Curtis Dahlgren
THOSE SIXTIES HIPPIES (1860s Russia, 1960s USA): When rascals rule
By Curtis Dahlgren
"As fiercely as ever he had arraigned the royal tyrant in the past, Patrick Henry denounced the presidential tyrant of the future, who would take the field at the head of his army, fasten his galling yoke upon the necks of the people and make one rush for the American throne." — James Morgan ("Our Presidents";Macmillan)
"THERE IS NO LITTLE ENEMY," said Benjamin Franklin. In other words, don't regard an enemy as necessarily harmless just because you are told that that is what you are expected to think! Morgan wrote:
"President Hayes said that a Napoleon in the White House in time of war could do almost as he pleased. Possibly he could, but it is doubtful. Anyhow, the popular instinct has seen to it that no man of that stamp has approached the White House."
Ironically, that was published in 1969, when our hippie movement was just picking up steam — and our government 40 years later is dominated by hippies or fans of that movement! Under Hillary Clinton, the Dept. of State is sending an Islamist extremist on a "good-will mission" at government expense! To see how 'harmless' all of this is, let's look back at the story of Communism in the old Soviet Union.
Does any of this sound familiar? From preaching "spreading the wealth around" to making a mockery of honest elections, there's a communistic pattern here. Our so-called "Youth Revolution" of the 1960s was preceded by Russia's Nihilism movement by exactly 100 years. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910) says:
"It originated in the early years of the reign of Alexander II, and the term [nihilism] was first used by Turnueniev in his celebrated novel, Fathers and Children, published in 1862. Among the students of the universities and the higher technical schools Turgueniev had noticed a new and strikingly original type — young men and women in slovenly attire, who called in question and ridiculed the generally received [traditions] of social life, and who talked of reorganizing society on strictly scientific principles. They reversed the traditional order of things even in trivial matters of external appearance, the males allowing the hair to grow long and the female adepts cutting it short, and adding sometimes the additional badge of blue spectacles.
"Their appearance, manners and conversation were apt to shock ordinary people, but to this they were profoundly indifferent, for they had raised themselves above the level of so-called public opinion, despised Philistine respectability, and rather liked to scandalize people still under the influence of what they considered antiquated prejudices.
"For aesthetic culture, sentimentalism and refinement of every kind they had a profound and undisguised contempt. Professing extreme utilitarianism and delighting in paradox, they were ready to declare that a shoemaker who distinguished himself in his craft was a greater man than a Shakespeare or a Goethe, because humanity had more need of shoes than of poetry.
"Thanks to Turgueniev, these young persons came to be known in common parlance as 'Nihilists,' though they never ceased to protest against the term as a calumnious nickname. According to their own account, they were simply earnest students who desired reasonable reforms, and the peculiarities in their appearance and manner arose simply from an excusable neglect of trivialities in view of graver interests.
"In reality, whatever name we may apply to them, they were the extreme representatives of a curious moral awakening and an important intellectual movement among the Russian educated classes.
"In material and moral progress Russia had remained behind the other European nations, and the educated classes felt, after the humiliation of the Crimean War, that the reactionary regime of Emporer Nicholas must be replaced by a series of drastic reforms. With the impulsiveness of youth and the recklessness of inexperience, the students went in this direction much farther than their elders, and their reforming zeal naturally took an academic, pseudo-scientific form.
"Having learned the rudiments of positivism, they conceived the idea that Russia had outlived the religious and metaphysical stages of human development, and was ready to enter on the positivist stage. She ought, therefore, to throw aside all religious and metaphysical conceptions, and to regulate her intellectual, social and political life by the pure light of natural science."
[Does any of this sound familiar yet? To those of you who have gone to college since the 1950s, it should sound very familiar! The Russian nihilists suddenly appeared a couple years after Darwin published his Origin in 1859, and I could cite many other 100-year "coincidences" in this repitition of history, but please note that the 1917 Bolshevik revolution was pioneered by hippies in the universities in the "sixties." It took nearly 70 years for the socialist movement to come to fruition (and it died about 70 years later).]
"Among the antiquated institutions which had to be abolished as obstructions to real progress were, religion, family life, private property [etc] . . Religion was to be replaced by the exact sciences, family life by FREE LOVE, private property by collectivism [etc, my emphasis throughout] . .
"Such doctrines could not, of course, be preached openly under a paternal, depotic government, but the PRESS censure had become so permeated with the prevailing spirit of enthusiastic liberalism, that they could be artfully disseminated under the disguise of literary criticism and fiction, and the public very soon learned the art of reading between the lines . . .
"The programme of the government was extensive enough and liberal enough to satisfy, for the moment at least, all reasonable reformers, but the well-intentioned, self-confident young people to whom the term Nihilists was applied were not reasonable. They wanted an immediate, thorough-going transformation of the existing order of things according to the most advanced socialistic principles, and in their youthful, reckless impatience they determined to undertake the work themselves, independent of and in opposition to the government . . .
"They began, therefore, a propaganda among the working population of the towns and the rural population in the villages . . Some disguised themselves as artisans or ordinary labourers, and sought to convert their uneducated fellow-workmen in the industrial centres, whilst others settled in the villages as school-teachers, and endeavoured to stir up disaffection . . . Landed proprietors and officials, it was suggested, should be got rid of, and then the peasants would have arable, pastoral and forest land in abundance, and would not require to pay any taxes.
"To persons of a certain education the agitators sought to prove that the general economic situation was desperate . . . " [my emphasis]
CONCLUSION -
DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR YET? The 2008 and 2009 "emergency bailouts" were justified on the premise that "the general economic situation was desperate" -eh?
When historians say that history "repeats," they're not kidding! The Nihilists assassinated a "Tsar" in 1881–100 years to the month from the attempted assassination of President Reagan. They suffered setbacks in the 1880s and 1890s, but the revolutionary Socialists never give up.
MORE TO COME NEXT WEEK.
© Curtis Dahlgren
August 18, 2010
"As fiercely as ever he had arraigned the royal tyrant in the past, Patrick Henry denounced the presidential tyrant of the future, who would take the field at the head of his army, fasten his galling yoke upon the necks of the people and make one rush for the American throne." — James Morgan ("Our Presidents";Macmillan)
"THERE IS NO LITTLE ENEMY," said Benjamin Franklin. In other words, don't regard an enemy as necessarily harmless just because you are told that that is what you are expected to think! Morgan wrote:
"President Hayes said that a Napoleon in the White House in time of war could do almost as he pleased. Possibly he could, but it is doubtful. Anyhow, the popular instinct has seen to it that no man of that stamp has approached the White House."
Ironically, that was published in 1969, when our hippie movement was just picking up steam — and our government 40 years later is dominated by hippies or fans of that movement! Under Hillary Clinton, the Dept. of State is sending an Islamist extremist on a "good-will mission" at government expense! To see how 'harmless' all of this is, let's look back at the story of Communism in the old Soviet Union.
Does any of this sound familiar? From preaching "spreading the wealth around" to making a mockery of honest elections, there's a communistic pattern here. Our so-called "Youth Revolution" of the 1960s was preceded by Russia's Nihilism movement by exactly 100 years. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910) says:
"It originated in the early years of the reign of Alexander II, and the term [nihilism] was first used by Turnueniev in his celebrated novel, Fathers and Children, published in 1862. Among the students of the universities and the higher technical schools Turgueniev had noticed a new and strikingly original type — young men and women in slovenly attire, who called in question and ridiculed the generally received [traditions] of social life, and who talked of reorganizing society on strictly scientific principles. They reversed the traditional order of things even in trivial matters of external appearance, the males allowing the hair to grow long and the female adepts cutting it short, and adding sometimes the additional badge of blue spectacles.
"Their appearance, manners and conversation were apt to shock ordinary people, but to this they were profoundly indifferent, for they had raised themselves above the level of so-called public opinion, despised Philistine respectability, and rather liked to scandalize people still under the influence of what they considered antiquated prejudices.
"For aesthetic culture, sentimentalism and refinement of every kind they had a profound and undisguised contempt. Professing extreme utilitarianism and delighting in paradox, they were ready to declare that a shoemaker who distinguished himself in his craft was a greater man than a Shakespeare or a Goethe, because humanity had more need of shoes than of poetry.
"Thanks to Turgueniev, these young persons came to be known in common parlance as 'Nihilists,' though they never ceased to protest against the term as a calumnious nickname. According to their own account, they were simply earnest students who desired reasonable reforms, and the peculiarities in their appearance and manner arose simply from an excusable neglect of trivialities in view of graver interests.
"In reality, whatever name we may apply to them, they were the extreme representatives of a curious moral awakening and an important intellectual movement among the Russian educated classes.
"In material and moral progress Russia had remained behind the other European nations, and the educated classes felt, after the humiliation of the Crimean War, that the reactionary regime of Emporer Nicholas must be replaced by a series of drastic reforms. With the impulsiveness of youth and the recklessness of inexperience, the students went in this direction much farther than their elders, and their reforming zeal naturally took an academic, pseudo-scientific form.
"Having learned the rudiments of positivism, they conceived the idea that Russia had outlived the religious and metaphysical stages of human development, and was ready to enter on the positivist stage. She ought, therefore, to throw aside all religious and metaphysical conceptions, and to regulate her intellectual, social and political life by the pure light of natural science."
[Does any of this sound familiar yet? To those of you who have gone to college since the 1950s, it should sound very familiar! The Russian nihilists suddenly appeared a couple years after Darwin published his Origin in 1859, and I could cite many other 100-year "coincidences" in this repitition of history, but please note that the 1917 Bolshevik revolution was pioneered by hippies in the universities in the "sixties." It took nearly 70 years for the socialist movement to come to fruition (and it died about 70 years later).]
"Among the antiquated institutions which had to be abolished as obstructions to real progress were, religion, family life, private property [etc] . . Religion was to be replaced by the exact sciences, family life by FREE LOVE, private property by collectivism [etc, my emphasis throughout] . .
"Such doctrines could not, of course, be preached openly under a paternal, depotic government, but the PRESS censure had become so permeated with the prevailing spirit of enthusiastic liberalism, that they could be artfully disseminated under the disguise of literary criticism and fiction, and the public very soon learned the art of reading between the lines . . .
"The programme of the government was extensive enough and liberal enough to satisfy, for the moment at least, all reasonable reformers, but the well-intentioned, self-confident young people to whom the term Nihilists was applied were not reasonable. They wanted an immediate, thorough-going transformation of the existing order of things according to the most advanced socialistic principles, and in their youthful, reckless impatience they determined to undertake the work themselves, independent of and in opposition to the government . . .
"They began, therefore, a propaganda among the working population of the towns and the rural population in the villages . . Some disguised themselves as artisans or ordinary labourers, and sought to convert their uneducated fellow-workmen in the industrial centres, whilst others settled in the villages as school-teachers, and endeavoured to stir up disaffection . . . Landed proprietors and officials, it was suggested, should be got rid of, and then the peasants would have arable, pastoral and forest land in abundance, and would not require to pay any taxes.
"To persons of a certain education the agitators sought to prove that the general economic situation was desperate . . . " [my emphasis]
CONCLUSION -
DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR YET? The 2008 and 2009 "emergency bailouts" were justified on the premise that "the general economic situation was desperate" -eh?
When historians say that history "repeats," they're not kidding! The Nihilists assassinated a "Tsar" in 1881–100 years to the month from the attempted assassination of President Reagan. They suffered setbacks in the 1880s and 1890s, but the revolutionary Socialists never give up.
MORE TO COME NEXT WEEK.
© Curtis Dahlgren
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