I grew up during the 1960's and Vietnam. The 60's was a strange decade for America. It was a decade of both great achievement and disappointment. In 1969 Americans walked on the moon to close a decade of great hope for mankind and in particular America. It was also the decade of Civil Rights - which ended with the murder of Martin Luther King. Unfortunately it was also the decade of Vietnam, the entrenchment of the Welfare State and the rise of radical liberalism. The world has only been living under the threat of radical Islam for about 30 years - and only in the last 20 years or so has it become extreme - but America has been living under the even more destructive force of radical liberals for over 40 years. It started in the 1960's with a generation of boomers unappreciative of the sacrifices their parents made during the Great Depression and WWII. It is the era that spawned the Clintons and now the Obama; people so unappreciative of being Americans and ungrateful for all that has been down for them to provide a free and safe country to live in. The 1960's also marked the beginning of decline of the democrat president - first with Johnson and his monstrous welfare state, the Great Society and his failed foreign policy in Vietnam; followed by Carter and his failures around the world and his tossing of the Shah of Iran under the bus of radical Islam; Clinton and the rise of the Nuclear North Korea and the continued spread of radical Islam and now the Obama. Every major failure in foreign policy can be tired to the Democrats - a democrat congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam. We had won that war and had forced the North Vietnamese to sign the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, that were completely an acknowledge of defeat. It was the liberal congress 2 years later that refused to fund and support the South Vietnamese when the North began its efforts anew to take the south - eventually succeeding in 1975. There was an influx of nearly 500,000 Vietnamese to this country in search of American freedom and opportunity - the Boat People. One should note that these Vietnamese immigrants have, as a whole, been far more successful than the African-Americans in this country with none of the vast benefits and opportunities given the African-Americans. Another testament to the failures of liberalism.
We lost Iran under Carter and that inevitably led to 9/11 and all that went wrong in Iraq. Had Carter been a strong world leader rather than a sappy domestic failure most of the middle mess would never have happened - even Afghanistan.
As a big amateur historian - especially American history - the 1960's are a hard era for me to study. I have personal experiences of that time - I remember where I was and what I was doing when man stepped on the moon. My office is full of Apollo era stuff. But it was also a decade that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I remember the war protests and the draft dodgers and I hated them. The 1960's also saw the beginning of the truly biased media - the news refused to report the successes of the war but were more than willing to make sure everyone knew the daily death count and any atrocity that our troops committed whether on purpose or accidentally. Most of the history from the 1960s and most of what we think we know of the Vietnam war has been written and thus tainted by liberal revisionist historians so I have a hard time even reading about the 1960s unless it is about the Apollo project. Bill Bennett had on his Morning In America radio show this morning Bruce Herschensohn talking about his new book, "An American Amnesia." I immediately ordered the book as it promises to be one of the few true histories of the Vietnam war. I don't even watch movies about Vietnam - except the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets. As I am discovering most history written by the libs are basically empty and full of downright lies.
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