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11/12/2007: "1968 as important as 1776: America's liberal revolution"
As the pages that follow demonstrate, the '60s were not necessarily, as some baby boomers would have it, America's defining moment. But they were an era when a generation held sustained argument over the things that have always mattered most: How should America show its power in the world? What rights were owed to African-Americans, to women, to gays? What is America and what does it want to be?
By the end of the decade, consensus was clearly not possible, and simply restoring civilization became the goal. Subsequent generations would have to answer those essential questions.
If the civil-rights movement truly transformed America, why are our cities still segregated? If women were liberated by the '60s, why do working mothers still feel so chained down? If Vietnam taught us how to be a humble superpower, why are we still bogged down in Iraq? These will all be vital questions facing the next president. The story of 1968 demonstrates that the truly brave presidential candidate will be he, or she, who finally acknowledges the '60s have everything, not nothing, to do with us.
[ The Baby Boomers split America between a realistic past and a liberalized, self-obsessed present that rapidly collapses. We either undo this wreckage, or sink with it. ]
http://www.newsweek.com/id/69637