In That Dawn

Twenty years ago the world was filled with a generation to end all generations—the “best and the brightest,” the smartest group of young people ever to inherit the planet. Defying time, they were never going to turn thirty (although some of their leaders had tiptoed past that landmark already). Defying history and tradition, they would remake every institution, realize every utopia, reform the world.

Today the Sixties rebels are remembered mostly for rock music and their opposition to the Vietnam War. But that is not really the whole story. “The Movement” of that era had a life all its own. In university after university, profession after profession, country after country (France, China, Czechoslovakia), youthful radicals had their day. In America, lawyers swarmed into the ghettos in search of causes. Psychiatrists forgot about the mentally ill and began organizing voter-registration drives and rent strikes in order to “improve poor people’s mental health.” (All of this and more, of course, was funded by the Federal Government.)

About the Author

William Tucker

Mr. Tucker is author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey.

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Columbia University

Twenty years ago the world was filled with a generation to end all generations—the “best and the brightest,” the smartest group of young people ever to inherit the planet. Defying time, they were never going to turn thirty (although some of their leaders had tiptoed past that landmark already). Defying history and tradition, they would remake every institution, realize every utopia, reform the world.

Today the Sixties rebels are remembered mostly for rock music and their opposition to the Vietnam War. But that is not really the whole story. “The Movement” of that era had a life all its own. In university after university, profession after profession, country after country (France, China, Czechoslovakia), youthful radicals had their day. In America, lawyers swarmed into the ghettos in search of causes. Psychiatrists forgot about the mentally ill and began organizing voter-registration drives and rent strikes in order to “improve poor people’s mental health.” (All of this and more, of course, was funded by the Federal Government.)