Publius Returns

Alan Ginsberg and Jerry Rubin



“Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass”

Kids chase him
thru screendoor summers

Thru the back streets
of all my memories

Somewhere a man laments
upon a violin

A doorstep baby cries
and cries again
like
a
ball
bounced
down steps

Which helps the afternoon arise again
to a moment of remembered hysteria

“Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass”

Kids chase him

–Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind)

Outliving a Liberal Activist – Part One

It was 1968 when I took a bit of a side trip from a camp in Southeast Asia, took a taxi to a suggested hotel, and was walking through the lobby. It was the first television set I had seen since leaving the states several months earlier. Watching TV was not in my job description. But, what the hell, there it was. I was at first confused by what I saw on the tube. A young fellow with long, fuzzy hair was speaking, rather yelling, very animatedly. After some concentrated effort, I realized that he was speaking out against the war and against me as a warrior. His name was Jerry Rubin. He seemed a joke to me, but in the ensuing months he and his followers became anything but a joke.

Rubin not only protested the war, but also those of us who participated in it.

Rubin has since passed on. Luckily, I, who was part of what he protested, keep on going. His pal, Abbie Hoffman, has passed away as well, his demise taken as a suicide. David Dellinger followed suit in 2004. There were other activist leaders at the meeting: Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale. Known as the Chicago Eight, some continued such activities throughout their lives. Two at least were awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience or some other similar accolade.

People have to applaud their dedication to whatever nebulous goal their protests were aimed. However, some became businessmen, entrepreneurs, and/or teachers, and were subjected to hostility from previous followers as traitors (to their cause). It was not these eight who shaped our present society in any case. Indeed, it is those thousands who minds those activists shaped. And it is those minds that are setting policy and indoctrinating our children today.

In large part their world was not only one of American anarchism, it was antiestablishmentarianism, a movement against any form of “the system” anywhere, and it was through not only hostility but irresponsible, juvenile, and comic antics. Rubin, in particular, was more enamored with the fun and visibility of the act than with its content.

Their overall social disdain came, sometimes, as much from cowardice as a need for fame. While they did not want war, while they did not want to put their lives in danger, apparently part of a noble cause, they did not respect the death or sacrifice of those who chose to help their fellow Americans who were already slogging through the rice paddies.

These were the seeds of American discontent with tradition, with public faith, with the sanctity of marriage, with the right to life of unborn infants, with the free market place, with the right to own property, with conservative free press and speech, and with self determination. And these seeds were planted throughout the western world as young men and women took up the activist sword in Europe as well.

But my outliving such liberal activism now seems an impossibility. The many thousands whose minds they influenced now fill the halls of our congress, our administration, our universities, our high schools, and our elementary schools. They fill our institutions, our churches, our commerce, and almost every facet of the social structure of Western Civilization.

It has been 41 years since I sat in front of that TV set and pondered the comic antics of cowardice. It has been 41 years since I saw young men die while others at home strutted their disdainful and disrespectful routines within the judicial system, thumbing their noses at America. In later years these activists were given kudus and awards from progressive intellectuals while their counterparts, the soldiers, lay still in the muck of a hot and humid jungle, dead and forgotten.

Did they protest to save those young men? I think not. They protested for the sake of protesting, for the visibility it gave them, for the disdain they held for the generation that bore them. It was a wonderful lark. But in their protest they were responsible for the lives of many who fell. Can only a soldier understand that?

When I left for Southeast Asia in 1968, people would stop their cars and shake my hand, offer me a ride or a steak dinner. On my return in 1969, our country had turned its back on us. These activists had been successful in turning the American people against us. Ironically, hardly anyone would admit to being in Vietnam or talk about it in those days. While 2,709,918 souls were true Vietnam vets, 9,492,958 now falsely claim to have served in Vietnam. Why this sudden popularity, enough to have people lying about their service, even building their careers on it? See the book Stolen Valor. It shows how people claiming to be vets with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can collect VA money monthly the rest of their lives. Not only that, once the venom of the Jerry Rubins, Abbie Hoffmans, Alan Ginsberbs, Jane Fondas and others of their ilk had passed, it became macho to say one was in the war.

Though times and people are fickle, the changes brought about by such people as Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti fermented through the generations of our youth. In my youth, as a philosophy student at the university, I thought these people, particularly Ferlinghetti, innovative, daring, romantic, and gave a young man an identity for which we all seek after leaving the family nest. But my mind changed as I realized that society will tolerate only a certain amount of decadence. Subconsciously, though not consciously, I came to understand that American society continues into deeper decadence simply by redefining its terms. And thus, over time, primarily because of the activism of the 60’s, society gave free reign to pornography, homosexuality, sexual profanity and promiscuity, social activism, anarchy, and movements against every facet of American culture, tradition, and values. Certainly, what was not tolerated 40 years ago is quite normal today. And it is because these same activists have used our very freedom to allow such decadence that they have impugned the concept of liberty and the traditional fabric of our values.

Are we free to display our Christian/Judeo faith and heritage publically? Atheists, activists, and those few who misinterpret separation of church and state say no. Are we free to display and promote pornography? Our liberal judicial system and activists says yes. Are we free to say our fallen were murdered by Muslim Terrorists? Activists and the politically correct cowards say no. This disparate list is so large now that it becomes not a bruise but a cancer upon a nation.

These activist sentiments spur government expansion in an effort to take over our lives. The concept of liberty has been twisted, adulterated, and manipulated in such a way that traditional American values are eroding one bite at a time.

I see people in the ER or hospital who have multiple, elaborate tattoos, piercings, an expensive cell phone or Blackberry, and smoking. They have no job and are not looking for one. Most spend their evenings drinking beer. Their clothes are below their buttocks, their shoes expensive Niki’s, and their designer shorts sport a crotch almost to their knees. Their knowledge of American history is dull and void, their pride, if they have any, displaced.

“Our nation’s health care crisis in not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is crisis of culture – a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me.” Starner Jones, MD

Self-appointed “progressive” social engineers and Utopian idealists have subverted and raped our souls through a quite eloquent and insidious attack on our common sense.

And in such times as these, what would people of conscience do?

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” Thomas Jefferson

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless, minority; keen to set brush fires in people’s minds …” Samuel Adams

You cannot continue to deny that wolves are upon you and still expect your liberty to survive.