dramatic progress that had been made in the preceding 20 years. How could this be?

Many observers believe that Johnson’s social safety net instead undermined work and self-responsibility, replacing them with an attitude that government was there to provide for every need.

Excessively generous unemployment benefits made work optional for those satisfied with a minimal standard of living. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – commonly abbreviated WIC – undermined the need for fathers in the home. The list goes on.

To these economic disincentives, add the social and moral upheaval characterized by the pill, LSD and the Beatles.

Birth control pills fostered a sex-without-commitment culture leading to today’s “hook ups” on college campuses. Increasing acceptance of abortion for those who forgot to take their pill has contributed to promiscuity and the steady erosion of traditional values in the guise of “women’s health.”

Drugs became fashionable among the young in the 1960s with psychedelic Timothy Leary’s famous LSD mantra, “turn on, tune in and drop out.” Marijuana began its climb to social acceptability as public figures acknowledged using it. Bill Clinton says he didn’t inhale while California Governor Jerry Brown apparently never exhaled.

Hollywood’s offerings started down their increasingly dark road glamorizing sexuality and drug use while dissing fatherhood, patriotism and love of country. It’s ironic that the same folks who applauded “realism” in movies and television are now the ones complaining about the exploitation of women.

The Beatles moved from the innocent “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to their well-publicized immersion in the drug culture, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Millions of young people followed.

Cocaine and its lethal variant, crack, were next. Now we have heroin and opioid epidemics. We’ve led ourselves down the primrose path of drug use.

I have no illusion that the traditional values dominant in the 1950s can be restored intact in today’s culture. But there are significant segments of society where they hold sway. Among these segments – spread across all levels of education and affluence – there is little drug addiction, minimal poverty and few homicides.

The 1950s values in the column above were demeaned and ridiculed by journalists, academics, and Hollywood. A certain well-known politician even called people with these values “deplorables.”

Until these very visible opinion leaders recognize where their misguided values have led the country, large segments of our society will continue on the path to economic dependence, social disintegration and moral depravity.

Howard Sierer is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: hsierer@stgeorgeutah.com

Twitter: @STGnews