The real source of rage against Vietnam.

Richard Cohen has an interesting piece today that is another look at the "we shall be as gods" conceit of modern man. (See "Cognitive dissonance," below, as another example of this conceit – financial data don't matter if our hearts are pure.)

The older generation of Americans were tougher and expected little from life, says Cohen, and they certainly didn't expect much from the government. The generation that came after thought they were immune from the brutal realities of life. When Vietnam came along and the draft kicked in with a vengeance, this younger generation reacted with rage.

This certainly comports with my recollection of the temper of those times. It amused me no end that when the draft started to bite into the ranks of college kids hitherto able to take advantage of student deferments, that is when the student protests went ballistic and the sacred cause of "peace" in Vietnam inspired many a riot, sit in, teach in, demonstration, or Bill-Ayers-Bernadine-Dohrn wasted life.

Yes. Rage at being forced to confront the demands of reality and being pried loose from comfortable dorms, nice cars, compliant girlfriends, and freedom to come and go at will in perfect security. And, by gosh, was it ever rage when it was no longer just the working class kids and farm boys who were going into the Green Machine, but numero uno his own self.

Solzhenitsyn's "crowbar of events" is even now smashing through the hallway door to open up a new vista on uncontrolled mass immigration; denigration of the bedrock culture (multiculturalism, reckless secularism); contempt for federalism and the constitutional protection of Article I, Section 8, and the Tenth Amendment; off shoring of manufacturing; Thomas Payne's "bastard kind of generosity"; blindness to the mortal peril of Islam; ruinous deficit spending; pusillanimity regarding the Iranian pustulence; the fatuity of nation building; cowardice in confronting black rejectionism; and a U.S. military defending every border in the world except the U.S. southern border. Inter bleeding alia.

For a people who thought there would be no tomorrow, it's, well, "morning in America." We'll see how the lads so enamored of their diamond earrings and 24/7 sports do when it's time to stand guard in the rain. Or time for something a lot worse.

"History Roars Again." By Richard Cohen, Real Clear Politics, 3/3/09.