Alito's feel-good vision of America before hippies & protests not true-LAT

[kpete]

Alito's mythical feel-good America
Alito's feel-good vision of America before hippies and protests simply isn't true.

By Jonathan Zimmerman


ONCE UPON A TIME, Americans lived by a few simple maxims: God, country and family. Children respected their parents; students listened to their teachers; citizens followed the law. Then along came the 1960s, when liberal elites undermined traditional sources of authority. College kids smoked dope, feminists burned their bras and black militants burned down the cities. So now we have welfare, divorce, crime and a sick society that has lost its moral compass.

That's the Republican Party line on the 1960s, when everything good turned sour. Well, maybe not everything. Amid the tumult and violence, a few Americans held fast to timeless American values. And that's where our next prospective Supreme Court justice comes in.


Samuel A. Alito Jr., you see, has become the GOP's anti-'60s cultural hero. Republican supporters seized eagerly on Alito's opening remarks at his confirmation hearing, when he compared his traditional upbringing in Hamilton Township, N.J., to the chaos and unrest he encountered at Princeton University.

................

And that brings us back to Alito. Despite his paeans to the decency of his childhood neighbors, did he know that many hard-working white communities were working hard to keep blacks out? And when he indicted Princeton students for behaving irresponsibly, was he including their peaceful protests against the Vietnam War?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-zimmerman28jan28,0,7066759.story
(I read the whole thing (scroll down) at:http://www.haloscan.com/comments.php?user=atrios&comment=113845402716563001)

[tanyev]

1. Good article.

I wonder how much modern Republican/Religiofascist thuggery is based in the fact that these guys were made fun of when they got to college, and they vowed that someday they would make somebody pay? Unfortunately, the whole world is having to pay.

[tularetom]

6. You've nailed it - I've said this for years

This is revenge of the nerds big time. But I think it started even before college. I think alito's school days were one long nightmare of wedgies and pantsings, interrupted by sessions with the chess club or the audio visual crew. Meanwhile all the hippies were smoking dope and getting laid. Must have been hell for him.

[WCGreen]

2. I love this guy...

He leaves the safety and comfort of home and is appalled that people might have opinions contrary to those upon which he was raised...

That there may be differences in the world...

That most of the time, life is Chaos for a good majority of people in this country...

Like a baby wanting his blankey, the GOP and Alito want to climb back in the womb, back where life is tender and sweet....

[jimshoes]

3. A while back there was a thread

kind of tounge in cheek about the kind of music that the good judge might have listened to. Was he an Everly Brothers kind of guy or more of a Jefferson Airplane kind of guy?

[punpirate]

4. Strikes me as the...

... Pat Boone type. :)

[CrownPrinceBandar]

5. The Norman Luboff Choir.........

and all the New Christy Minstrels B-sides you can shake a stick at.

:scared:

[jimshoes]

9. And these guys...

eek!

[kenny blankenship]

7. Quite right

before the 60s there was no such thing as a "broken home". Orphanages were full to bursting for some other reason...

before the 60s there was no crime. Everyone knows the 1920s and 30s were a time of uniform law abiding domestic tranquility. Gangster movies were just a fiction invented by a bored and dreamy populace to amuse themselves.

before the 60s, America had no racial problems. Lynchings and race riots like the 26 major race riots across America in 1919, and the race riots in Detroit in 1941 and 1943 simply never happened.

before the 60s America had no problem with substance abuse. Delerium Tremens and alcohol withdrawal may have been one of the top three leading causes of death, but since when has the sight of drunks lying dead in the gutter been a problem? In the modern era now that everyone owns a car or two the presence of alcohol besotted bodies in the streets is a chiefly visual experience, whereas in the past when one travelled mainly by foot, a dead drunk in the road was an assault on the olfactory sense as well until one was able to get well upwind. Alcohol abuse remains one of the leading causes of death, but it suffers the indignity in this debased day and age of being associated with pot smoking. Time was when you could cultivate your alcohol addiction with pride, knowing it was a manly occupation--the sort of thing John Wayne would do. And, although in reality you may have been speeding towards your grave, trashing your family life along the way, at least no one mistook you for a smelly hippy, preaching peace and free love.

[Cats Against Frist]

8. Magical thinking, historical revisionism, cultural supremacy

An appeal to a new "re-birth" through a hearkened to, idealized past. The sure warning signs of fascism.

This is the element of encroaching GOP totalitarianism that scares me the most. When you talk about "order and authority," etc., what you're talking about is someone's idea of "order and authority." From the Bible, to the King, to Hitler, to Mao, to the caste system -- that kind of "order and authority" generally comes to us through a lens of oppression and hierarchy.

That's where the true battle in all of this is waged, you know -- or, at least, it used to be, before the necons and their "history's actors" shit. It was the idea of order, versus the qualitative goals of the autonomous individual -- what the Republicans are agitating for is simply another version of totalitarianism. Pre-neocon, they wanted less government, so that they could run their own backwards kingdom of superstition and hierarchy in their own states. Post-neocon, however, they want to "create reality," and are concentrating authority at the federal level. The difference now is that they have admitted, to a certain extent, that they're not really traditionalists, but actually postmodernists -- and us, all of us, will just have to study what they do.

Scary shit -- patriarchal order and authority seen through a rootless lens that takes cues from neither the old-school pre-modern v. modern debate, or the so-called morality of their chosen superstitious belief system.

The womb in which they're trying to climb isn't the 50s home with the lampshades with sparkles and the Buick Special in the garage -- it's straight to the King and Church-type philosophies that they've always had -- this debate has been around longer than the modern GOP, make no mistake. These people want to be ruled. They're authoritarians in their own sphere and need authoritarian overlords to make sense of their world. All of history gets erased behind them, in their quest of dominance, supremacy, authoritarianism and order.

The Enlightenment philosophies were in direct opposition to this. Enlightenment was what sparked Democracy. Enlightenment was what founded our nation.

[napi21]

10. The whole idea of wanting things to be like they "were" is only

a dream, and a selective one at that! Most everyone does it. The human mind tends to erase the bad things and retain the fond memories. The only way to to change that it to point out to everyone all those nasty bad things that existed, but they've forgotten.

I was born in 1043 and grew up in the 50's & 60's.

One of those "Homes for wayward girls" was about 2 miles from our house.

Almost ALL females were employed as secretarys, nurses, retail clerks, teachers...

Girls were taught at home and in school that the "Greatest" profession you could have is being a Mother.

Most of our mothers didn't work, BUT, we never went out to eat, went to the movies maybe once a year, had ONE car, and it was a used one, the kids got new clothes for school and maybe for Easter Sunday but rarely any other time, we planted a garden to feed our family and canned the excess for the winter.

I didn't even include the really bad stuff like girls found dead at the end of an alley having blead to death due to a botched "coat hanger" abortion, terrible intimidation of blacks and I lived in Pa and didn't even hear about the lynchings and murders in the South.

I wonder, if people were reminded of all the things about that era that they've forgotten, would really WANT to go back????

[msongs]

11. let's bring back slavery,gassing jews - the conservative good old days

when islamics and other non-christians, and gays, hid in the dark alleys or they would be vilified, beat up,tortured or murdered.
and women knew their places. and you could beat your kids in public or at school and be called
a real parent.

conservatives uber alles.

boy, thanks senate dems, we can hardly wait.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/liberaltshirts.htm