CNN: Paula Zahn Now- Jane Fonda in 2005

Source:The New Democrat– Hollywood Goddess and New-Left political activist Jane Fonda: Talking to CNN’s Paula Zahn in 2005.

Source:The New Democrat 

“JANE FONDA TALKS TO PAULA ZAHN ABOUT HER ANGUISH OVER VIETNAM, 2005 {33}”

Source:Daily Motion– Larry King Live in 2005.

From Daily Motion

I think there really are two Jane Fonda’s: the great, sexy beautiful baby-faced adorable actress, who is arguably the greatest actress of her generation. With perhaps only Liz Taylor being better. And then there’s the New-Left political activist, that emerges on the American political scene in the late 1960s and is there throughout the 1970s. Who U.S. Military veterans see as The Devil. Who the New-Left/Far-Left in America, see as one of their heroes. Perhaps right there with Karl Marx and many others.

And I think it’s hard to cover both sides of Jane’s career in one post. But she’s made a huge mark in both careers that she’s had, I’m going to give it a shot.

It’s not being against the Vietnam War, that made Jane Fonda controversial. I mean, the country up until the early 1970s, was split on that issue. It’s still the worst war that America has ever been in. As far as all the pain, suffering and deaths and how it’s effected future president’s and Congress’s and how they go to war.

It’s how Jane was against this war that really sets her apart. And puts in the anti-war movement in America that makes it easy to portray her as anti-American, if not Un-American. When you accuse the President of the United States of being a war criminal and you take a picture with the enemy and you call Americans soldiers murderers, it’s easy to see how people who love America would hate you.

The positive side of Jane Fonda’s career: again, perhaps the best actress of her generation, ( The Silent Generation: Americans born in the late 1920s and 1930s, primarily ) I think only Liz Taylor would be better than Jane. And you look at Jane’s movies like Walk on The Wild Side, The Chase, The China Syndrome, some of the best movies ever and she had a great part and was great in all of them, its easy to see why she’s had such a great career. And inheriting Henry Fonda’s genes, doesn’t hurt either.

But as a political activist and I’ll go concentrate on the Vietnam War, perhaps some of her other activities, I probably agree with her on, she stands out as a real New-Left, or Far-Left radical, that has pissed off a lot of Americans. Who by-in large would probably like and love her a lot otherwise.

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NYU: Tom Hayden on His Life as a Political Activist

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat Plus

I was hoping this interview would be about if not mostly about if not the whole thing being about the 1960s. The New Left, anti-war movement, the Vietnam War and everything else from that period. Especially since Allan Gregg was interviewing Tom Hayden. One of the key leaders of Students For a Democratic Society and the New Left in this period. Before Occupy Wall Street was literally born, but the late 1960s version of OWS. But at least half of this interview is about the current Iraq War and 2008 in general. Especially since this interview was done in 2008.

Being that as it may, what Iraq and Vietnam have in common is they are both wars by choices. At least from America’s point of view of getting involved in something that at the very least could be argued had no business being involved in, in the first place. And for what, to build a liberal democratic utopia in a country that doesn’t have any type of democracy up until new pre-2003. And this liberal democratic utopia was supposed to be put together by Neoconservatives in the Bush Administration of all people. Which isn’t that different from what Neoconservatives wanted to do in Vietnam in the 1960s.

The anti-war New Left of the 1960s, were middle-age yuppie Baby Boomers by 2002-03 when the drive for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was put together. When Congress gives President Bush the authority to go into Iraq. Most of the New Left of the 1960s grew up and moderated and became spouses and parents and working good middle class jobs and even starting their own private business. They became capitalists and private enterprisers in the 1980s and 90s and so on. Which was one thing they were trying to get rid of in the 1960s and 70s. People tend to moderate with experience and knowledge.

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Fora-TV: Peter Coyote- Sleeping Where I Fall: Where The Counter-Culture Prevails

This piece was originally posted at The New Democrat Plus

I think Peter Coyote hit on the head so to speak and I’m not sure what I can add to it. Other than to point out why I believe he is right. If the goals of the counter-culture movement was to end war and capitalism, etc then of course they failed. If anything those things are more prevalent today. Especially when it comes to capitalism where most of the world now has some type of private enterprise private market economy that comes with basic property rights. Back in Peter Coyote’s time the 1960s, maybe half of the world had an open economy that was liberated from state-control.

But what is called counter-culture is all around us. Americans now more than in the 1960s are free to be Americans. Which is individualistic, which is the freedom for the individuals to be individuals. The freedom for one to be themselves and not feel the need to live in some type 1950s collectivist society where young people were expected to grow up and become their parents and grandparents. What Baby Boomers did and I include Peter Coyote in this group, was to break out from the parents and grandparents lifestyles. And decided to live their own lives instead. Even if their parents didn’t approve.

The part of the 1960s that I approve of is the so-called Hippie Revolution or culture. Which was about the freedom for people to be themselves and not feel the need to have to fit in with the establishment. And we’ve been on this track ever since which has freed millions of Americans all sorts of ethnicities, races, sexualities, cultures, lifestyles, etc to be themselves. It’s when you get into the anti-American, anti-private enterprise, anti-war at all costs, anti-law enforcement, pro-anarchy, anti-American form of government including the U.S. Constitution, where I break away with the New-Left in America.

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David Hoffman: What The 1960s Did To America

 

Source: David Hoffman

Source: This piece was originally posted at The New Democrat Plus

The 1960s was truly a revolution for American culture and politics. We go from a very conservative collectivist period from the 1940s and 50s to a period where all sorts of groups of Americans were standing up and demanding their freedom. And the freedom to live their own lives for the very first time in their lives. And from that sense at least the 1960s was a very positive time with so many new Americans now wanting and obtaining freedom over their own lives. And a bad time for the conservative establishment that wanted to keep things as is.

The 1960s you have the civil rights movement which was very positive. And not just for African-Americans, but for Latin-Americans, women of all races and ethnicities, as well as gays. And for Americans of all backgrounds now being able to live their own lives the way they want to. And no longer feeling the need or having to live the lives of their parents and grandparents. The 1960s you also have the anti-war movement which led to America finally seeing that the Vietnam War was wrong and that we couldn’t win it.

The negative aspects of the 1960s was of course the violence. We lost two great political leaders in John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. We lost two great civil rights leaders in Martin L. King and Malcolm X. The rise of crime in that decade, the rioting and division of that decade. Things fifty-years later we’re still going through and haven’t recovered from. But revolutions tend not to be all peaceful. There tends to be some casualties in revolutions and the 1960s was no exception to that.

We go from a very stagnant and status quo decade of the 1950s to a revolutionary decade of the 1960s. Where not a lot of new things seemed extreme, except to the establishment that again wanted to keep things as is. Because they benefited most from that America and also believed that was the way for all Americans to live. And if America had to do all over again I believe it would and that it would’ve needed to be done. Because of all the Americans who were denied freedom in America simply because of who they were.
David Hoffman: How The 1960s Changed America

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David Hoffman: ‘Hippies Remember The Glory Days’

Source:David Hoffman– A 1960s Hippie. (I’m presuming)

Source:The New Democrat 

“To support my efforts to create more clips please donate to me at http://www.patreon.com/allinaday. I am very proud of the TV series I made for PBS called Making Sense of the Sixties. I had the chance to spend a year examining my youth and how I became an active member of the 60s generation. If you are from that generation or a child of the 60s, I think you would find the entire series of value…

From David Hoffman

If you are familiar with leftist publications like Salon, The Nation, The American Prospect, AlterNet, TruthOut and I’m sure I’ve left some other out and the Occupy Wall Street movement and what is left of it today, go back to the 1960s and you’ll see where the members of that movement come from today. Students For A Democratic Society, the counter-culture movement and the anti-war movement and even anti-capitalist and wealth movement of the 1960s are the parents and grandparents of the Occupy today.

They were called the New Left back and people with this really far-leftist mindset at least in America are still the New Left today. People who were not only against the Vietnam War which a lot of the country who was a lot more politically mainstream back then was also against. But they were against the liberal democratic establishment in general. Not the Democratic Party necessarily, but the liberal values that govern America then and today and what the country was founded on. Mostly as it related to our military, law enforcement and foreign policy, but also our economic and political systems.

The New-Left coming of age in college in the 1960s decided they didn’t like America at least how the country was governed and founded. And put together a movement to not only get us out of the Vietnam War, which I would’ve been against back then as well as today. But they wanted to destroy our system and how our country is governed. And replace it with something a lot more social democratic, that is the democrats who were in this group. I mean if you look at Occupy today and then look at the New Left of the 1960s, they are the same people ideologically and culturally and believe in the same things.

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Jeremy Richey: Phil Donahue Show- Jane Fonda: Anti-War Speech & Interview on The Vietnam War

Source:Jeremey Richey– Hollywood Goddess and New-Left political activist Jane Fonda, on Phil Donahue in 1972, talking about President Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.

Source:The New Democrat 

“Jane Fonda Interviewed in 1972.”

From Jeremey Richey

Jane Fonda at her highest peak as an anti-war New-Left political activist, calling members of the American military criminals, murderers, including the President of the United States Richard Nixon and perhaps President Nixon’s predecessor Lyndon Johnson as well.

The wing of the American Left, the New Left people who are called McGovernites for their support of U.S. Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign took over the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And gave the Democratic Party a real bad name for over twenty-years.

We’re talking about people who simply don’t live on Planet Earth or at least in America (politically, at least) who believe that everything that America is supposed to stand for is somehow either imperialistic, materialistic, immoral, racist, bigoted, etc. Even though a lot of members of this political faction are urban, yuppies and some of the most successful and well-known, as well as talented and wealthy people in the world, such as Jane Fonda who is literally one of the best actresses of her generation, if not ever.

And yet the New-Left in America (Socialists and Communists) they constantly bash American capitalism and power, even though they’ve done so well with it. Even where designer material fatigues (that we’re probably made oversees) at their rallies.

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History Channel: 1968 With Tom Brokaw

Source: McKeow Tube– A hippie with Tom Brokaw.

“In this video, Tom Brokaw presents the causes, details, and legacy of the pivotal year 1968.”

Source:McKeow Tube 

1968 was one of if not the most explosive years in American history, for good and bad. With everything that happened that year from political assassinations, with people being freed to be themselves and live the way they want to. With all the good movies and music that came from this era. With the sporting events, as well as a new political movement in America that emerged on the Left-Wing and what I call the New-Left in America.

The New-Left (orFar-Left) that came into the Democratic Party that was anti-establishment, anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-anything that was previously done in America that seemed as part of the establishment. The mid and late 1960s was changing to the point that for people who weren’t Baby Boomers and were older, we’re seeing a completely New America.

The term New America I believe gets thrown around a lot and has become another corny catch phrase in American pop culture especially. But we did become a New America not in 1968, but go back to 1964 and perhaps even 1963 when the civil rights movement became mainstream in America.

1968 is that year where America became that true melting pot and where we became that country that just didn’t claim to believe all of those great liberal democratic values of opportunity, diversity, tolerance, individual freedom, freedom of choice, speech, tolerance etc, but we no longer just claimed those values, but actually owned them. We were no longer just a great melting pot ethnically, racially and everything else, but a country where all sorts of Americans became free to be themselves and live their own lives.

Culturally, the 1950s America that the Christian-Right have tried to move America back to ever since, it didn’t end in 1960 or even 1968. That culturally collectivist decade ended in 1963 or 64. But 1968 was a year where the right-wing came back and took on all of these millions of Baby Boomers who represented millions of Americans of all sorts of ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds and got behind Richard Nixon for president. And where these New Americans stood their ground. And that is where you see this cultural battle, Cultural War even that is still going on America today. Between Americans who want their 1950s back. Versus Americans who want to continue to progress and create an America that works for all of us.

1968 is a year where you see two America’s emerge. They were always there, but thanks to Hollywood and TV, they became obvious to most Americans. An America who saw things in black and white and if you saw things differently they would view you as Un-American. Versus an America that didn’t see things so simplistically. Who didn’t believe women’s place was necessarily in the home. That women should be able to make this decision for themselves whether to work at home and run the house, or work out of the home for money.

1968 is a year where our religious, ethnic and racial diversity, became celebrated. Where equal rights and diversity were celebrated in the New America. In 1968 you saw young adults essentially taking on their parents and grandparents in this new Cultural War.

America, went through a lot of hell in the 1960s with all of the assassinations and the Vietnam War. The violence that came about against the civil rights marchers (to use as examples) but with all of that violence and chaos came a lot of positive things as well. A Cultural Revolution where millions of Americans and not just Baby Boomers, but my Generation X and Americans after that, were given true American individual freedom to be themselves.

So in that sense at least and from my perspective, the 1960s and 1968 even, the most explosive year of that incredible decade, was a great time. It was a time where millions of Americans were given true individual freedom to be themselves. And with what comes with individual freedoms, comes personal responsibility as well. So Conservatives should support this as well.

You can also see this post at FreeState MD, on WordPress.

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Mitch: Chicago 1968: The Democratic Convention

Source:Mitch– I guess this couple was at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hopefully they survived the experience.

Source:FreeState MD

“As delegates arrived in Chicago the last week of August 1968 for the 35th Democratic National Convention, they found that Mayor Richard J. Daley, second only to President Lyndon B. Johnson in political influence, had lined the avenues leading to the convention center with posters of trilling birds and blooming flowers. Along with these pleasing pictures, he had ordered new redwood fences installed to screen the squalid lots of the aromatic stockyards adjoining the convention site. At the International Amphitheatre, conventioneers found that the main doors, modeled after a White House portico, had been bulletproofed. The hall itself was surrounded by a steel fence topped with barbed wire. Inside the fence, clusters of armed and helmeted police mingled with security guards and dark-suited agents of the Secret Service. At the apex of the stone gates through which all had to enter was a huge sign bearing the unintentionally ironic words, “HELLO DEMOCRATS! WELCOME TO CHICAGO.”

Source:The Chicago Blog– welcome to Chicago, Illinois.

From Smithsonian Magazine

1968 is when the Democratic Party changed and no longer became a Northeastern progressive party with a Southern coalition, made up of people who basically make up the Religious-Right and Neo-Confederate wing of the Republican Party today. By 1968, the Democratic Party was moving away from the South and becoming the party of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, as well as the Mid Atlantic.

With the emergence of what I call the Green Party wing of the Democratic Party, that is represented by the so-called Progressive Caucus in Congress that you see today in the Green Party, but also in Occupy Wall Street, the Democratic Party now had a major, left-wing in it. And this is how the Democratic Party lost the White House in 1968 because Classical Liberals on their Right and Progressives on the Center-Left in the party were now divided between the New-Left in the party made up of Socialists-Anarchists, as well as Communists. The group called Students For a Democratic Society then was what Occupy Wall Street is of today.

The Democratic Party lost in 1968 because they were divided by their two wings on the Left: The FDR/LBJ Progressive coalition, with this new coalition that’s called the New-Left, people who are against war (at all costs) but are in favor of using violence to get their message across. Who are against American capitalism and corporate America, but in favor of the New Deal and Great Society, but would expand into what’s known in Europe as the welfare state. What the Green Party today calls the Green New Deal.

The Green Deal would be a whole host of new Federal Government social programs to finish off of what the New Deal and Great Society didn’t accomplish.

The New-Left then made up of Students For a Democratic Society and Occupy Wall Street today, are not Pacifists in the sense that they are against violence and would never use violence. They just don’t want violence coming from their government, but are more than willing to use it against government or people in society. That represent what they do not like about America, like private corporations.

1968 is basically when the Democratic Party basically became three political parties: New Democrat Liberals, the center-right, (where I am) the FDR Progressives or what’s left of them, and Occupy Wall Street today or the Green Party. That sees the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as the same party, but with different names.

And even as split as the Democratic Party was back then, they still came within a state or two of winning the 1968 presidential election. But they would’ve done much better without the split happening all in one party.

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Chuck Collins: George McGovern’s 1972- The People’s Campaign

Source:Chuck Collins– George McGovern for President, 1972.

Source:FreeState MD

I don’t exactly where and when this photo was shot, but I’m pretty sure it’s from Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign. Always thought he looked good on the campaign trail and looked real. Which made very special in the sense that most American politicians (especially especially in Congress) look so made up and fake.

Source: FreeState MD

The 1972 Democratic National Convention, was real Amateur Night at the Apollo. Or in this case Amateur Night at the Miami Convention Center. Just because Senator McGovern didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the 1972 presidential election because of how popular President Nixon was then and with his foreign policy success. Including ending the Vietnam War and opening Russia and China.

And with the state of the Democratic Party thanks to the emergence of the New-Left in it that became todays Green Party and Occupy Wall Street movement. It was as if what Democrats were saying with George McGovern:“We’re not going to win anyway. So we might as well nominate our heart and go down big, but swinging.”

Just because you probably aren’t going to win an election, it doesn’t mean you have to prove to the wold how unqualified you are to not just govern a huge divided country, but to even win the presidency. And go out-of-your-way to do what you can to make that happen for yourself. And not run the best campaign that you can. Otherwise you might as well not have bothered running for president in the first place. And stay in the Senate and continue be part of the loyal opposition in Congress instead.

But what happened with the McGovern Campaign is that they never gave themselves much of an opportunity to win this election. And neither did the Democratic Party with the division between the Center-Left and Far-Left in the party.

I have a lot of respect for how George McGovern as far as how he managed his life and career. He truly was a public servant and a people’s politician and always believed in doing what was in the public’s interest. Also as far as what he accomplished politically and moving the Democratic Party from being dependent on racists anti-minority Dixiecrats to win presidential elections. By bringing in ethnic and racial minorities, as well as women and men. And making the Democratic Party very competitive in the North.

But the McGovern presidential campaign represents what can happen to the Democratic Party when their leadership is weak. And they don’t have a strong Center-Left establishment. And as a result they become divided and their Far-Left takes over. And they nominate George McGovern as their leader in 1972.

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Vice President Hubert Humphrey: 1968 Democratic National Convention Acceptance Speech

Source: EFan– Vice President Humbert H. Humphrey (Democrat, Minnesota) accepting the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, in Chicago, Illinois.  

Source:FreeState MD

“Here is Vice President Humphrey’s acceptance speech from that turbulent and wild convention in August 1968.

He was very much the establishment candidate in ’68, and was the favorite through the race after President Johnson quit. He might not have been the most popular choice in ’68 but he did come close to winning, which might have been the closest anyone could have come that year, but it depends on which history expert you ask. Humphrey does seem like a nice guy however.”

From EFAN 2011

Hubert Humphrey, didn’t lose the 1968 presidential election because he was a bad candidate or ran a bad campaign or wasn’t qualified to be President of the United States. The opposites are true and even though as it turns out 1968 was his best shot at being elected President of the United States, something he had been thinking about at least since 1957 after Dwight Eisenhower was reelected President in a landslide. Vice President Humphrey was caught in a perfect political storm for both the Democratic Party because of how much damaged it did to the party that lasted at least until 1976 and came back again in 1980 the same political divisions that reemerged again in the late 1970s.

But it was also a perfect political storm for the Republican Party because it not only brought them back to power with Richard Nixon, but made them a real competitive conservative national party again. Where the Republican Party represented the center-right in the country. And the Democratic Party now representing the center-left in the country.

1964 and 1968, even though only one of those elections resulted in short-term success and if you count 1966 and that would be two elections for the Republican Party which they won made them a conservative, national, competitive, party, that would fight communism and other authoritarianism. That would promote economic freedom and business and be a fiscally conservative party. These were the positive aspects of the GOP merging with the South.

What these elections did to the Democratic Party, was create chaos for them. Because it meant they could no longer count on the South for votes and to win elections with them. Plus, they had this emerging young more social-democratic, anti-military New-Left, coming into the party. That pushed the Democratic Party to the Far-Left on many national issues through the 1970s and even into the 1980s. Which they didn’t recover from until 1992 when the Democrats nominated Bill Clinton for president and of course he wins that election and Democrats keep control of Congress as well. But what 1968 along with 66 and even 64 did, was realign both the Republican Party and Democratic Party.

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