"THE LAST 40 YEARS that Wallis recalls only as 'wilderness' are remembered by most Americans as a recovery time from the chaos of the 1960s. Beyond the civil rights movement and the space program, it's hard for non-activists to recall most of that decade as historically anything more than a disturbing era of social disintegration.
Hardly wandering in the wilderness since then, America over the last 40 years has increased in population by 50 percent, become wealthier, healthier, cleaner, safer, less racist, and even more of a cultural and racial melting pot. After the ignominies of the Vietnam era, America went on to win the Cold War, largely end the impending threat of superpower nuclear conflict.
Now America presides fairly benevolently over a world that, with major exceptions, is far friendlier to American principles than 40 years ago. Good riddance to Leonid Brezhnev, Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, Joseph Tito, Gamal Nasser, and the countless radical activists in the 1960s who romanticized those tyrants.
Sadly, the legacies of the 1960s that still survive today are unrestricted abortion, widespread illegitimacy, broken families, pervasive divorce and absent fathers, all of which originated in the collapse of sexual mores and in the expansion of the federal welfare state that the 1960s unabashedly celebrated. Wallis rarely addresses these issues,, except to recommend an even greater welfare dosage of the Great Society.
Still, even these pathologies show some small signs of receding. And today's world, and today's America is far better than in 1968, thanks to the continued vitality of American democracy and of America's religious life.
A true prophet would recognize that."
Hello world!
7 years ago
2 comments:
I think the Spectator article takes an incredibly narrow view of the '60s. It's really convenient to focus on the ideologies that you hate (namely, communism), while ignoring the progress in regards to civil rights, women's equality, and a cleaner environment that also have their roots in the '60s.
One of the things that annoys me about conservatives discussing the '60s is that they seem to think that all DFH's were communists. This isn't even close to being true, but I guess it's a convenient way to use identity politics to discredit the left today.
I don't know if I'd call Jim Wallis a modern day prophet but I think he's certainly more on target related to the politics of faith than phonies of the right like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell.
In "God's Politics" Wallis talks about how "the right gets it wrong," and this op-ed is just another example of that.
Yikes, I just looked up what DFH means. But as for this one annoyance, I don't think all Lefites were Communists; however, coddling Communists and demonizing those who unquestionably aren't Communists annoys me. It's irresponsible.
But the article acknowledged civil rights as accomplishments from the 60s, so I think he "got it right." And his point is that these 40 years have only been wilderness wandering in the eyes of some . . . mainly those who have been having their ideological/electoral hat handed to them.
And I think Wallis is a phony . . . and Socialist in his values.
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