The 60s: You Say You Want a Revolution - Which One?

Yes, the 60s were part of a revolution. There were all kinds of people calling for all kinds of things to happen. As it turned out, there were several different ones that were started.

The political is the most obvious. Or is it? The one we most often think of is the one that pushed and prodded and demonstrated and worked for what we would label "liberal" changes in politics. It began with the Civil Rights Movement- equal rights. It showed up in the split into the "Black Power" movement that found the Civil Rights movement as too slow. It didn't take long for the development of the anti-war movement. Then, as time moved on others joined in. The Women's Movement- a long needed movement for equality of the genders arose. In June of 1969 police attacked a group of gay bar patrons at the Stonewall in Greenwich Village and the Gay Rights movement was born.

But we must not overlook another aspect of the political revolutionary heritage of the 60s. Ronald Reagan and the conservative to neo-conservative politics that we are so familiar with today. This is as much a product of that era as the anti-Vietnam War movement. Ronald Reagan became a Republican in 1962, gave a spirited speech supporting Goldwater in 1964 and was Governor of California from 1966 - 1974, elected on a platform that was as much anti-protest protest as anything else.

This conservative aspect of the 60s legacy is just as important to remember as the liberal politics that got all the headlines. But more on that in Thursday's post.

Then there was the equally obvious cultural revolution. This one was based in the sexual revolution- Free Love was one of those aspects of San Francisco that attracted a lot of people. Remember, it was the Summer of Love. And love was often not much more than sex- sex without restraint, sex without walls, sex without limits.

Of course this was brought on by a pharmaceutical revolution- The Pill. We may not remember it today but, according to Wikipedia, "although the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960, contraceptives were not available to married women in all states until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 and were not available to unmarried women in all states until Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972." Fits perfectly into The 60s, doesn't it?

We have already talked about the music side of the cultural revolution. The gender and sexual orientation political movements also gave rise to some very significant cultural changes- acceptance, more women in the work-force which led to a higher standard of living with two-income families. Television and world-wide communications possibilities changed a great deal of how we looked at the world.

Not to mention that now iconic picture from the moon of the blue earth hanging in the dark and lonely heavens. Which started the ecology movement and that first Earth Day at the end of the 60s in April, 1970.

And we should not forget the religious/spiritual revolution. Pope John XXIII. Even if nothing else were said that one name would say volumes about a revolution that is still being fought within the Catholic Church. But the folk music that began to seep into the church through the Baby Boomers set the stage for the worship revolution (and worship wars.) We saw an explosion of new translations of Scripture. And Eastern Religion began to have a significant place in western spirituality thanks to people like the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles, and Ravi Shankar.

These only skim the surface. And they only deal with the aspects of these revolutions that were happening in the United States. Just in 1968 student riots were exploding around the world, China began to become a real power, the Soviet Union ended the freedom movements in Eastern Europe- for the time being. But these were seeds for what would happen over the last 40 years.

Now, I am not a deep and trained student of history. But I do know than any age and era can be looked at as a time of change and even revolution, depending on what lens you happen to look through. There have been many "turning point" eras in the history of western civilization, not to mention the rest of the world. To look back from the 60s to say, the 20s, we could probably make a list of many, many events that contributed to what happened in the 60s. But I am not sure that those could be called revolutionary. They were extensions of what had been, not a seismic- or even quantum shift.

But there appears to be something stronger and more profound than usual in that era we call The 60s. It may have been a unique combination of many things in many places including the ability to communicate news and ideas almost instantaneously around the world, but things began to happen more quickly with greater impact than ever before. With this kind of diverse change- radical change- happening in so many places, a revolution was inevitable.

But who won? Who lost? That will be for Thursday. Suffice it to say for now that the 60s, while not the only time such a shift happened, it happened so quickly and so universally that we might even say we are still in the midst of it. The world has not been the same since.