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04/30/2008: "Forty years on, France still fascinated by May 1968"

Forty years after May 1968, France is enjoying a wave of nostalgia for the student revolt that rocked the streets of the Latin Quarter in Paris, fuelled by a never-ending debate about what it all achieved.

Television debates have pitted supporters who say the 1968 protests helped free up a hidebound society against critics who say they undermined vital institutions and opened the way to social breakdown.

But many conservatives say the carefree picture of youthful protest hid a malign disrespect for social institutions that has spawned ills ranging from high divorce rates to the violent riots that hit France's poor multiethnic suburbs in 2005.

[ Like all hippie revolutions, it was selfishness, now others pay! ]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080430/wl_nm/france1968_dc