What the Sixties Brought

Roger Kimball is co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion (www.newcriterion.com) and Publisher of Encounter Books (www.encounterbooks.com).

The fortieth anniversary of 1968 is upon us. What, with the wisdom of hindsight, should we think of that convulsive moment? Everywhere there are nostalgic backward glances: Youth! Freedom! Sex! Were not the Sixties the Last Good Time, an era of hope, idealism, the promise of emancipation from—well, from everything? Some think so. “Only a few periods in American history,” The New York Times intoned in an editorial, have seen such a rich fulfillment of the informing ideals of personal freedom and creativity that lie at the heart of the American intellectual tradition. . . . The 60’s spawned a new morality-based politics that emphasized the individual’s responsibility to speak out ...