1968: the year the dream died

The jig was up, and social revolution fell apart.

from the May 13, 2008 edition

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To back up a bit, in 1962, the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), proclaimed: "We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love." On the subject of youthful alienation, the document maintained: "Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance between man and man today. These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel management, nor by improved gadgets, but only when a love of man overcomes the idolatrous worship of things by man."

Unfortunately, in the supercharged climate of the 1960s, the call for freedom and love sounded dangerous. The SDS was labeled un-American, when in fact it was quintessentially American. By 1965, frustration was already apparent. A disillusioned Carl Oglesby, SDS president, admitted that, to some, his campaign might seem unpatriotic. "To [them] I say, don't blame me for that! Blame those who mouthed my liberal values and broke my American heart."

Frustration led inevitably to desperation. Thwarted at every turn, student radicals turned increasingly to violence. Theory provided justification: violence, it was claimed, would expose the authoritarian nature of the establishment.

In fact, violence destroyed the purity of the student revolt by opening it up to those who couldn't give a fig for freedom but loved the sound of breaking glass. Violence also gave every nihilist desperado the chance to be a star on the 5 o'clock news.

For the "establishment," the turn to violence was a godsend. Rebellious students could now be easily dismissed. Their misbehavior became justification for ever more repressive measures. Meanwhile, the silent majority cheered the authoritarian backlash.

By 1968, the jig was up: the revolt had been taken over by a group of lunatics in thrall to mayhem and in love with their own television image.

The great irony of the '60s is that a movement that started out as a worthy attempt to revive liberalism ended up as an agent in its destruction.

Gerard DeGroot is a professor of history at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of "The Sixties Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade."

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